The raid on the kosher meat-processing plant in Postville, Iowa, threw us a bone in the shape of a vigorous new debate�on whether it is fitting and proper to designate as “kosher” products made without regard for animal welfare, fair wages,�and the environment.� To these I would add human health.� What does it mean to approve the manufacture and distribution of products that are known to compromise the health of those who consume them?� Is there a distinction to be made between contaminants�that do their work quickly, like salmonella, and those whose destructive effects are slow and cumulative, like trans fats?

A few weeks ago, PETA released an undercover investigation of a kosher slaughterhouse that practices shackling and hoisting, a cruel method of slaughter in which live animals are tied up and hung by their limbs prior to having their throats slit. The facility is located in Uruguay and is a major supplier of Alle Processing, which became the leading kosher meat supplier in the U.S. in the wake of AgriProcessors’ collapse. Nathaniel Popper wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Meat from [the site of the investigation] and other South America factories is used to produce most of the processed kosher meat consumed in America, including deli favorites such as salami and pastrami, kosher authorities say.” Dr. Temple Grandin, a leading animal welfare and slaughterhouse design expert, said, “This plant is definitely doing the method of shackling the live bovine and then hoisting and dragging [the animal] out of the stun box and holding [the animal] down. This is a cruel, dangerous practice that should be stopped.”

Good news for all you justice-seeking java-lovers and chocoholics! AJWS has teamed up with Equal Exchange and formed Better Beans – � a new initiative to sell and distribute fairly traded, kosher coffee and chocolate. Better Beans products allow congregations, community organizations and individuals to order high-quality coffee and chocolate while supporting farmers and community cooperatives in the developing world.

(originally posted on GoingKosher)

In planning our new (improved?) kosher home, we looked at everything that went into our mouths � from dairy to diet soda; meat to mints, chocolate to cheese. One area I hadn�t thought about until Rabbi SpiceRock brought it up was wines.

I�m happy to say that I�m not hung up with the thought that �kosher wine� is synonymous with �diabetes-inducing sweetness�. So the wine needs a hekshur. OK.

�Uh, no there�s something else�. The good Rabbi offered. �It�s called mevushal, which just means �cooked� in Hebrew and��

Thanks to Karen Radkowsky for this guest post.  Karen is the President of Limmud, NY.

When Alan Glustoff founded 5 Spoke Creamery in 2005, he put his years as a dairy technologist to work. Glustoff set out to make artisanal kosher cheeses that rivaled their non-kosher counterparts, and his success speaks for itself.  Today, 5 Spoke Creamery’s Kof-K certified cheeses are served in the finest non-kosher restaurants (including Per Se), sold in leading specialty food stores (like Zabar’s and Murray’s), and touted in major food publications (from Bon Appétit to Epicurious).

What makes Five Spoke Creamery’s cheeses different is that they are handmade from the raw milk of grass-fed Holstein cows that are free of pesticides and hormones. Because grass-fed cows get to roam, picking and choosing from a variety of grasses, herbs, flowers and weeds, raw milk from a grass-fed cow has a depth of flavor that cannot be duplicated.

In case you are wondering, raw milk cheeses are perfectly safe. They are made from unpastuerized milk and follow state laws requiring a minimum of 60 days for aging which eliminates pathogenic bacteria. In fact, the safety record for raw milk cheeses span many centuries, and over 70% of European cheeses are made from raw milk.

A new restaurant is about to open in Brooklyn. It’s called Traif (the Hebrew word meaning not kosher).  As the BLD (Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner) Project points out, that while it may be in Brooklyn it is not a restaurant that the local Hasidic community will be dinning in.   Jason Marcus, the chef and co-owner of Traif, is Jewish and according to his blog, he wanted to open a restaurant that celebrates the foods he loves most, shellfish and pork.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about the restaurant when I heard about it. My friend sent me this article, announcing the opening of Traif. She was outraged. The idea of the restaurant didn’t sit well with me; but I didn’t think it is anti-Semitic. I wanted to tell the JCarrot community about Traif, but I am not really sure what to say. I am hoping that this post will spark conversation like it has on other blogs. I am curious about how this makes others feel. Especially people that care about food and Judaism.

I hosted a St. Patrick’s Day dinner party last week. We drank a lot of beer, but I still have plenty left that I’d like to use up before Passover (Michelle, I accept your cupboard cleaning challenge). There are many wonderful uses for beer (like Guinness Braised London Broil), but my current favorite is beer bread. Not only is it the easiest bread you will ever make, it’s so delicious no one will believe you didn’t spend more than 2 minutes dumping the ingredients together and throwing it in the oven.

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.