Welcome back to the land of bread! I had a realization on Sunday night, around 6:30 (i.e. T-minus 2 hours to carb consumption, when I was locked in a state of restless self-pity) that Passover would be a perfect time to try a cleanse. After the original spirit and kavannah (intention) of the seder wore off, you could at least still congratulate yourself for detoxing. Perhaps - but I digress.

Two days after Passover, however, is definitely a great time to wipe off the final matzah crumbs and get your finger back on the pulse of what else that’s going on in the world of food. Check out these tasty ideas from around the blogosphere. B’tai Avon!

Sacred Foods. Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal published a compendium of resources to help Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders educate about sustainable food and eating and make responsible food purchasing decisions in their congregations. The resource guide was created as part of Aleph’s Sacred Foods project. Find them here.

Carbon Side Dish. The New York Times reported this weekend on the strange-but-true phenomenon that it is not only possible but actually cost-effective to catch a fish in Norway, ship it to China to be processed into filets, and then shipped back to Norway for sale. oof - somehow, I’m not feeling all that hungry. Read it here.

Still Veggie After All These Years. Lilith Magazine talked with vegetarian guru, Mollie Katzen about the 30th anniversary of The New Moosewood Cookbook. (Unfortunately, the full story isn’t online, but you can purchase a copy the mag here.)

Drink Your (Raw) Milk. Harpers jumped on the raw milk bandwagon with a fabulous article on unpasturized dairy, its naysayers, and the converts who claim straight from the udder is the only way to go. Check it out here.

Sticker Shock. Grist offers a clear, concise analysis of the complicated issue of rising food costs. Read about it here.

Here are three newsy bites for your Friday reading enjoyment. The first is about the ongoing meat recall crisis, the second about the (also ongoing) Agriprocessors saga, and the third about the disappearance of Tam Tam crackers. (Okay, maybe I used the word “enjoyment” a bit too soon…but certainly food for thought.)

Rotten Meat. The Meat & Poultry Business Journal reported that, “The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering a proposal to not identify retailers where meat cited in recalls was sold except in cases of potential serious health risks to consumers.” Already, the report says, stores are required to remove recalled meat from shelves, but not obligated to alert customers about the recall. Read the full story here.

AgriProcessors fined $180,000 - The Forward reported that the controversial kosher meat company, AgriProcessors was fined over $180,000 by the state of Iowa’s Division of Labor for, “failure to provide workers with proper safety training, insufficient programs to manage blood-born pathogens and a failure to label toxic chemicals.” AgriProcessors denies many of the citations. Get the story here.

Where’s the Matzah? The New York Times City Blog reported the sad truth this week: Because of a technological glitch, Tam Tams Crackers (the beloved unleavened snack cracker) will be all but extinct this Passover season. (hat tip to Jewschool) In equally distressing news, Streit’s Matzo factory is closing down - shut out by rising rents on the Lower East Side of Manhattan where the family-owned business has churned out Matzah for the last century. Like many New York residents who can’t take the rent hike, Streit’s is moving to New Jersey. Read the Streit’s story here.

I never fancied myself a desert person - for most of my life, I’ve chosen the extra bowl of pasta over the ice cream. But after receiving an ice cream maker as a gift, I felt compelled to buy David Lebovitz’ beautiful book on ice creams, sorbets, granitas, and other sugary treats, Perfect Scoop. Owning this book might just turn me over to the sweet side.

Lebovitz’ recipe for Rice Gelato especially caught my eye. It’s rich and creamy but has a substantive texture lacking from most ice creams - think rice pudding or risotto. And while it’s not exactly healthy, it is a perfectly decadent treat for celebrating Purim.

Recipe below the jump

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The Jew & The Carrot {hearts} Aitan and Adva Dairy. Thanks to Nextbook for producing a wonderful podcast and feature one of our favorite Jewish goat farmers - yes, there’s more than one!

“Goat Days”
Nextbook 2.25.08
By: Jesse Graham
(Listen to the podcast)

There’s a growing movement among environmentally conscious observant Jews to rethink kashrut. Its adherents place less emphasis on the official kosher stamp, and more on where their food comes from. They want locally and organically grown produce, and if they are meat-eaters, they want to know that the meat they’re eating comes from farms that treat animals humanely.

One devotee of this movement is an unassuming thirty-year-old named Aitan Mizrachi, founder of the AVDA Dairy, a small-scale goat dairy farm in northwestern Connecticut that produces organic, kosher raw milk yogurt and cheeses.

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Today, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an above-the-fold, front page article about our newest source of mystery meat - cloned cows.

In the article “Consumers May Not Be Able to Avoid Cloned Food,” the Chronicle reported that the Orthodox Union has publicly stated that food items derived from cloned animals are kosher. Rabbi Menachem Genack of the O.U. stated that cloned animals would be kosher as long as they belong to a single kosher species, such as cattle, sheep, and goats.

Given the highly uncertain health effects of eating cloned meat, and the biological manipulation necessary to create cloned animals, I call on rabbis from across the denominations to speak out on this issue.

How can an animal production technology, which is proven to be cruel to the animals it creates, be kosher?

Animals can be cloned from the tissue of a dead animal. Would that cloned animal be kosher?

The principle of Kelayim requires the separation of species - what does it say about the replication of species?

What about the fundamental notion of eating food in its natural state, as God brought it to us. Does the biological tinkering with the DNA of life disturb our respect and awe for the divine manifestation of the natural world - in the food we eat?

I think the O.U.’s statement is wrong - I’d like to hear what others think, particularly our Jewish legal scholars.

With Love for Hashem, and Love for its divine manifestation in Food.

Z

By the way, for more information, check out my previous post, “Is Milk or Meat from a Cloned Animal Kosher?“

Thanks to Maria Russakoff for this guest post, originally printed in the Arizona Jewish Post.  It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything about Hazon’s Food Conference or the controversial goat schecting, but this piece is worth sharing. 

The handwritten sign over the shiny percolator reads: “Chai tea - made lovingly with raw goat and cow milk, brewster honey, sadeh hot peppers, blackstrap molasses, black tea and ginger.” I haven’t the faintest idea where brewster honey comes from or what makes hot peppers “sadeh,” but I know from the first sip that I have come to a place that will nurture my stomach, mind and soul for the next three days. I breathe a contented sigh of relief, happy to have made it in one piece from sunny Arizona to the Connecticut Berkshires in the dead of winter, happy to be back at the Hazon Jewish Food Conference in its second year.

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After a week of rather distressing food news - the FDA approving cloned animals as “safe” for consumption and Starbucks going back on their comittment to serve organic milk to customers - here’s something a bit happier to end the week with, right in time for Shabbat.  From today’s New York Times Business section:

“After an outcry from consumers, Pennsylvania’s Agriculture Department has backed off its plan to ban milk-container labels stating that the milk comes from cows not treated with bovine growth hormone.  On Thursday, the state issued new guidelines that required that the labels not be misleading and that there be a paper trail to verify the claims.

For instance, a label cannot read “No BST,” which is short for bovine somatotropin, since the hormone occurs naturally in cows. A dairy can, however, label its milk as coming “from cows not treated with rBST” — for recombinant bovine somatotropin, the synthetic version — as long as a disclaimer is included that says that “No significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-treated and non-rBST-treated cows.” (A dairy can preface the disclaimer with “The F.D.A. says.”)

The decision was hailed by some dairies and consumer groups, who had complained that the planned ban disregarded consumer demand.”

One small step for consumer rights - and after a week like this we’ll take what we can get.  Shabbat shalom!

Read the full article here.