By Samuel Eskenasy

iMasoret is a new all-in-one Jewish tradition application.  It serves as a vast info center that can accompany the user wherever they go.  iMasoret includes all the siddur prayers (in Nussach  Ashkenaz  Sfarad  and Edot Hamizrach) for Israel and for The Diaspora. Also included are The Holy Days, the books of the Torah, Tehillim(Psalms), Lessons, Kabbalah, Blessings, and Songs.  The app even provides locations of Jewish sites of interest including kosher establishments, synagogues and hotels.

Some features included are:

•     Shabbat and Yom Tov tefilot:  includes Shacharit Mincha and Maariv songs in three Nussachim, Laws & Customs, and Songs
•       Tehillim: In text, there are week day or monthly readings, and there is the option of Neshama letters.
•       Books: includes Torah(5), Nevi’im (19), and Ketuvim (11(
•       Kabbalah + Lessons: a very wide variety of lessons in text, audio, and video formats
•       Songs + Poetry: another option that provides a comprehensive coverage of centuries of Jewish wisdom, all in text and video.
•       Blessings: all the daily prayers for before and after a meal, and what to say for each kind of meal.
•       A calendar with important times.
•       A search option for finding any word or sentence in any of the content as well as a help function
•       Comments – the user can add his comment to some part of the text that will then be available for all others using the application.

The iMasoret is a fully multilingual application.  The current version provides English and Hebrew, subsequent releases will provide Spanish, French, Russian, and German.

The application also has a business directory that any establishment can join to reach a large pool of potential customers.  Find out more at www.imasoret.com

Zachary Agopian is a chef in Portland, OR and an intern working with an exciting project called Food-Hub: food-hub.org/. This project promotes the use of local foods by directly connecting local farmers and ranchers with local buyers. Thanks, Zachary, for sharing this project with us!

If you’re like me you’re always on the prowl for the freshest ingredients to nourish your body. Now, this may involve an assortment of ridiculous activities; from a full inspection of your milk aisle for the freshest carton, or the heated family “discussion” over your highly guarded mushroom foraging stash. My personal favorite, over-dosing on peaches until you can’t stand the sight of one until next summer, as to not give-in to the temptation, in the long winter months, of a well traveled piece of fruit.

But Wait, Locavores! We now have technology on our side. No, I am not speaking of bioengineered, modified, high yield, “enhanced” vegetables. (Who really wants all of their food to look and taste exactly the same?) I’m talking about FoodHub.

FoodHub. www.food-hub.org.

A new online directory and marketplace which connects some of the region’s most passionate farmers, ranchers, and food producers with regional buyers. What is so amazing about FoodHub is that it can benefit everyone. If you’re a school district looking to purchase 500 lbs of organic carrots, or a local grocery store wanting to stock your shelves with local products, or just throwing a dinner party and want to find locally raised chickens; FoodHub is your tool!
FoodHub is a not-for-profit, there is a membership fee of $100 per year and is open to food buyers and sellers of all kinds throughout OR, WA, AK, ID, MT, and CA. Members create online profiles that include contact info, products they buy or sell, preferred methods for doing business, and many other useful details. Sophisticated search capabilities allow buyers to instantly discover ready suppliers with a few clicks of their computer keyboard. Conversely, sellers can use FoodHub search features to identify new buyer leads and build targeted customer databases. With over 3,000 items in FoodHub’s pantry, the search options are endless.

My favorite tool on FoodHub is the Marketplace function which is a kind of Craig’s List for food. Buyers and sellers post immediate needs and opportunities in FoodHub’s Marketplace. Consider the following posts recently placed on FoodHub:

• Artisan Cheese Coming out of the Caves: Our newest blue cheese – Caveman Blue will be ready to release from our caves within the next two weeks. Contact us now for information about ordering.
• Local Baker Looking for Rhubarb: We are in search of local rhubarb for pie season. We prefer once a week deliveries to our North Portland Bakery. We need 250 – 350 pounds per week while in season (April – July). Please email through FoodHub to provide us with more information.
• Do Your Products Need a Ride? We deliver ice cream in our freezer truck from Bellingham to Seattle/Eastside, San Juan Islands, Skagit Valley, Port Townsend to Port Angeles. We would be willing to deliver your frozen goods along our regular routes for a nominal trip charge.

Give FoodHub a tour; this is a tool that is going to reshape our nutritional landscape.

My dear friends The Wandering Jew and David Levy over at Jewschool, sick with envy that they couldn’t attend the Hazon Food Conference this year, produced this tongue-in-cheek video to vicariously participate nonetheless. Please enjoy their playful snark as we consider how the hell this product fits into the eco-kashrut movement.

Do you love your CSA (or Tuv Ha’Haretz) but also want sustainable products that are not found locally where you live?  Things like olive oil and dates are local to the Mediterranean Sea – not New England.  But for folks in the greater New York area committed to sustainable agriculture, some of our CSAs have recently partnered with a new company that supports small-scale farming and economic development in the Negev Region of Israel.

Negev Nectars, a new business that launched last week, will be bringing gourmet, sustainably produced foods to CSAs (and Tuv Ha’Haretz) to the United States.  Negev Nectars members will be sent olive oil, jams, chutneys, honey, dried herbs and other unique products (check them out here) three times a year just before Hanukkah, Passover and Rosh Hashanah.  Negev Nectars can be shipped all over the U.S., although your share can be picked up at participating sites.  Currently Negev Nectars can be picked up at the Tuv Ha’Haretz in White Plains, NY and Forest Hills, NY with additional sites coming soon in New York and New Jersey.

A Negev Nectars membership is more than just an investment in Israeli farms employing responsible growing practices; it is also an investment in the future of the country and the region. Farmers such as Doron Akiva, the olive grower, and those at the highly regarded organic kibbutz, Neot Smadar, irrigate their fields and orchards with brackish (salty) well water when the plants can handle it, and employ the most up-to-date water saving technology for desert conditions.

The ethos behind Negev Nectars is akin to what’s going on in the sustainable food world in the US “For those of us not living in California, local organic olive oil is impossible to find,” said Jeffrey Yoskowitz, Director of Operations and Marketing. “Many of our products are specific to the Mediterranean and the desert, and supplement the fresh produce from farmers markets and CSAs very nicely.” He added that no matter the distance, you should get to know your farmer.

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.

Although he describes his model as upside down and risky because he invested about one million dollars to build production capacity before serving his first spoonful, Noah believes customers taste the difference, and the expense was well worth it.  “Our gelato and sorbets enjoy a clean, balanced flavor and do not leave behind the unpleasant aftertaste and greasy palate associated with industrial-strength ice cream products,” proclaims Pitango’s website. “Our customers understand the difference in quality and price between the pint of fresh local strawberries that goes into our strawberry sorbet and an artificially flavored product that may go by a similar name.”

Milk that is More than Organic

Although hesitant to market Pitango strictly on its organic credentials, lest he scare away customers who associate “organic” with “healthy and bad-tasting,” Noah’s standards go “way, way beyond organic.” After conducting a search across the mid-Atlantic region for the right milk and cream to form the base of his gelato, he discovered that not all organics are created equal. “You can go into an organic farm and they do things by the letter of the law but they are not with the spirit,” he explains. “I’ve been to those farms.  I came out emotionally disturbed.”

Instead, Pitango sources all its dairy products from Spring Wood Organic Farm in central Pennsylvania.  Less than one percent of U.S. dairy farms have grass-fed herds, but Spring Wood is one of them.  Noah describes Spring Wood owner Roman Stolzfoos as “a guy who really loves his cows.”  While the cost of grass-fed organic milk from healthy cows is higher, the quality, flavor, and health benefits justify this cost.

Noah also believes in the benefits and taste of raw milk, noting that every time milk is heating during pasteurization the quality is compromised.  U.S. laws that regulate raw milk protect the big dairy industry, he says, because when they skim, pasteurize, and homogenize milk at high temperatures they are able to sell “sick” milk from ill-treated, factory farm-raised cows.  “Cows produce five times what a cow body should produce over a long time, so you better treat it as a toxic matter,” Noah exclaims.  But he notes that people have long-since believed in the medicinal benefits of raw milk, recalling that once upon a time Shaarei Tzedek hospital in Jerusalem raised cows on the premises to provide raw milk to patients because doctors so strongly insisted upon its medicinal value.

Because Spring Wood’s cows are so healthy and well-treated, Pitango is able to base their gelato on raw milk, which they pasteurize as they prepare each batch to avoid double pasteurization.  The difference in taste is immediately evident.

Other Sustainable Ingredients

Besides their grass-fed dairy, Noah and his team will go to great lengths to provide the purest, best-tasting, most authentic gelato possible.  Focusing on classic Italian flavors, Pitango Gelato contains no flavorings, colorings, or artificial ingredients whatsoever;  “We don’t offer novelty flavors such as blue ice cream or Phish food, because we believe that nature offers its own novelties every season of the year.”

As much as possible, Pitango relies on local, organic fruit for flavors.  But Noah has avoided the organic label because he does not want to be “trapped” if he cannot get an organic ingredient.  He imports a Bronte pistachios, for instance, from Italy.  These nuts are not organic, but they grow wild in the volcanic soil around Mount Etna, and Noah believes their taste is unparalleled.

Conscientious Business Practices

In addition to tasting better and being healthier, Noah believes sustainable business practices are a no-brainer.  “It’s just common sense.  In recent times people pay more attention to [sustainability], but it’s just common sense.  It also makes good business decisions.”

One example of Noah’s sustainable, good business decisions recalls the brara of his childhood.  He buys small organic strawberries from a farmer in Pennsylvania.  The strawberries burst with flavor, he says, but are too small for the farmer to sell in the city because he can only get a worthwhile price mark-up on large strawberries.  But by focusing more on flavor than looks, Noah is able to procure a better-tasting strawberry for a lower price.

Noah also incorporates sustainability into the operation of his stores. “My grandmother said that only very rich people can afford cheap things,” he comments, explaining how, for instance, the reusable metal cannisters he uses to hold his gelato cost $100 each, but they last forever and are ultimately much cheaper than continuously buying disposable paper cartons.  The fact that they don’t end up in landfills is an added bonus.

The three Pitango stores also boast display cases that cost more than normal but consume about a tenth of the electricity, and recycle the paper they do use by having a wood-boiling burner as a heat source on Roman’s farm.   “We try not to throw away anything.  You just have to think a little bit ahead.”

Noah Dan (left) and staff at the Washington DC Pitango Location

A Business Model for Success

Asked about the future of Pitango, Noah muses about opening more stores across the mid-Atlantic region.  He explains that the Pitango model is scaleable on a modular level, although not like big industry.  The idea is to have one farm that supports a large number of shops, and then repeat the same methods in another region so everything stays fresh and local. It’s not an easy model to execute, but Noah thinks its doable.

“You try to do the right thing, one flavor at a time,” he says.  Noah envisions a food culture in which people associate good value with a label like organic, not in the sense of price but in that the food tastes better, is safer, and healthier.  “We have a long way to go.  I think it’s a fight worth fighting.”

Food politics aside, Noah simply derives joy from watching the joy on customers’ faces when they sample their first Pitango Gelato.  For this reason, he concludes, “Every Jewish boy when he gets to my age should probably open a gelato shop.”

Kosher‘s interface is cleanly designed. Essentially, it’s a front-end viewer for a database hosted on Shamash.org, which has listings of restaurants, groceries, butchers, kosher food stores and even caterers. The database also contains reviews that visitors to these establishments have submitted. But the app also has a host of iPhone specific features and goodies that make it a compelling purchase for any iPhone user who keeps kosher or has friends who do.

What makes this better than a printed list culled from a website?
The iPhone specific features are excellent. (Note that the app also works on the iPod Touch, but without the GPS features.) The app allows you to use the GPS feature of the iPhone to find local restaurants, ranked in descending order of distance. You can also browse a global list of restaurants, and you can search for a specific place using various filters to narrow down the results (meal, cuisine, price, etc). Once you’ve found somewhere to eat, you can hit the map button to find the location using Google Maps and even get directions from your current location.

This makes Kosher app perfect for travellers visiting an unfamiliar city. In Cape Town, Tokyo, Moscow, Budapest or Rio de Janeiro? You’ll be able to find a comprehensive list of kosher establishments or places selling kosher products (groceries, butchers, restaurants, cafes, bakeries and so on). Here’s an example of the location of an Indian restaurant we visited in Paris:

There’s also a phone button that allows you to call the restaurants directly to make a reservation or to ask questions. Not wanting to pay for an unnecessary international call, though, I didn’t manage to test whether clicking on a foreign restaurant’s phone number works: all the telephone numbers seem to be formatted for local dialling from their respective countries, which might cause problems for direct dialling using the iPhone from abroad before your trip. The London phone number of this restaurant, for example, is formatted for dialing from within the UK, not from abroad:

What are the best reasons to get the application?
It’s really great to be able to search such a comprehensive database from your phone: it’s a helpful resource for tourists, travellers, and for those who prefer to eat only in restaurants certified by a particular rabbi or hashgacha, or who want to avoid a hashgacha they consider untrustworthy, since they can restrict their search to a specific kashrut certification.

You can save a list of favorites to your phone, which makes it easy to access the phone numbers and locations of places you visit often, or places you’ve been abroad and would like to recommend to friends, but don’t want in your main iPhone phonebook.

The app is also a great resource for religious eaters: it has the full text of Hebrew blessings before and after meals in several different traditions (Ashkenazi, Sepharad, Sephardic and  Chabad).

If you prefer to buy only certified food, or need to do so for a friend who keeps a stricter standard of kashrut than you do, the list of hechshers is a wonderful resource to have while you’re in the supermarket, since it lets you compare a symbol on a packet with an easy to read, comprehensive list.

You can submit your own review of a restaurant to the Shamash database, which is a nice feature. Here are the existing reviews of a fantastic place in Los Angeles:

Kosher app also links to the website of a restaurant (if available) and lets you email a listing to a friend.

Any caveats?

• Information on kashrut certifications is sometimes visible on the page of a specific restaurant, but doesn’t appear in a search for symbols on products: for example, the Sephardi Kashrut Authority in London appears in restaurant lists, but strangely, not in list of hechshers under “England” although, as far as I know, they certify packaged products under their own hechsher as well.
• When choosing a filter before searching for a restaurant, the bottom row of filter buttons is too close to the bottom icon bar of application options. This makes it easy to click “Near Me” by mistake when in fact you wanted to limit your search to Sephardic restaurants. The organization of the options in the “Filter” box could be clearer: it’d be better to have separate lists for cuisine, meals, and type of establishment. That way, you could choose “cafe/deli” or “caterer” from one list,  ”breakfast” as opposed to “dinner” from another, and “Sephardic” as opposed to “Mexican” from a third.
• One minor correction: the Sephardi blessing over wine ends with “hagefen” not “hagafen”.

What improvements would we suggest?

• It’d be really nice to rotate the iPhone and be able to view Birkat haMazon in landscape view, since the Hebrew text is quite small.
• What about being able to browse restaurant menus inside Kosher app without having to open the Safari browser? This would probably entail adding a feature to the Shamash database, but it could be as compelling a proposition for restaurant owners as for their customers: imagine easily being able to plan what you’d like to eat before a trip abroad to a culinarily-diverse location like Paris, where there are numerous kosher restaurants.
• What about being able to view photos of food from the restaurant, or photos of the restaurant interior itself?

The Shamash database really needs cleaning up. Kosher app itself is excellent, but sometimes its iPhone specific features don’t work perfectly because the entries in the Shamash database feed it erroneous data. Since the restaurant database can be edited by users and consists largely of submissions from people who’ve visited the restaurants in question, rather than professional reviewers, one should probably expect this sort of inconsistency. Nonetheless, perhaps RustyBrick can convince Shamash.org to spend some time checking the phone numbers and addresses for accuracy. Because of these database inaccuracies:

• Locations are classified somewhat inconsistently: sometimes under city name and sometimes by city name and zipcode. This is a merely cosmetic problem, but makes the listings appear slightly sloppy and makes it less easy to see restaurants in a particular neighborhood grouped under one heading, at a glance. (For example, after Zurich in the list of cities, there’s a load of incorrectly alphabetized cities. I’m not sure why they are there and not in the main list.)
• More seriously, when a restaurant is not correctly listed (such as one in Casablanca Morocco, which had the Massachusetts state abbreviation MA at the end of the address) the Maps application can’t show it correctly on screen. Viewing a location using Maps only works if the address from the Shamash database is perfectly formatted. Searching for a restaurant we visited in Paris (shown above) first brought up nothing. Since this was a test to find a place whose location I already knew, I was able to correct the address by deleting an extraneous street name and the bracketed name of the restaurant after the actual address which I knew to be correct. Only then did the map appear correctly, but this would have stumped a casual tourist trying to find an as yet unknown location.

But all in all, these are minor gripes: Kosher is an excellent and well-designed program. In our view, it’s well worth the $5 price. You’ll find all sorts of kosher restaurants and stores you might never have known about, you’ll be able to get directions and phone numbers for your favorite haunts in seconds from your phone and you’ll be able to upload a review of your meal as you sit digesting dessert and waiting for the bill to arrive.

My (lovely) mother is a proper woman. It was a rare meal when we were allowed to place a food container directly on the table. For the most part we would decant the mustard or horseradish into a small bowl and take from that. In many areas I have followed in my mom’s footsteps, I too do not like putting cereal boxes and drink cartons on the table but that is because it bothers my aesthetic senses (i.e. they get in the way when they clutter a small kitchen table) and I want to shield my children against obnoxious marketing and advertising. Yet, unlike my mom I have had to cut corners and fallen a couple of rungs on the proper-ness ladder. By child number two, I stopped making my own tomato sauce and with child number three the days of homemade pie crusts were over.

A few months ago, the Times had an article that my mom cut out and sent to me about money saving measures one could take in the kitchen. I didn’t find it all that earth shattering but one thing it said was that sticking a few soup veggies in a pot is always better then store bought consomme. I love to cook but I also need time saving measures. Osem’s soup mixes, which can be found in most kosher food sections, are tasty and can offer that je ne sais quoi to rice dishes, cholents, and of course soups. In the past year Osem came out with a new chicken consomme that boasts all natural ingredients. Perhaps this new version can help us save time in the kitchen and will offer a healthier alternative to the original. Let’s see:

Osem Chicken Style Consomme Soup & Seasoning Mix 14 oz (Original)

The ingredients of this product as listed on the side of the container are: Salt, flavor enhancer (monosodium glutamate), tapioca starch, sugar, palm oil, spices, dehydrated vegetables (onion, celery), flavorings, antioxidants (butylated hydroxyanisole, butylated hydroxytoluene.

Osem Chicken Style Consomme Soup & Seasoning Mix no MSG 14 oz (New)

Ingredients: Salt, Corn Starch, Maltodexin, Yeast Extract, Palm Oil, Spices (celery, parsley, garlic, black pepper, mace, rosemary), dehydrate onions, Natural Flavoring.

Comparing Nutrition Facts: (1 tsp.)

Calories: 15 New; 10 Old

Sodium: 770mg New; 860mg Old

Total Carbohydrate: 3g New; 2g Old

Protein: 0g New; 1g Old

I guess from here it’s safe to say that the pros mostly lie in the fact that as the label points out there is No added MSG, No preservatives, and No food coloring. Nutrient-wise, this product contains very little. A serving of this consomme is 1 teaspoon of dry powder which will make 1 cup of consomme if prepared according to the directions. This will contain 15 calories, of which there is no fat, 3 grams of carbohydrates, and 0 gram of protein. There is, however, a ton of sodium which makes up about 30 percent of one’s daily recommended allowance.

So in short, yes plain veggies in a pot are better but come on mom, sometimes dinner time just juts its head out of nowhere and Osem soup mix is a quick yummy fix.

Please note: the container that I purchased of the new “all natural” mix does NOT have a kosher for passover symbol on it however the “old” version does. I am unsure whether more recently they have come out with a kosher for passover new version.

Please also note: this title is somewhat of a joke.

Disney has found a way to infiltrate breakfast, by branding eggs with images of Mickey Mouse and other loveable Disney characters.  These eggs are (naturally, I suppose) neither cage free nor organic – but they sure put the fun back in breakfunfast.  I have many questions, but I’ll start with three:

1. What is Disney thinking, offering customers a daily opportunity to crack Mickey’s head open?

2. Is there anything scarier than waking up in the morning and opening up your egg carton to find MICKEY MOUSE GRINNING UP AT YOU?

2. Does anyone else shudder at the inevitability of a Jewish knock-off product?  Magen David stamped eggs?  Menorah stamped eggs? Rebbe stamped eggs?  I think I’ll stick to oatmeal.

Photo credit: Serious Eats

With all the jokes about Jews loving Chinese food, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a Jewish version of the Chinese zodiac calendar.  Now, by inputting your year of birth, you can find out which Jewish deli food (lox, bagel, black & white cookie…you get the picture) that you are cosmically aligned with.  Moreover, once you know your sign, you can (conveniently) purchase *stuff* with a picture of your sign on it.

Personally, I’m a little bit annoyed/amazed by the continuing onslaught of Judeo-kitsch out there in the world.  Doesn’t that sort of thing get old to anyone else but me?  Then again, maybe I’m just cynical because I’m a blintz.  (It figures…)

Get the whole dish and find out your sign here.

(hat tip Daniel Belasco)

When it comes to honey pots, you can go with something traditional and very jew-y:

OR…….

…try something kind of homey and rustic:

I personally like these modern and more abstract pots:

And then there are the more whimsical options like a pomegranate…

or a flower.

For a fancier table, here are some more formal possibilities:

For tons more options, try the Jewish Museum’s online shop or check out the handmade options on etsy and get one from a local artist.

Now, what kind of honey goes into your specially chosen pot? You might be tempted by the plastic golden bear on the shelves in your supermarket, but there are way better options out there.

I love wildflower honey, and orange blossom is famously fantastic, but there are tons of different varieties available, from bamboo honey, to soybean honey. In general, the darker the honey, the stronger the flavor.

You can also get honeycomb which is really fun, but a little difficult to deal with, or whipped honey, which is thicker and spreadable. The National Honey Board has a honey locator feature on their website that lets you search for honey from a particular location, or a certain kind of honey. And don’t forget to look for honey at your local farmer’s market! This year my family will be having wildflower honey from Laney Honey farms—it’s certified kosher, and I picked it up at the Nashville farmer’s market.

Wishing you a sweet and creative New Year!

Thanks to the Jewish Museum for the inspiration behind this post.