I’m sure that like me, many of you cannot get Hanukah cooking and baking out of your minds!  I will be making potato leek latkes, homemade apple sauce and some chewy ginger cookies tonight.  As you can tell, I’m in full holiday mode!  Anyway, if you are looking for a break from the holiday food maddness I have a great recipe for you!

My birthday was about a month and a half ago.  As much as I enjoy eating out I really wanted to cook my birthday dinner at home with my boyfriend this year.  We decided our main course would be homemade pizza – something neither of us had ever made.  I had heard it was very easy to make but having never made any type of yeast-based bread, I was a bit nervous!

I looked into a few recipes and ended up using one based on a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers.  I will say that this recipe didn’t make quite enough dough for me.  I think next time I will try this recipe.  The most fun thing about making your own pizza is that you can put anything you want on it (and it can be as healthy or unhealthy as you’d like)!  We were especially proud of our pizzas since the vast majority of the ingredients were local and organic.  I hope you enjoy making your own pizza.  Feel free to leave comments with your favorite topping combination!

It’s sort of funny when two worlds collide unexpectedly, especially when one comes to the aid of the other. Take for example my recent search for the perfect milk alternative. I don’t dislike good ol’ cow’s milk, nor am I allergic to it. But as an observant Jew, I often find myself at odds with the fridge staple, usually after I’ve just enjoyed a delicious turkey sandwich.  I am what some would call a Fleish-a-phobe: I rarely eat meat if I can avoid it out of dread for the five hours and one minute to follow, when I will be barred from my favorite treats: ice-cream, chocolate, cheese, milk-based pie, the list goes on.

And so I’ve spent some time searching for that perfect alternative, that wondrous, dairy-free concoction that will replace milk in my cookie recipe and help me whip up the perfect pareve pumpkin pie.  Recently, my best friend and I (with both health and Halacha in mind) unofficially took it upon ourselves to taste-test every non-milk available to us, from various brands of soymilk to the less orthodox (and rarely Kosher) hemp milk, with varying results.

The last time I went to Melo Hatene to stock up on tahina, I ran into my friend and fellow kibbutz member, David Leishman. David was there for tahina, too: He occasionally makes tahina ice cream for Melo Hatene’s restaurant in exchange for raw tahina and other yummy things from the shop.

Intrigued by the idea of tahina ice cream, I asked David for his recipe. (David has been making wonderful homemade ice cream since before he came to Kibbutz Gezer, over 30 years ago.) What I got from David was not really a recipe, but vague amounts for a restaurant quantity. 

I know we are in the season of fasts for many Jews but here is a simple (yet a bit time consuming) recipe that tastes great!  We have been getting quite a bit of zucchini in our CSA box.  I even made a healthier version of this (the one without the pineapple) zucchini bread using this recipe.  If you’d like the modified version please post in the comments section and I will get back to you.

Now, I do like zucchini but when it is cooked and mushy it grosses me out a little bit (I have some food texture issues which involve a real dislike of baked/mushy fruits and vegetables).  So, in this reciped I added the veggies at almost the very end of cooking.  If you’d like them cooked a bit more you can add them earlier.

As I mentioned in a previous post, risotto has been a long-time family meal and holds a special place in my heart.  One of the reasons I love risotto is that it is so versatile.  I know many people are intimidated by risotto but this is totally unfounded.  The trick to good risotto is making sure there is always enough liquid in the pan.  You never want the risotto to be so dry that it sticks to the bottom of the pan.  So really the trick might just be attentiveness.

Like my previous risotto post, this recipe isn’t Kosher the way I made it.  However, it is very easy to make it Kosher.  You can use vegetable broth or some sort of chicken-flavored boullion for the depth of flavor that chicken broth gives you.  I would not eliminate the dairy in this recipe.  You just can’t have good risotto without parmesan cheese.  I hope you enjoy this summer risotto!

Call me old-fashioned, but I always thought flowers were for vases – not plates.

Oh, sure, I read the articles showing a cheerful chef tossing a nasturtium blossom on a pile of lettuce. Surely a tasteless bid for attention, I sniffed.

A recent web search for organic pest riddance has given me a new taste for ripe nasturtium blossoms, leaves and seed pods.

Gardeners have long loved nasturtiums as companion plants to keep insects off of collards, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, fruit trees and radishes. Nasturtiums themselves are as edible as the vegetables and fruits they protect.

The flavors are not dramatic. Blossoms, tossed whole or torn into salads, taste like mild radishes. Sautéed nasturtium leaves processed into a cold vichyssoise are peppery. Bined or pickled seedpods make a poor gourmet’s capers.

Here is one of my favorite recipes: nasturtium butter.  The petals give the butter a wonderful gold color.  This is excellent on freshly steamed vegetables or fish.

Oh dear readers, the Shmethicist has been AWOL for a while.  But now I’m back and better than ever (not unlike that pea soup that was even more delicious when we reheated the leftovers!).

Dear Shmethicist,

I am currently feeding a family of four (two adults, two toddlers) on a very small food budget ($150 a week).  A couple of years ago, my husband and I were able to buy all organic dairy and produce, and free range meats and eggs.  Now, it is a rarity.  Our costs are so tight, that even at $150 a week, we only cook nice dinners on Shabbat.

We have noticed a difference in how we feel and would absolutely love to do this again. We do not have our own yard in which to garden, which I would love to do someday.  There are several farms near here, but they are not open to the public (instead, they drive their goods to the farmers markets in the large city, which is over an hour away and which we cannot afford to drive to regularly, at $20 gas for the trip and $10 parking for the day).

First, let me apologize for the poor quality of the picture!  It doesn’t do justice to the tart or the camera’s abilities… better luck next time!  Now onto to the food itself…

I’ve always been a huge fan of onions – red, white, yellow, green – I don’t discriminate.  I like them raw and cooked, on bagels with cream cheese, on pizza, in salad, etc.   I find that most things I cook begin with my gorgeous Sur Le Table sautee pan (Hannukah present from my Dad), some olive oil, chopped garlic, and of course, some onion.   They just seem to add necessary flavor to everything.  Now I know there are people who hate onions and while I can respect that, I just can’t understand it.  However, as my friends and family will tell you, I have some weird issues with food textures that many cannot understand.  Fortunately my little sister has many of the same issues so I have an ally.  Let me also add, if you do not like onions, this recipe isn’t for you… but it’s really really good.

I’m in the minority as far as Jews go in that I’m blonde.  There are increasing number of blonde Jews but we’re still few and far between.  I was president of my Jewish sorority in college so my picture was smack in the middle of our composite photo.  Not only was I  front and center but I stuck out like a sore thumb as one of three or four blondes out of over 100 women on the  composite.  In any case, I’ve always embraced being blonde so when I was deciding what to bake recently blondies came to mind immediately.  I am a huge fan of chewy brownies but there’s something about blondies that make them even better than brownies, at least in my opinion.

I located a recipe on one of my favorite cooking blogs and after reading the recipe I realized what makes blondies so fantastic (beyond the hair color connection, of course): brown sugar!  Blondies are chewy and have a bit of a molasses flavor since they made using only brown sugar and no white sugar.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with blondies, they are sort of like a chocolate chip cookie in a bar form – but so much better.  There are a few reasons that blondies will be my quick and easy dessert of choice moving forward: they are versitile, easy to make without fancy kitchen electrics, and keep well in an airtight container for a few days.

As far as versitility goes, the recipe I used called for semi-sweet chocolate chips but I had a bag of Heath Toffee Bits that I wanted to use up so I did a bit of a swap.  Here are some of my other ideas for blondie add-ins: dried cherries or cranberries with white chocolate chips, semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips with walnuts, semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips andcrystalized ginger, and the list goes on…

Thanks so much to Rachel Bergstein for this great cross-post from the Green Profit.  Since her summer camp counselor explained in detail to a 14-year-old Rachel how the dairy industry ravages the environment, she has been awkwardly obsessed with sustainable food.  Today, Rachel and dairy are in a complicated relationship, based on a simultaneous love of cheese and concern for sustainability and environmental justice.  Rachel is a 2009 graduate of the University of Maryland, a New Israel Fund 2009 Social Justice Fellow, and a contributor to Green Prophet.

Photos courtesy of Jamie R. Liu

Noah Dan has not forgotten the tastes of his childhood.  He remembers eating brara, the fruits and vegetables bursting with incredible flavor but too “ugly” to package for sale in the cities, on Kibbutz Givat Brenner, where he was born and raised.  He also remembers eating creamy, homemade gelato in Trieste, Italy where he spent summers with his Italian grandparents.

Now a resident of the Washington DC area, Noah is the founder and CEO of Pitango Gelato.  Pitango, whose namesake is a variety of cherry that grows wild in Israel, recently opened two new shops in Washington, DC and Reston, Virginia after a successful first run in Baltimore, Maryland.  In his attempt to reproduce the gelato of his childhood, Noah has found a way to build a business that is sustainable, conscientious, and produces a very high-end product without the use of chemicals or artificial additives.

There is a cheesecake sitting in my (boyfriend’s) refrigerator right now. At some point late last week I got it in my head that with Shavuot just around the corner I should make a cheesecake. Since I’m doing a time-share with my boyfriend’s kitchen, permission had to be granted by the relevant roommates, which was how I found myself late last night remembering how much I disliked baking.

But I’m terribly sentimental about food and of course my cheesecake comes with a story…

It’s just about that time of year again: the cream cheese is starting to thaw, the cheesecake recipes are dusted off, and the dairy, it is a’flowin. Welcome to Shavuout preparation!

Shavuot is technically the end of the counting of the Omer, and is the traditional high holiday which celebrates G-d’s gift of the Ten Commandments. Shavuot is derived from the word for week and has a number of other intrinsic meanings as well. It is a very happy and joyous celebration, as it marks the most sacred gift to the Jewish people, that which continues to affect the daily lives of so many, that which is the basis of basically all Western civilization codes of morality. As we are educated by the Torah, so we educate ourselves for Shavuot. One tradition is to stay up all night long and learn the night of Shavuot… some mark the break of daylight by reading the 10 Commandments and then running into the ocean for an early morning dip for fun (well, at least in beautiful Santa Barbara!).

Originally published on My Jewish Learning

Blintzes are most often described in relation to other foods. They are “like pancakes” but thinner, “like Russian blini” except without the yeast, or “like crepes,” just folded a little differently. Still, blintzes are a delicacy all their own. Originally from the Ukraine, fillings like cheese, potato, and kasha were folded inside the blintz wrappers (or bletlach, “leaves” in Yiddish) and fried until golden brown. In The World of Jewish Cooking, Rabbi Gil Marks writes that, “As with other filled foods, blintzes provided a great way of transforming leftovers into a special dish or stretching scarce resources.”