Briefly:

• Streit’s factory in Manhattan closes to relocate in a cheaper locale after 80 years. (Forward)
• The Forward also features a profile of food maven Arthur Schwartz.
• Over 160,000 2-liter bottles of kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola is made in Texas. The Texas mashgiach reports. (Jewish Herald-Voice)
• Israeli punk band YIDcore has finally given up rolling in hummus as its signature stage gig. (Australian Jewish News)
• As if fundamentalist kashrut could go no further, the waters of the Kinneret were disconnected from Jerusalem so that ultra-Orthodox Jews wouldn’t have to risk eating crumbs that washed downriver, despite several levels of filtering. Give me a frickin’ break. (London’s Jewish Chronicle)

There’s nothing better than eating food that you grew yourself (or that your CSA farmer grew on your behalf), right? Well, Steve Brill thinks you can do better - by foraging your dinner.

Also known as “The Wild Man,” Brill is best known for getting arrested in Central Park in the early 80’s - for eating a dandelion. (He was charged with “defacing public property”.) Outraged - Brill called every media outlet in New York, winding up on television and the front page of several city newspapers. Soon after, the Park’s Department changed their minds - and gave him a job leading foraging tours around the Central and Prospect Park. He now leads independent tours across the Northeast showing ordinary, store-buying folks the incredible amounts of edible plant life that grows, unnoticed.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I traveled up to Stone Barns Center for Barber’s restaurant, Blue Hill. Although we spent time wandering through Stone Barns’ impressive, sprawling greenhouse and watching a staff member buzz the thick wool off a (very pregnant) sheep, we were really there to forage with the Wild Man.

More - and photos - below the jump.

Read more »

The blogosphere has been buzzing with fake news stories for April Fool’s today (because we need more incorrect information on the internet?) including announcements that Al Gore announced his presidential bid, and Jewish philanthropist, Michael Steinhardt, started a network of kosher cannabis clubs.

Our friends over at Ethicurean really got us giggling with this gag:

Caca-Cola: The National Pork Producers Council and Coca-Cola have announced a joint venture to build facilities that will carbonate soft drinks using CAFO-sourced methane. The partners call the project “a dynamic, environmentally conscious approach to eliminating factory farming odors, which of course were never really a problem in the first place.” (CartelWatch.org)

Hmmm, well honey from bees (a treif insect) is kosher, but soda made fizzy with pig gas? Kosher-keeping Jews, and really everyone else, might decide the join the Pepsi generation after all.

One of the biggest criticisms of the organic, locavore, sustainable food etc. lifestyle is that it costs too damn much to be realistic. In other words, I may know that an organic red pepper is better for me and the world, but at $8/lb (versus $2/lb for the conventional pepper), I can’t always justify spending the extra money.

The problem is, the epicure in me gets a little twitchy if I don’t have a fairly regular influx of artisanal cheese or fresh, organic greens in the house. And these days my weekly feeding schedule includes Shabbat dinner and lunch, which, by way of being festive meals, deserve better-than-average food. So how do I satisfy my need for good food without breaking the bank?

Family lore tells me that my grandma Martha was able to stretch one chicken into a nourishing meal for six people, with leftovers. I unfortunately did not inherit this gift, but I have picked up some tricks for eating well on a budget without resorting to dumpster diving (don’t worry Mom, I’m over that phase), or existing on the starving artist fare of rice and beans, or - gasp - bologna and Wonder Bread.

Read more »

Thanks to Jonathan Bloom for this series of photos. Jonathan is writing a book on wasted food in America. He became interested in the topic after a day volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen. Seeing the truckloads of rescued food that would otherwise have gone to landfills made him wonder how much edible food does slip through the cracks.

As a journalist, Bloom set out to learn why and how Americans waste more than 40% of the food produced for consumption. He started a blog dedicated to the topic and worked at a grocery store, farm and catering company to better understand the problem.

The photos below depict the incredible amount of food wasted in America, and also some hopeful examples of food recovery.

Read more »

Yesterday, the California-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company issued the largest beef recall in history - 143 million pounds.  According to the NYTimes, the recall: 

“…comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply.”

In other words, the meat itself was not necessarily tainted.  Instead, the recall was largely a precautionary (and perhaps futile) measure to safegaurd the American dinner plate from the irresponsible practices of the meat industry.  A precautionary measure that sent 143 million pounds of meat to the trash heap. 

If ever there was a modern-day example of violating bal tashchit, this is it. 

Read more »

Last year, my freelancing musician boyfriend took a side gig teaching Hebrew school at a neighborhood synagogue on Sunday mornings.  Like, 8:00am on Sunday morning.  I understood his desire to teach and make some extra money, but it frustrated me to relinquish him to a bunch of strangers’ six-year olds during prime pancake and omelet hours.  (Especially since, in my new mostly Shabbat observant life, Saturday morning was also out). 

Luckily, all those early mornings paid off.  The synagogue changed its Hebrew school structure - he now teaches during the week, clearing up Sunday mornings for New York Times reading, bluegrass listening, and - of course - brunch.

This morning, we celebrated with coffee in the Turkish tea glasses he recently found on the street (ahhh, Brooklyn!) and french toast.  Made with leftover challah and organic free-range eggs, and topped with pears softened with agave nectar and ginger, it was french toast fit for The Jew & The Carrot.  Check out the recipe below the jump. 

Now that we have Sunday mornings free, we need more recipe ideas!  I’d love to hear some of your favorite healthy (or more indulgent) brunch meals…

Read more »

12/10/07

The boots had been sitting in a bag for weeks. They’d been moved from front hall to bathroom to tub and outside as needed, and I didnt know what to do with them. I’d worn my galoshes when I’d gone to help slaughter 3 turkeys the Thursday before Thanksgiving at a farm in upstate NY. That powerful first for me went very calmly and cleanly and my boots remained unmarked. I was surprised, but pleasantly - I had worn the boots and my raincoat with the expectation that they would get covered in blood - ruined.  I wore them again that Monday when I went to help slaughter the 24 turkeys we (my ethical kosher meat venture, Kosher Conscience) would need for the holiday. I was out of my mind with details and satisfaction and fear, but also relieved that I’d had the warm up the week before so I knew what the process would look like, feel like. That day went very differently from everything I expected and my boots by days end had quite a bit of blood on them, as did my  clothes and my skin. My skin and my clothes needed to be washed, no question. If only for sanitary purposes if not for comfort as well. But the boots became less clear, for reasons I didn’t see coming.

Read more »

Does it pay to read blogs? Maybe if I hadn’t checked a few of my favorites this morning (metafilter.com, jewlicious.com, nextbook.org), I wouldn’t have come across these bewildering, highly amusing and slightly nauseating headlines:

• A talmudic analysis of a soccer player’s lament, as it relates to restraints made of kreplach
• An FBI plan to track Iranian terrorists in California based on monitoring spikes in falafel sales
• White Castle’s 2007 Recipe contest winner? Slider Latkes (only slightly less gross than last year’s winner -I think I’m gonna be sick)

OK, back to work, people. (Image via Jewlicious)

Today is the kick off of the Globesity Festival in NYC - a week long series of performances that confront the “beastly grind” of over-consumption.  Each of the participating artists engaged in a juice-fast before the festival, during which they “conceived a theatrical performance in response to consumerism,” that will be showcased at the festival.

Journalists, writers, and documentary film makers serve an obvious purpose in the food movement - researching our society’s eating patterns and reflecting them back in an accessible (ahem, digestible) format.  But what about the performance artist, the dancer, the sculpter?  Find out by checking out the performances at Globesity Fest, here.

Sukkot is coming up next week. As a self-described natural Jew, I love this harvest holiday. I love decorating a sukkah with gourds and juicy apples (or in the case of my friend Julie’s sukkah two years ago, Jackson Pollack-style splash paint). I love that it’s a time of year when Jews unabashedly sniff citrus fruit and beat palm fronds on the ground. I love that we pray for rain.

It’s also a time of year when I start to think about gleaning - which, as a non-farmer I admit feels a little weird, but actually couldn’t be more relevant. As we learn from Ruth’s story (which is read on another Jewish harvest holiday, Shavuot), the Jewish mitzvah of pe’ah commands that farmers leave the corners of their field to the poor.

Read more »

Leadership of the JCPA (Jewish Council for Public Affairs) will be participating in the now-famous Food Stamp Challenge during the Days of Awe period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Sept. 14th-21st).

Executive Director Rabbi Steve Gutow and JCPA Chair Lois Frank will stick to the $1 per meal or $21/week budget of an average food stamp recipient, as part of the organization’s new Anti-Poverty Campaign, to highlight the connections between Jewish teachings surrounding poverty and the current Food Stamp reauthorization component of the Farm Bill.

JCRC leadership and Jewish communities around the country are being encouraged to also ”Take the Challenge,” coinciding with the Locavores’ September Local Food Challenge. Do any of us dare to take the double challenge? I think this would result in nearly an 11-day long Yom Kippur fast, or perhaps subsistance only on apples, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and the remains of nectarines and melon.

Ideally, an organized Jewish participation in the Food Stamp Challenge, including Rabbis and other national Jewish leaders, could have an impact on federal legislation, if it is publicized appropriately for advocacy. Hopefully, continued action surrounding Food Stamps will have an impact on the Farm Bill, which has yet to pass out of the Senate Agriculture Committee (expected in mid-October).

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..”

Read more »

Links from all over the web and Jewish blogosphere:

• There’s a food fight over at Jewcy.com: Isa Chandra Moskowitz, queen bee of ethical veganism and author of Vegan With A Vengeance, versus Charles Eisenstein, pioneering theorist of environmentally motivated meat-eating.
• Thou Shalt Snack offers kosher, GMO-free and (moderately) healthy snacks for the holy palatte. Portions of proceeds go to Mazon: Jewish Response to Hunger, the Grameen Foundation USA, and the JCC Association. And hey, with a name like that, who can argue otherwise?
• The Canadian Jewish News covers the Tzedek Hchsher and its cheif champion, Rabbi Allen Morris.