It is apropos that the Whole Grains Council has declared quinoa as the March Grain of the Month, as we begin Passover on the night of March 29th. Quinoa, a rockstar of a grain in its own right with tons of nutritional value, made its debut as a Passover friendly grain just a few years ago, forever changing the way many people cook for the holiday.

According to the laws of Passover, chometz (barley, rye, oats, wheat, and spelt [BROWS to many who attended Jewish day school]) and their derivatives are forbidden. An Ashekanazic rabbinic tradition developed where kitniyot, legumes, rice and other similar products that are processed similar to chometz, look like chometz when ground into flour, or may have even just a bit of chometz in them, were also outlawed for Passover (many Sephardic Jews eat kitniyot).

As luck would have it, the law of kitniyot applies only to items that the rabbis were aware of at the time this tradition developed. This means that, you guessed it, quinoa is allowed on Passover! No longer were the Jewish people restricted to endless variations of potato dishes.

Enter, quinoa.

Many Jews would consider a bagel naked without the lox

Disclaimer: I am neither Orthodox nor do I keep kosher. And when I read things like this week’s Jewish Week article, I realize just another reason why.

Granted this is in the haredi community, which continues to move further and further toward a parody of itself. A group of rabbis has determined that Shabbat elevators, which are in use throughout Israel and New York, are no longer kosher. And now lox may be suspect.

As someone who cares deeply about where my meat comes from, how it was treated when it was alive, as well as how it was killed, I am continally struck by how except for a handful of exceptions (run by people we all know) kosher meat does not fit into this at all. People who care about both have so few options available.

Cross-posted to heebnvegan

This week The Jewish Star reported that some haredi rabbis in Israel (as well as some of their American counterparts) have deemed various types of fish treif because they possess a parasitic worm called anisakis. The article quoted a bulletin from “Chevra Mehadrun, the Kashrus Advocacy of Rockland,” as advising that “wild salmon, hake, flounder, sol[e], halibut, sea bass, red perch, scrod, pollock, cod and butter fish are no longer considered kosher.” It must be noted that many mainstream Orthodox authorities, including the Orthodox Union, do not take this position.

Although this new classification does not yet have a huge following, one must imagine that lox and various other common foods would cease to be staples in kosher cuisine. If a large number of kosher consumers adhered to the new standard, fish consumption among kosher-keeping Jews would likely decrease substantially. At this time, there is no reason to suspect that this will be the case. Considering that fish feel pain and suffer in much the same way that other vertebrate animals do, though, one can still hope that more and more people see that fish are friends, not food!

Huge mazal tov to Rabbi Eliav Bock, author of this guest post and Director of Ramah Outdoor Adventure, on the birth of his son last week!

Today is the first of periodic blog posts about food at Ramah Outdoor Adventure. Because the food we eat at camp will play such an integral part in supporting the overall mission of the camp, I thought it appropriate to focus some of the blog posts leading up to camp on the use of food.

For those who missed the announcement the other day, The First Lady, Michelle Obama, launched the “Let’s Move” campaign. She has correctly singled out childhood obesity as a major epidemic facing America. Her campaign aims to get kids off the couch, away from video games, and eating more wholesome food. For anyone who has been aware of the growing food movement in America these past few years, nothing that she said yesterday is too surprising. It is an indisputable fact that as a society, our children today are less healthy than they were a generation ago. Anywhere from 25%-30% of American children are overweight. As Mrs. Obama pointed out, today’s children are the first generation whose life expectancy is shorter than that of their parents.

Be sure to check out this article written by Nigel Savage, Hazon’s founder and executive director, published in Sh’ma this month. The piece is a good summary of the lay of the land of the Jewish Food Movement and is sure to give folks some “food for thought.”

My boyfriend is Brazilian.  To look at him you’d probably think he was Middle Eastern, with his dark complexion.  He speaks with an American accent that is very South Florida, but none-the-less he was born in Brazil.

Last week for no particular reason I wanted to surprise him with a Brazilian inspired meal. However, most Brazilian cuisine involves meat or fish – two things my boyfriend is loath to eat.  (We do occasionally eat humanly raised grass-fed local sustainable meat, but he finds seafood appalling.)   Feijoada, considered the national dish of Brazil consists of black beans slow cooked with various parts of the pig.  Since my boyfriend loves meatless rice and beans, so I decided to get creative.

On the Internet I researched various feijoada recipes, which mostly relied on lots of salt and pork and very little other flavoring unless you count the beef bits.  But how could I keep things kosher and compete with recipes that look like a butcher shop in a pot?  There were a lot of vegetarian black bean recipes online, but this needed to be more than just rice and beans, I needed to make this complex and interesting to call it feijoada.  So I explored the Internet for some more tastes of Brazil.

I’m fascinated when tradition gets tested by modern science and comes out standing.  I’d cheered when acupuncture was shown to be effective for chronic pain.  Now, I’ve learned that America’s Test Kitchen, which publishes Cook’s Illustrated, has subjected challah to its test kitchen experimentation.  The results: pretty much what you’d learned from your mother and grandmother (or would, if you had one).

The best tasting challah is not too sweet, not too dense, not too fluffy and not from the commercial bakeries.  Their results, from the Holiday Baking 2009 issue, included:

People love to cook for intimate gatherings, but they also have a fascination with mass-producing food. I, for one, am guilty of an obsession with the Food Network show Unwrapped and immediately join the line for any tour of a cheese-, chocolate-, or bourbon-making operation. I’ll also tune into any show that gives chefs a ridiculously short amount of time to cook for an outrageous number of people—preferably with some kind of added challenge, like making dinner for a cruise ship filled half with gluten-sensitive diners and half with people who subsist entirely on whole wheat bread… while the boat heads directly for a storm on the high seas.

I never give a one-word response if someone asks whether I keep kosher. After saying “yes,” I usually add qualifiers, such as “I’m vegan, so I keep kosher by default.” Although I do keep kosher in my own way, the extent of my kashrut might not meet the expectations of the person asking the question. I grew up eating meatball pizza, shrimp cocktail, and pork fried rice, so keeping kosher was never a claim I could make early in life. In recent years as I’ve seriously explored the connections between Judaism and veganism, it has been a claim I like to make.

As I’ve noted before, being vegetarian makes it easier to keep kosher:

You don’t have to worry about whether you’re eating meat that’s certified kosher (and whether that certification meets Jewish ideals) if you’re not eating meat. You don’t have to worry about mixing meat and dairy products if you’re avoiding one or both of those categories altogether. As one vegetarian rabbi explained in a 2005 Jewish Ledger article, “We have one set of dishes (plus Passover dishes) and never have to worry about the status of leftovers in the fridge or whether a guest will mix the utensils or food items. … By not eating meat, I am much more certain to never violate, even accidentally, the Biblical and rabbinic prohibitions concerning non-kosher meat.”

Okay, so the job market is pretty lousy right now, but I got this job posting via email and though I’d pass it along.

Sales and Operations Manager

KOL Foods, LLC puts kosher meat and ethics on the same plate so consumers can feel good about the meat they eat. KOL Foods sources and sells grass-fed, non-industrial, healthy lamb and beef and pastured poultry directly to individuals. Since its foundation in 2007, the interest in KOL Foods’ products has grown rapidly, and, consequently, they are now available in the East Coast and the Midwest primarily through our website. As demand is increasing KOL Foods is seeking to expand in the Eastern United States and, in the near future, nationwide.

KOL Foods is unique as it operates differently from industrial kosher meat businesses. As a values-based business, our mission is to produce food that is in harmony with nature, neighbors and tradition – all the way from farm to fork.   For further information on KOL Foods, please go to:  www.kolfoods.com .

(Originally published in The Forward)

Last November, I koshered my kitchen for the first time. I did so with the full understanding that my decision came with certain compromises, like giving up my favorite cheeses and my delicious but uncertified collection of vinegars. While a bit heartbreaking, these were sacrifices I was willing to make as I welcomed in my new lifestyle. If only I had known that I might have to give up salad, too.

Leafy salad greens, along with berries, asparagus and a variety of other produce, have come under serious scrutiny in the kosher world over the past decade. There’s nothing treyf about these particular fruits and vegetables, except that they have a tendency to attract insects, which are halachically forbidden. Once they are removed from a spinach leaf or the inside of a raspberry, the produce is theoretically fit to eat. But kosher agencies like the Orthodox Union and KOF-K argue that certain bugs (for example, aphids, thrips and mites) are too small to spot easily, but large and common enough to be compromising.

Fresh out of ‘The Vegetable Monologues: Jewish Women Farmers’ it is clear that Jewish women have no hesitation in leading this Jewish Food Movement. This session featured a panel of four Jewish women farmers. Abbe Turner, who yesterday led a session on Do-It-Yourself: Making Mozzarella Cheese, discussed her experiences as a Cheese Farmer in Ohio. Anna Hanau and Elizabeth Giancola of the ADAMAH Farm talked about their transformative experiences which led them out of the office and into the field. And finally, Conference chair, Emily Freed shared her experiences on Jacob’s Farm, which just finished its biggest harvest season yet!

Sitting in sessions all day long, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Asilomar is located right on the Pacific Ocean. However, there was no way to forget that when the entire community walked down the boardwalk to the beach so that we could all say the blessing upon seeing the ocean for the first time. The text goes:

Barukh Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melekh haOlam Sheh-Asah Et HaYam HaGadol

Which translates to Blessed are you our God, King o the Universe, who made the Great (or Big) Ocean.

The Friday morning session entitled “Food Justice: Tools to Help Organize and Lobby More Effectively” featured Scott Minkow and Eric Schockman. Minkow discussed the amazing work that he has been leading through the LA community Jewish Federation. One project that was really taking off is called “Fed Up With Hunger,” which approaches local city officials such as the County Board of Supervisors, the City Council, and others to incorporate healthy eating and living into neighborhoods around the city. In LA fashion the project enlisted the help of a celebrity person, Debra Messing, though it has also been tweeted by the famoulous Alyssa Milano. As the other panelist, Eric Schockman put it, “Fed Up With Hunger is an example of how a federation turns a battleship around” to make change.