On Monday I was in attendance at the 3rd  annual Royal Wines gala event, “The Kosher Food & Wine Experience”. This year’s event was in the NY Metropolitan Pavilion, located on 125 West 18th Street between 6th and 7th Ave in Manhattan.

The event attracts people from all walks of life and all branches of Judaism are represented. The cost of entry is $100.00, but many industry people get complimentary tickets, including me. There were kosher wines from all over the world. I was especially struck by the quality of the wines from Spain.

Chanukah gelt always seems like a good idea at the beginning of December, but these days, the chocolate just doesn’t seem worth fighting with the foil to eat. Similar to Rhea Yablon Kennedy‘s experience, we wanted to find another way to use up our leftovers. When my roomies came back from a trip to Ohio they were inspired to make Buckeyes – the unofficial candy of the state of Ohio. Buckeyes are a tree nut and the candies do resemble the naturally occurring buckeye. Rachel, who hails from Cincinnati, referenced the Isaac M. Wise Temple Sisterhood cookbook for recipes. Not 1, but 2 recipes can be found (pages 113 and 114 for those of you who have the 2001 edition of the cookbook).  The Hazon office sure enjoyed these tasty treats…Buckeyes are basically peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate.

Not everyone suffers from this problem, but I personally have leftover holiday candy. Mine is a half bag of Sunspire chocolate drops, which I bought as dreidel game “gelt.” It turns out you don’t need an entire 10-ounce bag of M&M wannabes to play a good game of dreidel, and being one of the only women on the planet who does not require frequent intake of chocolate (some kind of hormonal imbalance, I’m sure), I had these things sitting around for the past two weeks.

I did notice them sitting there and I did think about snacking on them. Somehow, though, I couldn’t get into the idea of crunching down on the sugary candy shells and the room temperature chocolate inside.

As my time at Adamah (the Jewish farming fellowship) fellow came to a close, I felt like our season as farmers also came full circle.  For me personally, the experience on the farm also marked my transformation from an Artistic Administrator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (a fancy-clothes wearing, stress filled employee) to a pickler, meditator, Carhartt-wearing farmer and much more chill person as well.

At the beginning of Adamah in September, when the weather was still warm (though it’s hard to remember back that far!), we went to our field, the Sadeh, on a Monday morning to take part in the shechting (kosher slaughter) of nine of our male goats. It was an incredibly challenging day, to say the least – and even more surreal because just one day before we’d hosted “Feast in the Field,” a beautiful brunch complete with fancy food from the Sadeh and celebration, all in the same location. That said, the shechting took place with intention and with respect, not unlike the experience I had almost one year earlier at the Hazon Food Conference, where we shechted three goats.

As a kid, anything edible held my attention. Sukkahs, charged with dappled light and dedicated to the harvest, seemed to combine all of my interests into one sacred space. I’ll never forget the excitement I felt, standing alone in the autumn-smelling sukkah, under a ceiling hung with fresh, growing foods; and I’ll never forget my disappointment, year after year, at the sight of apples, squash and blue corn wizening and rotting on their strings.

Now that I’m a full grown canner, it occurs to me that the sukkah, with it’s commandments for good air circulation, more shade than light, and it’s tradition of hanging edibles, is a perfect place to preserve for the cold months. After all, turning sukkot decorations into food is already a tradition—Etrogs make it into wine or brandy after the celebration’s over.

Below, you can find some tips and recipes for celebrating God’s gift of food and shelter through the year.

Over the last 30 years, Americans have grown accustom to food being (falsely) cheap and abundant – so the recent sticker price hikes have likely come as a shock. But one doesn’t have to look very far into the past to find other times in our country’s history when food was neither cheap, nor abundant.My 85-year old father, for example, grew up during the Great Depression of the 1930s. While he does not recall ever feeling overwhelmingly hungry (his father, a minister, was often paid in eggs and other food, and his mother was known for making a chicken stretch in twenty ways), he does remember the backyard garden his family relied on for a substantial portion of their fruits, vegetables, and other food.

If ever there was a day for foodies to curl up with a mug of fair trade coffee and the newspaper, today’s the day. The New York Times Magazine’s (first ever, I believe) Food Issue hit stands this morning, so if you haven’t already scanned the whole thing online, find yourself a comfortable chair and a couple of hours to savor it the way papers were originally intended to be read.There’s a LOT of good stuff inside – enough to be slightly overwhelming. So before you dig in, take a look at The Jew & The Carrot’s recommendations on what to read, skim, and skip. Get the most out of the magazine and still have some daylight left to play. Below the jump!

A few months ago I wrote some tips on appropriate and helpful ways to bring food to someone who’s ill or grieving.  At the time, my mother (that’s her in the picture, with me at our dining room table in happier times) was in treatment for terminal cancer, and though we were grateful to have an amazing community providing food for us during such a difficult time, I often found myself guiltily throwing out some leftovers that had gotten shoved to the back of the fridge to make room for new offerings.  I suggested that people try to bring smaller portions.

Then, on September 9th, my mother passed away, and what had been a slight excess of food transformed into a mountain of baked goods, stacks of trays from kosher restaurants, and Tupperware as far as the eye could see.  From the very first day of shiva we were completely overwhelmed with food, and the same women who were coordinating people to bring us meals were having to sort through the fridge and toss or freeze the obscene amount of casseroles, cakes and random snacks that people were bringing when they came to visit with us.

One of the rules of sitting shiva is that the mourners should not prepare their own food, so we had expected to have meals for the week made and prepared by others, but we were not prepared for the sheer quantity of what we ended up with.  Among other things, we ended the week with an ant problem in our kitchen because there was so much food sitting out all the time.

Over all, I found shiva to be a difficult but incredibly healing week, and it was wonderful to have so many people showing us their support in so many ways.  Still, it frustrates me to see so much food go to waste, and some of the craziness that resulted from having other people run my kitchen for a week was no fun at all.  So, here’s some new tips and thoughts on bringing food to a shiva house.

Tips after the jump!

It’s Sunday morning at 9:30 and my family has already been up for hours which, yes, I find somewhat disturbing, and means, among other things, that this might be a good time to make a real breakfast, instead of just to-each-his-own bowls of cereal or a quick French toast. We sometimes get in the mood for fancier breakfast fare, but I’ve become a bit of a zealot about not letting leftover challah go to waste, and I definitely want something sweet. Behold, Crème Brulee French Toast! It’s an incredibly easy recipe (no blowtorch required) that’s delicious and delightful.

Recipe (plus another recipe for particularly awesome bran muffins), after the jump!

I made mozzarella cheese last night. This is not a shechechiyanu moment – I’ve done it before, using this, highly recommended, cheese making kit. But every time I accomplish the feat of turning a gallon of milk into two fistfuls of salty, stretchy, kosher cheese, it feels rather profound.

It also feels a little wasteful, as in, “I go to the trouble of pouring a whole gallon of milk into a pot, heating it 88 degrees, and stirring in vegetable rennet, and this is the thanks I get? A bunch of wasted whey?” I know I could probably save the whey that separates from the cheese curds, and use it for a million different things (suggestions welcome). But aside from pouring about 1 cup worth into my grateful plants, I dumped the rest of it down the drain. I thought my roommates might not appreciate two large Tupperwares full of yellow cheese-water crowding up the fridge.

So why did I go to all this trouble to make my own cheese? Well, to impress my Shabbat guests, of course – and also to make an “Israeli caprese salad,” which is a simple tweak on the Italian classic of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, but might just be an entirely new creation.

Perhaps I should say a shechechiyanu afterall? Recipe below the jump.

Last week, walking down my very urban street in Brooklyn, I was stopped short by some bright purple-black splotches that covered a small portion of the sidewalk. They were totally grody (and a little bit scary) – but oddly familiar. I looked up and there was the culprit of the mess – a mulberry bush!  An overgrown, concrete-surrounded version of the mulberry bushes that I used to frequent in my backyard in suburban Chicago.

I’d walked past this bush countless times over the last year, but never noticed the bonafide fruit-bearing plant in my neighborhood. I was psyched. I picked off a couple of the dark berries, ignoring the odd looks from passersby and relished in my moment of urban gleaning.

What if my experience could be duplicated many times over, in cities across the country? According to Fallen Fruit a collaborative art project in California, it can and should.

From Dear Abby to Ask Umbra, advice columns are a time-honored method publications use to engage readers on a personal level, while sharing expertise and etiquette from a trusted expert. But what happens when the “expert” (and I use that term loosely here) is stumped with a question of her own? Today, I thought I’d switch things up and turn to you with a CSA-related quandary that has been gnawing at me for the last few weeks. Miss Manners might tsk tsk my table-turning, but this is the blogosphere, after all, and I’m desperate for a little good advice…

Dear Gentle Eaters,

After nearly being shut out of my CSA this year, I was fortunate enough to secure a share. My two roommates said they wanted in, so we split full vegetable and fruit shares three-ways, which cut down on the cost, and – I thought – meant we’d split the eating duties. But several weeks in, I seem to be the only one using the vegetables! Over the last three weeks, one roommate made a chocolate beet cake, and the other made a turnip mash (both delicious), but the responsibility of using the drawer full of broccoli, lettuce, kale, cukes, blueberries, and just about everything else, has fallen on my shoulders.

Two of the most interesting stories that came out of Postville this week show two very different sides of the kosher meat industry, and particularly Agriprocessors.

Flood Relief. As you might have read (or experienced) there has been a LOT of rain and flooding in the Midwest over the last couple of weeks. According to Chabad.org Iowa’s Jewish community – including the Rubashkins – has been spared a lot of the most destructive flooding and is stepping in to help other Iowans. The company donated 1,000 pounds of meat to residents saying:

“Agriprocessors is proud to serve the greater good,” said Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for the Postville, Iowa-based Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the United States. “The people need our help right now.”

I’m glad to hear that the Jewish community is pitching in to help their neighbors. Still, whether or not donating 1,000 pounds of meat makes up for Agriprocessors’ other “less honorable” business practices is up for debate. (hat tip to Arieh Lebowitz)

The OU Weighs In. In other news, Ben Harris over at the JTA wrote on The Telegraph that Rabbi Seth Mandell – the head Mashgiach (kosher supervisor) at the OU – has been spending time calming people down about the fate of Agriprocessors.

Every kid remembers a time when their parents urged them to “Eat your vegetables.” But what about “Eat your ice cream or you’re not leaving the table?”

Vegetable ice cream. I know it’s a radical concept, but I proved recently to my dinner guests that this unexpected combination of fresh spring peas and sweet cream actually tastes amazing together. I am a huge fan of green pea soup, puree, anything to do with peas. As a child, I would sneak a handful of frozen peas while my mom was making dinner, and I still love popping them in my mouth whenever I’m cooking with them. If you are lucky enough to have fresh peas, then by all means, use them, but frozen peas will definitely do the job here.

As usual, I turned to my trusty ice cream cookbook, David Liebovitz’s Perfect Scoop, for inspiration (remember the indulgent rice gelato I tried during Purim?). From there, I let my improvisation run wild. This ice cream screams spring, and with a fresh burst of mint, you will be sure to impress your friends and family. They may even demand second helpings of their veggies!