I’ve already posted once today, so sorry for double-dipping, but this is worth posting ASAP:

From the JTS press release:

Dr. David Kraemer, the author of Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages [and 2006 Hazon Food Conference Keynote Speaker], will discuss “Jewish Eating and Jewish Identity” at The Jewish Theological Seminary’s Henry N. Rapaport Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, February 4, 2008. The event will take place at JTS, 3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street), New York City.

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages is the first book ever to explore the history of Jewish eating practices from the Bible to the present, and the first to interpret Jewish eating practices throughout the ages as keys to understanding current Jewish identities.

On the Friday night of last year’s Hazon Food Conference I said, “put your hands up if you eat meat - but would not do so if you had to kill it yourself.” And a good number of hands went up.

Then I said: “put your hands up if you’re vegetarian - but you would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” And a different group of hands went up. And after a brief pause, everyone laughed.

They laughed because the two responses revealed what a self-selected group we were - and how fascinating our different distinctions. The first group were essentially saying, “I do like eating meat - but I know the process of killing it is awful - it’s actually so awful that if I had to kill it myself, I just wouldn’t eat meat.”

The second group were essentially saying “I’m vegetarian because I hate everything about how animals are raised and killed in our industrial food economy. But if I actually took responsibility for killing an animal myself, I would feel I was acting with integrity, and in accordance with my beliefs - and therefore, in that instance, I potentially would eat meat.”

And my response, when the laughter died down, was to say “Great: next year we’re going to shecht (slaughter according to kosher law) an animal here at the Food Conference..”

And people went: “Oooohhhhhh..”

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As a CSA coordinator and food blogger, I have the privilege of hearing the rumblings of what’s sprouting in the world of sustainable agriculture and eating.  And the question on everyone’s mind these days seems to be: Is it possible to consume meat and poultry in a way that is responsible for the earth and our bodies?  And, is there a way to do it that supports farmers, without completely breaking the bank?

AND (for kosher-keeping consumers), is it possible to find ethical meat that is also kosher?

As a result of the rising interest in meat from “happy cows,” a crop of organic family farmers across the country have started offerring sustainably raised and ethically slaughtered meat as part of their Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) communities or through special meat coops.  This morning, NPR featured a story about these sustainable meat coops and the enthusiastic response they’ve received from members.

And this week, the Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA in Washington DC launched a program that will offer not only ethically raised, but also kosher meat to their members.

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From JTA via JPost and our very favorite Alix Wall (who helped cook in the kitchen the food we all ate!)…

Forum urges Jews to think how did this food get to my plate?
By ALEXANDRA J. WALL / JTA
Dec. 31, 2006
FALLS VILLAGE, Conn — David Frank graduated from New York’s French Culinary Institute without ever tasting a single morsel.

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Who knew that quinoa packed so much protein in its weird little spirally grain? Turns out, it’s a pseudo-grain since it comes from a plant, not a grass, and indigenous Andean natives considered it holy. The Spanish conquerors found that heretical and tried to ban its use for a few centuries, to no avail.

I decided to cook it after a friend of mine, Chana Citron, taught me that it is an ideal kid food. Provides all essential amino acids, and packs an enormous amount of protein (12-18%). First rule, which I learned the hard way: you must rinse it. Boxed brands supposedly are pre-rinsed, but I don’t trust them. Unfortunately, I didn’t rinse my first batch. The kids dutifully tasted a bit and immediately, unanimously rejected it. Ruined by saponins, the bitter coating that prevents birds from devouring the entire crop.

It is amazing how many recipes neglect the rinsing part. The grains are small, but I happen to have a strainer fetish, so with a fine-meshed strainer it is a snap to rinse under cold running water in the sink.

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At Hazon’s food conference two weeks ago I was shocked when I tasted the latkes. They were delicate, lacy, not greasy, flecked with tiny bits of green, and utterly heavenly. I had never tasted a latke made for more than 20 people that was worth eating, and this preparation was for 150 people.

It took some sleuthing to figure out the recipe. First I cornered the very busy chef of Isabella Freedman, insisting on seeing the machine he used to grate the potatoes so finely. He showed me his industrial-sized Robot Coupe, and I realized the grater holes were about 3 mm wide rather than the usual 5 or 6 mm wide in a standard Cuisinart. That was my first problem. How to grate my potatoes so finely?

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Someone made a comment at the Food Conference that ‘ethnic foods’ were unhealthy; take your pick between Italian (heavy sauces), Indian (full of butter), Chinese (high fat & sugar content), and nobody’s national dish is particularly good for you. Nigel countered this with an important distinction: what we think of as “typical” cuisine from other countries is often, in that country, reserved for special occasions, whereas we eat it any (and sometimes every) night of the week. Couple that with the fact that when we eat out we’re likely to eat more than we are hungry for, and still have dessert–and yes, eating special occasion food all the time IS bad for you. It’s the equivalent of having a Thanksgiving-type meal four or five nights a week.I hadn’t really thought about this before. Our culture assigns different kinds of foods and meals to different kinds of occasions, and more and more, the category of ’simple sustenance’ is giving way. Food plays a lot of different roles in our lives, and its importance for feasts, festivals, gatherings, important occasions cannot be understated. But in terms of what we need to stay healthy, our bodies require much less than society would like to feed it. We risk numbing ourselves by excess (not to mention getting fat, encouraging overproduction of our farmland, and increasing the disparity between this country and most of the rest of the world).

I do it all the time — I ‘treat’ myself. If I’m feeling sad, or stressed, or I woke up late, or even if I just happen to be biking past the bakery that gives a 50% discount on all its pastries if you arrive by bicycle (how do you turn that down!?)–I buy something yummy to get me through the day. But when I stop to tally up the week– the ‘treat’ hot chocolate, muffin, pastry, carrot cake… I’ve eaten something like that nearly every day.

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A conference about Jews and food might cause some to think of people trading chicken soup and brisket recipes. But this was a different kind of conference, and a different group of Jews.

Organic, sustainable and compost were the buzzwords, with most participants saying they wouldn’t eat chicken soup unless it was made with ethically-raised, free-range chickens. And brisket? Only if the cows were grass-fed, leaving kosher consumers with few options.

Hazon convened this group of 150 people, chefs and farmers, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members, educators and food enthusiasts to talk about how the every-day decision of what to eat is loaded with numerous consequences, and how eating organically is not only the health-conscious choice, but the environmentally-sound one as well.

Hazon first made a name for itself with its environmental bike rides, both in the United States and Israel. While the rides have grown in scope, it is now changing the way Jews think about food. With Tuv Ha’aretz, it’s CSA program, it has numerous synagogues in cities across the country supporting CSAs, where synagogue members buy shares in a farm, and receive a box of organic produce each week, with the synagogue as the pick-up point.

Tuv Ha’Aretz is expanding to include more cities next year, and this conference was at first meant to be a leadership retreat for those involved. But interest quickly grew beyond that.

The Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn. was the setting, where a group of 20-somethings live off the land in community each summer, growing their own organic vegetables, collecting eggs, and milking goats. The Adamah-niks, as they are called, were a significant presence, offering fermentation tips and drumming whenever given the chance.

At one workshop a child obesity expert offered startling statistics about this epidemic, while at another, people practiced eating as a meditation, noticing the texture of a carrot slice, the crunch of a potato chip, the juiciness of a grape. A panel of Jewish farmers spoke about how they are bringing the Torah to life every day, as the Bible is a largely agricultural story, and a chef and cookbook author spoke about how disposable chopsticks are depleting the rainforests, telling participants that the simple act of refusing them at restaurants is one small way to make a difference.

Rabbi Natan Margalit made the point that a Jews’ notion of kashrut should be expanded to consider the entire journey the food on one’s plate has made. If one cannot feel good about the way in which it was raised, and grown, then what does it mean to bless it?

Children at Latkes to Lattes conference kneading challah dough.

Children and parents at the cob-fed oven at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.

More to follow!

I had an amazing morning. Here was just the first little bit:

I went for a walk with Marco and Talia (aged 3) to find the goats and the hens. The goats are just roaming around, doing hen-like things, and looking pretty happy. The difference between how they live and the pictures one sees of hens in cages is pretty dramatic. Last year some of the Adamahniks gave me eggs from here - they were like eggs I’d never eaten before; kind of like the eggs that Michael Pollan describes in Omnivore’s Dilemma — dark and rich and strong. The eggs of happy hens.

So then we wanted to find the goats; and en route bumped into Eitan, Freedman’s very own Jewish goat herd. Standing there with a big shovel, a load of old food, and four big bins of compost. Here’s the conversation, roughly:

Marco (who’s a Wall St guy — and an interesting one): You’re composting that?

Eitan: yeah. I let the hens eat the leftover food from Freedman for about a day, but then I compost it, because you don’t wanna let mold grow on it, or too much bacteria — the hen feces is good for compost, but not good for the hens to eat.

Marco: Yeah. And great compost.

Eitan: Yeah — do you compost?

Marco: Yeah — we have a place at the beach and we compost and grow stuff — asparagus, tomatoes, cucumbers.

Eitan: What kind of cucumbers?

Marco: The Amira ones, the little Israeli ones.

Eitan: Oh yeah, Persian, they’re really great.What do you use for mulch?

Marco: We harvest seaweed, at the seashore…

Eitan: That’s really cool

Marco: …And we have great raised beds; a few years ago this guy from the circus gave us some tiger feces, it was really good

Eitan: Wow, that’s really cool — carnivore feces just has totally different bacteria. Great compost…

And I’m stood there and I’m thinking: I’m an urban Jew. I’ve never grown a cucumber. I don’t know what an amira cucumber is — and maybe I’ve eaten one, and maybe not. And I’ve never composted. And tiger feces — and it’s relative merits in composting — who knew??

And how cool for Talia and her sisters to grow up like this.

And then a different question: Eitan makes goat cheese. It’s great cheese - I’ve eaten it. But it’s not being served at this conference. How come — because it’s not hechshered.

Has to have a hechsher, otherwise we can’t serve it. So it’s not kosher, right?
Wrong! Ridiculously wrong!!

Eitan’s cheese is the most kosher cheese you could meet in the whole world.
The goat is called Zilpah! She’s milked by a Jewish guy — called Eitan. He makes cheese, very simply. Kosher rennet — hechshered kosher rennet. And gives it to me, who eats it. I know the goat, and the guy who made the cheese, and what went in it - how often is that true of the cheese you eat?

And then I went to a great session Arlin Wasserman did — “What’s In A Symbol?” - all about this stuff. The kosher market in the US is now $140 billion a year — hot dogs alone, $30bn. People choose it, according to his data, 35% on taste, 16% because they like the guidelines, 5% because it’s safe or healthier, 8% because they’re observant, 4% because they can’t get halal, and 8% because they’re veggie or for other reasons.

Well: I want the market to be $140,000,001,000 — because I think we should buy $1,000 of Eitan’s cheese this year — at least — and I want someone to be able to certify in a really simple way that it’s kosher…

– The Jew

Hello from the Food Conference!

I’ve just been to two sessions, and eaten so much amazing food, and tasted raw milk for the first time, and heard about the combination of different bacteria that are involved in making miso, in a process that takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 years.

And this only the first day!

It’s interesting, though, that the things that have grabbed me and pulled me out of my seat with “Wait! What about…!” thoughts are the same things that I’ve already heard about before, or ostensibly already studied, or were so ubiquitous to have never merited a second glance. The most recent session was about the Birkat Hamazon.

We learned (or realized again, upon closer consideration, with several “oh yeah”s) that the birkat hamazon mirrors the amidah in its sections: praise, thanks, petition. That it is, in that regard, actually a mini-service. That, even if we don’t say the amidah or any other regular prayer, the offering some kind of thanks after we eat is in fact praying three times a day.

And we talked about the words. What do you do with a pile of archaic Hebrew - whether it is sung to a singsong tune (which always gets stuck in my head) or mumbled, high speed? Do we prefer the newer ones, the ones that use words like ’spirit’ and ’sustainability’? Do we sort of like the newer ones in sentiment, but cling to the words and tunes we learned at Hebrew school? I kind of do - although we learned that before the printing press solidified the texts, the ‘harachaman’ section was in fact an ‘insert your prayers for the community here’. And interesting that these prayers are said in the plural, not the singular - we pray for what we hope for the community. Does that make it easier? Weirder to put into actual words? More universal?

I enjoyed realizing - again - that Oseh Shalom is part of the birkat as well. I knew this, I’ve sung it. But thinking about it again, inthe context of what’s going on in Iraq, and what’s going on in meatpacking houses and on the Mexican border, and all the other places of strive and violence in the world right now — the fact that a prayer for peace is integral not only to our whole tradition, but that we think to include it in our prayers after FOOD - every meal! That we’ve been saying Oseh Shalom as part of the Birkat for 2000 years. We’ve been praying for peace since we began praying. There has been a need to pray for peace since we began praying. And that Judaism is all about that…

I enjoyed that. Because you often don’t have to look very far to see something new or shocking. And I guess, starting with food (which we eat daily, automatically!) is a pretty good place to get these thoughts going…

– Anna

Greetings from the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center!

Over 150 Jewish food, farm, health, sustainability and spiritual learners are gathered here for the next four days to share our stories about food, connect Jewishly to contemporary issues, and celebrate innovative approaches to our heritage.

Said Nigel Savage during one of tonight’s sessions, as we innovate Jewish tradition in light of contemporary life, we also “vote with our feet” and determine which innovations have traction, which innovative ideas “stick.” That is precisely the purpose of Latkes to Lattes — innovating Jewishly, exchanging ideas, and ultimately broadening what it means to eat kosher with what “sticks.”

Over these days, we will bring the conference to you virtually through JCarrot.org! We encourage you to post your comments and let this fantastic beginning continue beyond Isabella Freedman into our everyday lives.

– Ben Murane, JCarrot Blog Team