I’ve already posted once today, so sorry for double-dipping, but this is worth posting ASAP:

From the JTS press release:

Dr. David Kraemer, the author of Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages [and 2006 Hazon Food Conference Keynote Speaker], will discuss “Jewish Eating and Jewish Identity” at The Jewish Theological Seminary’s Henry N. Rapaport Memorial Lecture at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, February 4, 2008. The event will take place at JTS, 3080 Broadway (at 122nd Street), New York City.

Jewish Eating and Identity Through the Ages is the first book ever to explore the history of Jewish eating practices from the Bible to the present, and the first to interpret Jewish eating practices throughout the ages as keys to understanding current Jewish identities.

There was a disturbing story in the Times today about the alarmingly high level of mercury in both store-bought and restaurant-served sushi-grade tuna. How is it possible that no government agency tests for mercury in our country’s seafood, when even the FDA and EPA have issued warning advisories about the consumption of certain fish that are known to contain unsafe levels of this industrial pollutant?

While it might be fun for my three-year-old son to color in this page from his “Jewish Activity Book (!):

…maybe I should just substitute a page with Joe Camel smoking a cigarette, which would be no more toxic?

The good news for fish-eating Jews everywhere is that there are sustainable seafood choices out there, including smaller fish found lower on the food chain (but just as high up on the kiddush buffet line), which are not only safer in terms of mercury levels, but very high in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. So dig into those herring, sardines and anchovies, everyone!

Seldom have I found an article as compelling as the January, 19th NY Times article The Food Chain - A New Global Oil Quandary: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories.

Many of us are very conscious of what we eat, where it comes from, and how it is produced. We do what we can in our communities by supporting CSAs, local farmers markets, buying not toxic household cleaning products etc. While we are aware on some level of why these choices are important, I find that it is often hard to see the big picture. It’s difficult for me to wrap my head around the extent to which there is a global food crisis emerging all around us. Because we live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, in many ways this reality has not yet hit home.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this article.

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.

As it turns out, Hazon is not alone in slaughtering animals in a public way to help people get a sense of where their meat comes from - and where it might come from if meat production was signficantly more humane and responsible.

An New York Times article today by Julia Moskin, “Chef’s New Goal: Looking Dinner in the Eye, features British chef Jaime Oliver (as well as American chefs Dan Barber, Tamara Murphy and others), going to great lengths to educate themselves - and their customers - about the meat industry.  Moskin writes:

LAST Friday, in front of 4 million television viewers and a studio audience, the chef Jamie Oliver killed a chicken. Having recently obtained a United Kingdom slaughterman’s license, Mr. Oliver staged a “gala dinner,” in fact a kind of avian snuff film, to awaken British consumers to the high costs of cheap chicken.

“A chicken is a living thing, an animal with a life cycle, and we shouldn’t expect it will cost less than a pint of beer in a pub,” he said Monday in an interview.

Read more »

I still remember the first time my suburban food-bubble was burst, when I realized the implications of fruit sold according to season. I was in Israel, and became completely dumbfounded when I couldn’t find the strawberries…”whaddya mean you don’t sell them in the winter?!?”

Of course, as my sister recently reminded me, even junk food lovers know the comforting seasonal rhythms of Cadbury Creme eggs in late winter (they’re only sold from Jan 1-Easter Sunday), Peeps in the spring, and, of course, Mallomars in the late fall.

Ah, Mallomars…If Proust had grown up in New York, he would have traded in his madeleine for a Mallomar. Respectable journalists have sung its praises to the heavens, this perfect confection, only available during the dark, baseball-less months of November through March, so delicate is its thin outer layer of chocolate, that it can’t survive the trip from factory to store in the heat of spring or summer. And what could be more Jewish than a cookie that comes eighteen to a box, 70% of which are consumed by New Yorkers?

The only cookie that comes close is its Israeli cousin, the Krembo. Similar in construction and seasonal availability, writers also wax rhapsodic about krembo season. Plus, according to its wikipedia entry: Read more »

Last year, my freelancing musician boyfriend took a side gig teaching Hebrew school at a neighborhood synagogue on Sunday mornings.  Like, 8:00am on Sunday morning.  I understood his desire to teach and make some extra money, but it frustrated me to relinquish him to a bunch of strangers’ six-year olds during prime pancake and omelet hours.  (Especially since, in my new mostly Shabbat observant life, Saturday morning was also out). 

Luckily, all those early mornings paid off.  The synagogue changed its Hebrew school structure - he now teaches during the week, clearing up Sunday mornings for New York Times reading, bluegrass listening, and - of course - brunch.

This morning, we celebrated with coffee in the Turkish tea glasses he recently found on the street (ahhh, Brooklyn!) and french toast.  Made with leftover challah and organic free-range eggs, and topped with pears softened with agave nectar and ginger, it was french toast fit for The Jew & The Carrot.  Check out the recipe below the jump. 

Now that we have Sunday mornings free, we need more recipe ideas!  I’d love to hear some of your favorite healthy (or more indulgent) brunch meals…

Read more »

So maybe they did stop their covert nuclear activities almost five years ago, but now there’s a chance that we’re supporting the axis-of-evil with our choice of snack:

World Briefing | Middle East
Israel: The Hunt for Illegal Nuts

Published: November 22, 2007

Israel has asked the United States for help in cracking down on illegal pistachio nut imports from Iran, an official said, after Washington warned that the trade was hurting efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel imports pistachios worth $26 million annually, mostly from Turkey. But Washington says nuts from Iran are mixed in with the shipments, undermining economic sanctions meant to force Iran to stop developing its nuclear abilities. An Agriculture Ministry official said Israel was willing to help but, as in the past, the problem was how to figure out the nuts’ origin.

A much more adversarial description of this exchange can be found here.

Fear not, gentle readers - if you want your eating to contribute to peace, love, and understanding, enter the Build a Sustainable Gingerbread House competition over at Bake for Change.

And about those pistachios…maybe we should just start a nougat for nukes exchange program .

5-Spoke Creamery - As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, 5-Spoke Creamery is the place to look if you’re looking for raw milk, artisanal, amazingly delicious, and kosher certified (Kof-K) cheese.  Now, it seems event the New York Times agrees.  Hazon was blessed to have Alan, Barbara, and their kids serving up samples of their delicious cheese - including their recently released, Tumbleweed variety (see left) - at the Food Conference.  Click here, to find out where you can get your hands on some.

Lantern Books Essay Contest - Lantern Books - publishers of books on animal advocacy, religion, social justice, and environmentalism announced its 2007 essay competition. The aim of the competition is to allow new thinking to emerge on the key subjects of Lantern’s publishing program and to encourage new voices to step forward to shape the debate for the future.

The first prize is $1000. There is no entry fee. Essays should be no longer than 1500 words. The deadline is December 31, 2007.  For complete guidelines, as well as prior years’ winning essays, click here.

The New York Times, like much of the country around this time of year, is in a giving sort of mood. But despite our best intentions, giving isn’t easy.  Following up on an article last week that announced severe shortages in food banks across the country, today’s Times published an article which declares that giving is more complicated than it used to be. Food giving, the article says, no longer simply refers to bringing a can of wax beans to your local food pantry (though it still means that, too).

Kim Severson writes in So Little Time, So Many Charities to Feed,

“…figuring out where to direct help can be complex, especially in an era when tens of thousands of such programs exist.

Charitable groups dedicated to saving farms from bankruptcy or delivering vegetables to poor urban neighborhoods have popped up in recent years. So have groups that build organic gardens in struggling school districts or protect endangered indigenous foods like the O’odham pink bean.”

So, do you stick with the can of beans to the food pantry? Give to a food bank like City Harvest? Donate to a Jewish hunger organization like Hazon Yeshaya, or Mazon? It turns out, just like there’s no one perfect diet for everyone, there’s also no perfect place to donate.

“The question to ask yourself as a donor is, What problem do I want to solve, and how do I best think that it could get solved?” said Melissa Berman, the president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors…”

I would add that, just as we all need to eat, so is it our responsibility to help others - or support those people who are helping others.

So what’s your favorite food charity? If you have one, list it below - if not, check back in the comments section for ideas.

Eric Schlosser’s Nov 30 editorial targeted Goldman Sachs, one of three private equity firms controlling most of Burger King’s stock. The fast food monarch, in turn, is reponsible for turning the tide back on the one-cent per bucket increase in wages for thousands of Florida tomato pickers.

It would cost Burger King just $250,000 a year to increase the pickers’ wages by this amount, to solidify similar deals struck with Taco Bell and McDonalds by the AMAZING Coalition of Immokalee Workers. Although many readers of this blog may not frequent Burger King, many others do.

Regardless of the location, when we shell out $6.50 (or $36.50) for a meal, do we have any idea how much of our dollar is going to the person serving us?
to the person making the food?
to the person harvesting the food?
to the person driving our ingredients across the country?

An alternative model is practiced by Just Coffee, a Madison, WI-based co-operative business which sources, roasts, and sells coffee held to the most fair and ethical standards “using the language and mechanics of market economics to turn the market on its ear.”

A number of food industry firms have introduced voluntary nutrition labeling Read more »

The Oxford American Dictionary just announced its word of the year and it’s more than relevant to us all at The Jew and the Carrot. The most important new word for 2007 is: LOCAVORE. Even a more prescriptivist dictionary like Oxford has recognized the new local movement and the importance of a diet based on locally harvested foods. The New York Times covered this story. According to the Times’ Mike Nizza, “The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.” Nizza detailed a bit about the movement’s history up until the coining of the word of the year by Jessica Prentice of San Fransisco in 2005.

The runner-up for the word of the year was “tase,” as in to stun someone with a taser or stun gun.

It’s a familiar legend - whether it’s the Golem or Dr. Frankenstein’s monster (the latter perhaps inspired by tales of the former) - what we arrogantly create comes back to haunt us. America’s monster might turn out to be one that we encounter in its most powerful form each Halloween: corn. Not the sweet, buttery kind that we get from our CSA in July. The kind that industrial-strength petro-chemicals and lobbyist-induced grain subsidies have produced in quantities unfathomable even fifty years ago. As Michael Pollan noted in Omnivore’s dilemma, which so eloquently sounded the clarion call for the dangers of corn, much of this crop has been turned into food additives that are so commonplace that if we’re eating any type of processed food, chances are we’re eating corn, even if we don’t even know it! Read more »

Further proof (from the NY Times no less) that kale is the best food ever.  Melissa Clark writes in “If it Sounds Bad, it’s Got to be Good:

“Nonetheless, I ordered the [raw kale] salad. It arrived as a shadowy green mountain under a blizzard of grated pecorino Rossellino cheese (a nutty Italian sheep’s milk cheese with a ruddy rind) and bread crumbs, flavored with lemon and chili. Tangy, spicy, slick with good oil and crunchy from the earthy-flavored kale, it was as pungent and rich as it was fresh and clean tasting; a veritable raw foods epiphany. The minute I left the restaurant I craved another.”

Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry’s wife) recently published a book, Deceptively Delicious, which offered sneaky recipes that slip vegetables into kid-friendly food - only to find out that the book had already been written - i.e. Missy Chase Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef.  I wonder what Mrs. Seinfeld would think of the idea that - prepared well - maybe vegetables like kale and spinach don’t need to be pureed into brownies after all.