Singer-songwriter (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Jay Mankita recently teamed up with The NY Coalition for Healthy School Food to create Eat Like a Rainbow - a “rocking, funky, danceable collection of quirky kids songs about healthy food and sustainable living.”

Sounds great, but would kids actually listen to a CD about eating fruits and vegetables? Last weekend, I tested it out on the experts, my three daughters.

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When I was a kid, I harbored a secret love of fake food - doll house-sized cereal boxes, perfect fried eggs that came with my plastic play kitchen, and tiny replicas of very not-kosher chili cheese dogs and lemonade pitchers that accompanied my Surf’s Up Beach Barbie. (To this day I’m still oddly fascinated by the plates of ersatz linguine and plastic lettuce salads shellacked with faux dressing that restaurants display in their front windows.)

But the folks at Nintendo have taken their fake food obsession to the next level.

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Thanks to Elena Sigman for this guest post.

My Tante Toni (may her memory be a sweet blessing) made a dish for Purim, called noun, which I haven’t seen since the 70s. It was my favorite treat at her house: a plate of sweet, sticky pieces of noun cut in the shape of diamonds about one-and-a-half inches long. I guessed it was made of honey and chopped nuts and dates, but I was never sure of the recipe. It was dark brown and chewy and even though it was super-sweet it was also somehow tangy. The plate was passed around the table at the end of our Purim seudah, and it was quickly finished. The batches were never big.

Tante Toni had blue eyes that were two different colors because one was hers and the other was glass. The glass eye was bluer and bigger and her real eye was smaller and more hazel. At home in the evening, she wore a hairnet in order to preserve her coiffure from erev Shabbos, after she came home from the beauty parlor, until the next Friday morning when she’d get her hair done again. She was a smart, compact woman, barely taller than my child self, but she walked with a spine so straight no runway model could match it. She never tried to make chit chat with me. When I was a kid I would occasionally sleep over at her apartment on Friday night. After dinner she read the B’nai Brith Messenger cover to cover in her high-backed chair, and I read my book (Agatha Christie mysteries one year, Pearl S. Buck novels the next) on the couch until the Shabbos clock clicked off the light.

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Did you ever wish that you could create an energy bar with just the right nutritional ingredients, that tasted great, and was (mostly) kosher and organic? How about if the company that made them gave a percentage of their profits to a local foodbank? How about if the company was a mother and son who started out in the kitchen of their synagogue? 

Check out this great story in the NYTimes, and head over to youbars.com if you feel like creating (and naming!) your very own Powerbar.   

First there were Smucker’s Uncrustables - the prefab PB&J sandwiches that resemble mini pot-pies and fit snugly (jam and all) in the toaster.  Now, Kraft has introduced frozen Bagel-fuls that come pre-shmeared with cream cheese. 

Really?  PB&J and bagels with cream cheese are already the definition of “on the go” foods - is there really consumer demand to shave 30 seconds off the morning routine?  And wouldn’t these convenience bagels actually take more time since they have to defrost? 

More than that, I find Bagel-fuls to be a serious affront to the bagel’s integrity.  There was a time when the bagel - crusty, chewy, and drowning in poppy seeds - rivaled challah as the quintessential Jewish bread.  And while shrink-wrapped versions (like Lender’s) have already made a mockery of our beloved carb, Bagel-fuls truly represent a new low.

Fight back against this culinary offense - whether you’re partial to plain, scallion, or Toffuti, the right to shmear is yours.  

Related bagel posts on The Jew & The Carrot
The Only Bagel
What’s so Jewish About Bagels?
Does it Work for a Knish Too?
Does a Bagel Platter Make us Hypocrites?

(Hat tip to My Jewish Learning)

Mel Brooks had it right in his hit 80’s movie Spaceballs - it’s all about moichandising!  Now, thanks to the folks at Cafe Press, you can support The Jew & The Carrot in style.  

The beautiful “Eat, be Satisfied, and Bless” decal (designed by The Jew & The Carrot contributor, Anna Stevenson) comes on coffee mugs, aprons, journals, T-shirts, tote bags, and throw pillows.  They’re great for birthday gifts, mishloach manot, or for your own stylish foodie self.  Click here to find out more!

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I suppose it was just a matter of time: Pepsi just joined the world of greenwashed corporations with the introduction of Pepsi Raw. 

Like other “natural sodas” available on the market, the new drink comes in glass bottles and is made with ingredients like cane sugar, coffee leaf, apple extract, and sparkling watter.  (I suppose you might call it “Kosher for Passover” Pepsi’s eco-friendly cousin?)

While Pepsi Raw certainly beats regular Pepsi’s brew of high fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid, and artificial colorings, I’m not planning on running to the stores just yet.  Actually, I couldn’t even if I wanted to - as of now Pepsi Raw is only available in the UK. (I haven’t decided if this counts as another nod to the Brits for being one step ahead.)

If you have 20 seconds to spare, I highly recommend checking out Pepsi Raw’s bizarre ”dance dance revolution” website splash page.  I’m not yet sure what it has to do with soda, but it’s definitely entertaining.

That’s right, your long wait for cheeseburgers in a can is now over. They’re even more convenient than these (but don’t forget, February 12th is International Pancake Day! Although you’ll have to wait a week to celebrate at IHOP).

I think if “Sarah” had eaten this cheeseburger, she might have become Ba’al Teshuva instead of secular. Of course, if you want the ultimate in non-kosher (both eco and traditional) eating, you could cook your cheeseburger on one of these while driving on shabbos:

Thanks to Rhea Kennedy of the You are Delicious blog, for this guest post.

When I was a kid, my parents gave me weird food for lunch and packed it in weird ways. God bless them, they sent me off into the world with chunks of tempeh, entire raw portabellas, dark whole-grain bread with thick pieces of cheese inside. These treats were invariably wrapped in waxed paper, which my mother had deemed better for you than plastic baggies or packaging from a factory. As soon as I was old enough to notice this was different from the other kids’ cold cut sandwiches in neat Ziploc bags and individually-wrapped string cheeses, I became mortified.

Around the same time, I started attending Hebrew school in the evenings – something I approached mostly with dedication, although I occasionally dragged my feet about going. After all, it wasn’t the Christian kids’ religion class (which we all just referred to as Religion) that got them out of school early once a week. To me, those who went to Religion sat in the soft cloak of normalcy—and I didn’t.

Fast forward a few years.  I now follow Jewish tradition with pleasure and am a zealous whole foods foodie. Although eating and religious study practices may be hard to take for an image-conscious little kid, I now understand eating whole foods, keeping kosher, saying brachot and other thoughtful ways of approaching food are central to my life.  Indeed, I’d argue that observing these traditions - in combination - is rather revolutionary.

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As I enjoy my last week of vacation before I return to New York City for school, my mind starts to wander towards all sorts of issues that didn’t really apply to me in the last year, when I was living in the woods and farming at a Jewish retreat center. The biggest one is paying rent, which I didn’t have to think about in my prime forest real estate (granted, I don’t yet have an apartment to pay rent on, anyone looking for a live-in farmer?).

Another is teaching; in the last year I’ve found that I really enjoy explaining things that I care about, but for the next two years, instead of having a relatively captive audience of Adamanicks to work with and teach, I’ll be a captive audience myself, paying very close attention to my teachers…

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Last year, my Tu Bishvat wrap-up post dealt with the question of the mysterious end to the Tu Bishvat seder. After eating foods that are edible on the inside, then outside, then all the way through, the final section of the Tu Bishvat seder has us eating nothing at all. In explanation, I offered this quote from Maggid of Mezritch, the Chasidic master Dov Baer:

““Nothing in the world can change from one reality into another, unless it first turns into nothing, that is, into the reality of the between-stage. The moment when the egg is no more and the chick is not yet, is the level of Ayin, nothingness. It is the same with the sprouting seed. It does not begin to sprout until the seed disintegrates in the earth and the quality of seed-dom is destroyed in order that it may attain to nothingness which is the rung before creation.”

The reason there is no fruit at the end of the seder is because it exists only in the future - after we pick up where the seder left off and plant the seeds of tikkun olam in our community, and in our lives. To tangibly represent this point, this year we’re printing the last page of our seder on this paper. It contains actual wildflower seeds that will really grow if this page is planted in the ground following the seder! May all our work towards a sustainable world come to fruition this year.

The fabulous folks at Notschlock came up with the Jewish Food Pyramid T-Shirt, which plays off of the food pyramid that booted the concept of ”four food groups” out of collective consciousness in the early 1990s. 

Notschlock’s Pyramid Picks:
Tier 1: bagels, matzah, matzah balls, pita.
Tier 2: Pickles, hummus, tzimmes, dill, figs
Tier 3: shmeers, cream cheese / gefilte fish, lox, pastrami on rye
Tier 4: gelt coins, schmaltz, jelly rings, latkes, blintzes

Thank you to everyone who answered the question: “What is your all-time favorite Jewish comfort food?” and was entered into the random raffle for a Thou Shall Snack gift basket.  Our winner Karen (who claims “chopped liver, straight up” as her favorite Jewish comfort Food) will receive a basket filled with Thou Shall Snack treats, a TSS apron or T-shirt, and a beautiful latke serving platter. 

Congratulations Karen!  Stay tuned for more great foodie give-aways from The Jew & The Carrot…

Jewish Grandmas are known for their special gift for feeding - and over feeding - their loved ones.  But for Jill Ginsberg (second from right), her Grandma Rose not only filled her belly with chicken soup, rugelach, and blintzes - she also sparked Jill’s entrepreneurial spirit. 

In 2005, Ginsberg founded Thou Shall Snack - a line of kosher snacks products that recreate traditional Jewish recipes, while giving them a decidedly contemporary twist (they’re kosher as well as baked, free of trans fats and genetically modified ingredients, and made with 70% organic ingredients).  Read an interview with Jill below and answer this question for a chance to win a special gift basket from Thou Shall Snack: What is your all-time favorite Jewish comfort food?  The gift basket contains an assortment of Latke Crisps and Babka Bites from Thou Shall Snack, a custom apron and/or T-shirt, and a beautiful latke serving platter.

LK: How did you come up with the original idea for Thou Shall Snack?

JG: The first time I got the idea for Latke Crisps was after I heard of my friend’s Jewish beer company, HeBrew Beer.  I thought, someone better make some latke crisps to go with that beer!  It was really more of a lark in the moment, but it ended up becoming our first product.

[I also realized] there were a lot of other ethnic-inspired snack foods out there, which got me thinking about the Jewish foods I grew up eating.  I began to wonder why no one had done something like this before.

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