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.

“What would happen if every blog published posts discussing the same issue, on the same day?”  That was the question posed by the folks at Blog Action Day. 

The idea is simple and profound: one topic, thousand of different voices across the blogosphere.  Well, the day is here and the topic is the environment.  Considering The Jew & The Carrot is about food, Jewish life, and sustainability, that shouldn’t be too difficult to handle.  Then again, food lies at the core of many aspects of life, so if next year’s topic is business (or family, books, politics, vacations…) we’ll be ready.

To get things started: check out the fascinating op-ed in The New York Times today, where the former president of the American Farm Bureau, Dean Kleckner blasts the US’s continued addiction farm subsidies.  Kleckner writes:

“By promising to cover losses [through subsidies], the government insulates farmers from market signals that normally would encourage sensible, long-term decisions about what to grow and where to grow it. There’s something fundamentally perverse about a system that has farmers hoping for low prices at harvest time — it’s like praying for bad weather. But that’s precisely what happens, because those low prices mean bigger checks from Washington.” 

With the Senate’s Farm Bill vote looming, it was heartening to see support for a smarter Farm Bill coming not just from well-meaning activists, but from the farmers themselves.

Today’s New York Times reported:

As Israel’s Jews start a new year, the country finds itself in the middle of a fierce religious dispute about the sanctity of fruits and vegetables.”

Indeed.

As Yigal’s article mentioned, the ancient, Torah-mandated practice of shmita leaves the contemporary land of Israel, its farmers - and also its eaters - in a peculiar bind.  The problem is, unsuprisingly, religious.  Israel’s chief rabbinate condones the loophole practice of heter mechira, or growing food on Israeli soil if it is temporarily sold to non-Jews.  Still, it allows rabbis of local cities to decide for themselves whether heter mechira will rule, which opens the “two Jews, three opinions” floodgates.

Read more »

Joan Nathan knows Jewish food.  Author of culinary tomes like Jewish Cooking in America, Joan Nathan’s Jewish Holiday Cookbook, and The Jewish Holiday Baker, she sets the standard for elegant, timeless Jewish cooking (and not just shmaltzy Ashkenazi fare either - she is currently researching for a new book on Jewish cuisine in France). 

Ms. Nathan recently delved head first into the “new Jewish food movement.”  In an article she wrote for the New York Times called, “Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul,” she explored the work organizations, farmers, and companies are doing across the country that ties together food, faith, and farming.  (Hazon - and this very blog - enjoyed healthy shoutouts in the article.)

The Jew & The Carrot sat down with Ms. Nathan the week before Rosh Hashanah - just before the start of the “high season” of high holiday cooking frenzy.  She shared her take on traditional Jewish cooking, new conversations about food and Jewish community, and her most important tip for hosting a successful Rosh Hashanah meal.      

LK: Your recent New York Times article, “Of Church and Steak,” showed how many organizations and individuals connect faith, food, and farming.  What was the most interesting discovery you made about Jewish food while working on that article?

JN:  I think the most surprising thing to me was finding out about Orthodox Jews’ interest in sustainability.  I expected it more from other populations in the Jewish community, but I discovered many Orthodox people are interested too.  I also heard a lot about the idea of Jewish stewardship, which I hadn’t heard before.  I’m not sure [it’s a mainstream conversation in the Jewish community], but it’s there.

Read more »

The New York Times reported today that school cafeterias across the country are going on a diet:

As students return to school this week, some are finding unusual entries on the list of class rules: fewer fried foods, smaller servings and no cupcakes. School districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are overweight.

In California, deep fryers have been banned, so chicken nuggets and fries are now baked. Sweet tea is off the menu in one Alabama school. In New Jersey, 20-ounce sports drinks have been cut back to 12 ounces.

Overall, schools report that the changes are being met with fanfare from health officials and shrugs (but not disgust) from students. Some of the changes, however, have parents up in arms:

Read more »

Congratulations to Shahar Peer, who became the first Israeli woman to reach the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open by defeating Agnieszka Radwanska last night in the fourth round.

Unfortunately, the reporting of Peer’s accomplishment in the Times threatened to incite an international food-incident, when reporter Karen Crouse referred to Peer being “as at home as pastrami between two slices of rye bread” amongst all the Israeli fans at Flushing Meadows.

As an article in New York Magazine correctly (if snarkily) noted, Katz’s Deli is not the official cuisine of the Jewish people - especially not Sabras!! Now, if she had written that Shahar had felt as at home as a fried chickpea surrounded by tahini sauce, well, it still would have been ridiculous, but at least more culinarily accurate.

Best of luck to Peer, and if she drinks enough Kaballah Energy Drink, I’m sure she’ll do great in her match against Anna Chakvetadze tomorrow.

There’s no question - the 2007 Farm Bill, which will be voted on by the Senate at the end of September - is serious stuff that will impact farmers and consumers alike. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be funny video about it where a do-gooding apple chases an mischevious snack cake around the city, right? Right?

Click here to watch the video.

In other weird news, PETA - the veggie sensationalists of the “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign - is at it again.  The New York Times reports in “Trying to Connect the Dinner Plate to Climate Change:

PETA is outfitting a Hummer with a driver in a chicken suit and a vinyl banner proclaiming meat as the top cause of global warming. It will send the vehicle to the start of the climate forum the White House is sponsoring in Washington on Sept. 27, “and to headquarters of environmental groups, if they don’t start shaping up,” Mr. Prescott warned.

I don’t really have the words for this - but something tells me this stunt won’t bring much credibility to PETA’s cause…

Read the article here.

Today’s New York Times included a great article by Joan Nathan: Of Church and Steak: Farming for the Soul.  Joan writes about the work being done across the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths to encourage sustainable agriculture, CSAs, responsible meat consumption and stewardship of the land within these faith communities. 

The article is a who’s who of the faith and farming world and includes a shout out to Hazon for the Tuv Ha’Aretz Community-Supported Agriculture program and also The Jew & The Carrot as the front page of the emerging Jewish food movement.  She writes:

“Environment-minded Jews are asking the leaders of Conservative Judaism to rewrite their kosher certification rules to incorporate ethical concerns about workers, animals and the land. Hazon, the Jewish environmental organization, has set up community-supported agriculture programs, or C.S.A.’s, in which customers purchase shares of a farm’s harvest….”

and later

Read more »

Well-seasoned foodies might find Sunday’s, NY Times article, In Pursuit of Farm Fresh Flavor, somewhat (excuse the pun) ”behind the times.”  The article’s basic theses were that local is the new organic, people like feeling connected to their food and farmer, and that those same people are hesitant to pay more for organic/local food.

Yep.  I’ve read that all before.  (I’ve even written that all before, as have many other food bloggers and writers.)

The article did, however, indirectly point out one interesting trend, which was summed up by Southampton resident, Sandra Fox’s comment: “If you live [in the Northeast] you know that the supermarket is for winter.” 

It seems that local food enthusiasts get more complacent about where their food comes from once the weather gets cold.  As the farmers markets close up shop and the CSA season ends, the overwhelming urge is to grit one’s teeth and return to the supermarket’s fluorescent haze and the waxy produce from far away lands. 

Read more »