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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Last Sunday, I attended Kosher Fest, the yearly gathering of kosher food and beverage purveyors and other food professionals (held in New York City, naturally). Kosher Fest is no informal synagogue social – it’s a two-day mega event that features the newest, best, and flashiest in kosher food. Page 11 of the 84-page Kosher Fest program guide displays some “impressive facts” including the dollar value of kosher produced goods in the US - $10,500,000,000. In other words, if you make kosher food you’re either at Kosher Fest, or you’re missing out.

Precisely because it’s the “see and be seen” event of the Jewish food year, Kosher Fest serves as an annual barometer of the kosher industry – its health, its growth, and its trends. More interestingly, as I ambled down the aisles of shiny displays, I began to notice how the state of kosher food uncannily mirrors the state of today’s Jewish community.

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It seems that Jews have made it. Bizarre, strange American holiday rituals (read: butter turkeys for Thanksgiving, fruit cakes for Christmas) have extended out a hand to American Jews. New for the holiday season is a special soda that tastes like latkes and a Christmas Ham soda that happens to be kosher.

Jones Soda co., a Seattle based soda-maker, announced new soda flavors for the holiday season. See the story in The Olympian. Jones is known for bizarre and “offbeat” flavors. New to the holiday line–in addition to the turkey and gravy soda flavors for Thanksgiving–are Chanukkah and Christmas flavors. The Hanukkah pack features Jelly Doughnut, Apple Sauce, Chocolate Coins and latkes soda flavors. “As always, both packs are kosher,” a Jones statement read. Read more »

What do you get when you cross: 

-A blend of 28 cocoas (including 14 of the most expensive and exotic around the globe)
- 5 grams of edible 23-karat gold, served in a goblet lined with edible gold
- 18-karat gold bracelet at the bottom of the goblet (with 1 karat of diamonds)
- Whipped cream covered in more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle, which sells for $2,600/pound?

The Frozzen (yes two zs) Haute Chocolate, a $25,000 desert from Serendipity 3 in New York City.  Here’s my question, why would you want to EAT gold?  Yes, yes, there’s the whole “you are what you eat,” thing, but would you really want to be an inert mineral that probably causes serious indigestion?

Let’s just say The Frozzen Haute Chocolate doesn’t top my Chanukah gift wish list this year - but if you want to get me something from The Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide…

Melanie Dunea’s new book - My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals- combines Americans’ ever-growing obsession with food and celebrity chefs, with our voyeuristic desire to glimpse into the lives of famous people.

The book features goregous, coffee table-quality portraits of renowned chefs, along with interviews and - of course - their own description of their ideal “last meal.” It is truly remarkable to notice the number of chefs who chose shellfish and pork products (particularly suckling pig) as their deathbed delicacy.

New York-based chef and organic foods enthusiast, Jonathan Waxman’s final meal comes slightly closer to The Jew & The Carrot’s style:

“a bountiful and varied selection: handmade tortilla chips with guacamole made from organic tree-ripened avocados, spit-roasted lamb from the Sonoma Valley, served with potatoes cooked in ashes, followed by ice cream sandwiches made from shortbread, served with wild strawberries.”

So nu, what would your (God, forbid!)  last meal include?

Purchase My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals here

Organic. Pancakes. In a can.

End of civilization? Or dawn of a new era of enlightened convenience foods?

Discuss.

I have not held back on my love of all things cheese on this site.  Today is no exception.  I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love…with 5-Spoke Creamery. 

5-spoke cheeses are:

• handcrafted / artisinal
• made from raw milk of grass-fed cows
• pesticide and hormone free
• KOSHER! (Kof-K)

The best part is, they’re available to accept my love.  You can find 5-Spoke at Whole Foods across the Northeast and at specialty food marts in NYC like Zabars, Fairway, Bierkraft, etc.  Not in your neighborhood yet?  Contact 5-Spoke and tell them to share the love in your community.  As for me, I’m off to make some of my very own 5-Spoke Pasta with Arugula Pesto.  ummm….cheeessseee.

As Ben, Aaron, and other The Jew & The Carrot bloggers have mentioned in previous posts, this country’s obsession with bottled water has reached epi(demi)c proportions.  We spend 10.8 billion dollars/year on bottled water (and growing), while people in many US cities could enjoy water straight from the tap.  Our addiction adds up - in dollars, in packaging going to the landfill, and in CO2 (from importing water to the US from far off places like Fiji.)

I’m personally ready to put a cap on my own bottled water consumption - give me a Britta and a good looking Nalgene and I’ll get along just fine.  I’m not, however, ready to let go of seltzer water - that “traditional Jewish” bubbly beverage that just feels a little more exciting than its non-carbonated cousin.  Luckily, I just found out about a company called Fountain Jet that offers a “Home Soda Maker” - that promises as little or as much seltzer as you want “with the push of a button.”  I know I sound like an informercial, but I’m pretty excited to think that I could make all my own seltzer for the Rosh Hashanah table and not have a pile of plastic messing up the kitchen afterwards. 

Check out Fountain Jet here.

Related to an earlier post regarding bottled water, evangelical-type eco-warriors are known to say that all sorts of things are bad for us — frequently because our awareness about what is safe and unsafe lie on the many unexamined habits and practices that we don’t examine closely. Scientific study to prove one way or the other frequently is barely keeping up — or ineffectively communicated to the public. But of all the horrors, just as bottled water is bad for Ha’Olam, now our beloved Nalgene bottles are bad too?? How??

A little bit of internet research is useful, categorized here in brief.

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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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