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.

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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..”

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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.

In less than three weeks we will celebrate our son Shlomo’s Bar Mitzva, G-d willing. Those of you who have had the privilege of meeting him know that underneath the black hat, fringes and payos (sidecurls) he is one cool kid – into farming, animals (he raised the first flock of laying hens for Isabella Freedman/ADAMAH), woodworking, sustainable building and even a bit of WalMart and corporate America bashing once he gets going! Read more »

Tomorrow my boyfriend and I head off into the wild yonder known as the West Coast (San Francisco through Shabbat and then a jaunt north to Portland).  While I love any vacation, I’m especially excited about this one.  It’s our first long trip together.  We’re visiting some of my dearest friends.  He’s never been to Portland, before so I get the chance to show him one of my favotie places, after many occasions down in his native Silver Spring.  And it’s California and Portland! - the first a land where heirloom tomatoes grow locally in March, and the latter a pine scented town where everyone carries their reusable coffee mugs strapped to their backpacks. 

I’m also excited because - forgive me for outting myself as a total dork here - I love packing food for the airplane.  If all meals were as delicious as the crustless panini, tiramasu, and bottle of wine I once received (in coach) on a flight between Spain and Italy, there would be no reason to pack food for the plane.  For that reason, I’m actually glad American airline services tend to serve tasteless, plastic-wrapped food. 

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Any doubts that humane, healthy, organic and local are the dominant food trends? Witness today’s NYTimes dining:

• Prince Charles: Farmer, Cookie Maker, Ecologist and Yes, the Future King
• Foie Gras Makers struggle to Please Critics and Chefs
• When the Wine is Green: an exploration of biodynamic, natural and organic viticulture
• Locavores: Preserving Fossil Fuels and Nearby Farmland by Eating Locally
  
• Wonder Bread backlash: Alex Witchel’s voice of benign and boring dissent
• A New Alliance in the Fight Against Childhood Obesity: Rachel Ray and Bill Clinton (!)

Assuming the dining section is one step behind the curve, reporting peaking trends rather than coming ones, what do you think will be next? Where will sustainability take our plates tomorrow?

[NYTimes]

• Winner of the first annual matzah scuplture contest: the Washington Square Arch. [NYSun]
• In 18 minutes, Joan Nathan answers your fermenting Passover questions, also writes about chometz-free Spanish deserts, pre-1492. [NYTimes]
• Newsday asks what makes wine kosher for Passover? [Newsday]
• “Inspector Rabbi” answers the same question about orange juice at the St. Pete Times. [SP Times]
• Like getting to Carnegie Hall, the secret to a perfect seder: practice, practice, practice. [AP]
• Let all who are hungry, come and eat gourmet. [NYMag]
• Police shutter the matzah bus. [NYTimes]

I grew up for the majority of my childhood in the MidWest with corn, but little did I wonder why there was so damn much of it. Back in college economics courses, corn was touted as a solution to the world’s poverty problems. But it’s an interesting twist that now that corn turns out to be the devil in disguise. Produced in too large quantities by farm subsidies, at falling prices, it’s our desperation to use up the surplus that leads us to convert it into biofuels, plastics and other goods. Alas, eco-gourmets have it out against corn, and here’s why, via Grist.com:

• High fructose corn syrup’s sticky ethanol ties.
• Genetically-modified corn may not be good for you
• New documentary King Corn lays it all bare

Is Starbucks kosher? [imamother.com]

Will January tomatoes shrivel your ovaries? [NYT]

Distasteful? Who, rich people? “Unlike missing art and antiquities, hot wine has no official registry. “Something like an Amber alert would be very useful,”” [NYT]

• “Thankfully, the new year brings news of two very positive developments in the world of kashrut that are of a piece with Pollan’s conclusions.” The “Justice” hecsher and Tuv Ha’aretz. [Jewish Journal]

• Organic agriculture can help beat greenhouse gasses and global warming. [International Federation of Environmental Journalists]

• He left Brooklyn for the farm, but says small-scale farming doesn’t pay and never will. [Grist]

• Temple Grandin, leading slaughterhouse designer and NYTimes bestseller, on bettering the kosher kill. [Anthropology of Food Journal - Improving Religious Slaughter Practices in the US]

• In addition to the $85 billion a year Americans spend on obesity, with the government and insurance companies picking up about 85 pct of the tab, obesity costs the obese better jobs and financial security. Weight bias is stronger than race bias, which you can test for yourself at Harvard. [NYTimes]

• “The “crazy, crazy Jewish fun” of Kosherland looks a lot like the board game Candy Land, except gefilte fishing substitutes for visits to the Ice Cream Sea.” [AP]
• Genteel without being Gentile, circa 1846
  [The Jewish Manual or Practical Information in Jewish And Modern Cookery With a Collection of Valuable Recipes & Hints Relating to the Toilette.]
• Holy Foods’ stock is on a downward spiral, losing 40 percent of its value in 06, despite paying their CEO a measly $1 a year salary. [SLATE]

On a recent trip to Montreal, my boyfriend and I visited a vegan restaurant we discovered through a quick Google search. (I’m a vegetarian and wary of mediocre kosher restaurant fare.  He keeps kosher but will eat in vegetarian and vegan restaurants.  This was a good compromise – in theory). 

Our bohemian server, who was also the restaurant’s chef and owner, let us know that aside from using no animal byproducts, the restaurant had another strict policy: guests are required to eat everything on their plates.  Meaning, everything (leftover sauce on the plate included).

When we cheerfully assured him we weren’t “typical wasteful New Yorkers,” he launched into a fervent and mostly incoherent diatribe about food waste, the Iraq War, and America’s Puritanical intolerance.  The food he eventually served was remarkable – an amazing tangle of flavors and textures.  But we ate our meal in uncomfortable shock and left with a sour taste in our mouths.    

The experience left me wondering: How much does the revolution belong at the dinner table?

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• Sufganiyot, the new make-at-home treat. WaPo suggests they’re easy as pie. WaPo is so totally wrong. [WaPo]
• The Observer asks how much of a food geek you really are with a Foodie Quiz. 

A waiter says your lamb comes from New Zealand, you…

c) grab the waiter by his neck, shove him in a tiny crate, which you load into the hold of a plane bound for Auckland, while shouting: ‘How would you like it, you animal abusing spawn of the devil? ‘

[The Observer]

• Small farmers are “in” right now. Businessweek, cutting edge trend spotter, discovers locally grown produce.[Businessweek]
• Raw milk: unpasteurized poison or magic medical potion? [LATimes Magazine]
• Gary Hirschberg, founder of Stonyfield Farm yogurt, answers your organic questions. [ABC.com]