Yesterday’s Dining Section featured a fascinating article about saving endangered species, by serving them for dinner.  The marketplace is a powerful conservation tool, the article argues - if it’s being sold in the market, it’s not extinct.

One of the most interesting parts of the article was the accompanying interactive map that broke the country down into regions, by species (i.e. food).  New York City falls into the Clambake Nation (not the Whitefish Nation?).  Personally, I bioregionally identify a bit further north and west in the Maple Syrup Nation…

Click here (or on the map above) to find out about your region.

I just came across the most amazing story of the Ba’al Shem Tov (the charismatic founder of Chasidic judaism), which has been retold at a special festive meal at the end of Pesach for over 250 years!

The basic story is that the Ba’al Shem Tov is repeatedly thwarted in his attempts to sail to the land of Israel. Along the way, he is stranded on an island, attacked by pirates, and invents both the alphabet and matzah ball soup. OK, so I’m extrapolating a little bit with that last part, but even so, I would easily pay $10 to see Johnny Depp in this story at the local cinemaplex.

What’s most interesting to me as a Jewish food blogger is that this story, as shared by a poster on jewschool, is always accompanied by a meal featuring 31 matzah balls. Maybe it should be included as an addition to the Baskin (Robbins) haggadah?

Speaking of Jews and 31 flavors, today is Ben & Jerry’s annual free ice cream cone day! Ironically, even though these two boys met in gym class in Merrick, (pretty close to my congregation), there’s barely any scoop shops left on all of Long Island. I wonder if I would be attacked by pirates if I attempted an hour-long pilgrimage to the closest scoop shop…

Thanks to Liore Milgorm-Elcott at COEJL’s blog, To Till & To Tend for this guest post.

Last night I stayed up much past my goal bedtime because I was gardening. You may be asking yourself: “who gardens at midnight?” The simple answer which, admittedly, leads to more questions is: someone who lives in a 3rd floor NYC apartment. How does one garden in a NYC studio apartment? Instead of a shovel I use a large spoon, instead of lush gardens that flow into each other I have potted plants (in pots beautifully and lovingly made by my father), instead of a compost pile I have a mini bag of soil…. I think you get the point.

So there I was, past midnight, my fingers deep in soil and dirt all over the floor; throughout, an incredibly satisfied smile was planted on my face (sorry that I don’t have a picture for you).

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x-posted at Lilith

Amy Ephron at The Huffington Post has a theory: “In order to be First Lady you have to have a cookie recipe.” Ephron’s tone is (of course) tongue-in-cheek as she describes Martha Washington’s “jumbles,” (a pretzel/biscuit hybrid) Jackie Kennedy’s peanut brittle, and Nancy Reagan’s coconut macaroons. Still, she brings up several serious questions.

If Hillary Clinton gets elected President, what sort of “cookies” would Bill be required to make? In other words, how would a woman’s presidency change the traditional roles of first spouse? And, more importantly, how would it change the presidency itself?

What sort of expectations of traditional “feminine/motherly” conduct would be foisted on Clinton in the White House? How would she balance her necessary role as Commander-in-Chief with these expectations (or would she)? Would she be pressured - like former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was - to serve a literal “steaming pot of tea and [homemade] cookies” to diplomats?

The answers to these questions remain to be seen - but if Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania has anything to do with it, Bill had better start perfecting his baking technique.

Golda Meir’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here
Hillary Clinton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe here.

Yes, folks, it’s serious. So serious that the Bay Area’s matzo shortage has made front page news. The woman behind me at Berkeley Bowl this morning was forced to buy a box of Sun-Dried Tomato Matzo. Who even knew they made such a thing? She said that since it wasn’t for seder, it was fine to use the rest of the week. Whatever. Call me a purist. I never got used to the idea of sun-dried tomato bagels, either. Just the idea of flavored matzo (besides chocolate-covered, mind you) gave me the willies, even though it might not be half bad. When I was buying my five-pounder two or so weeks ago, the guy behind me said “That’s a lot of crackers.” But after our family seder and traditional post-seder matzo brei brunch, I think I’ll have just enough to last me through the week. Phew.

This past weekend, our synagogue hosted a “Pesach University”: A community-wide day of Passover workshops, on everything from the anthropological roots of the seder, to how to “green” your Pesach.

But the true highlight of the event was a live Passover cooking demonstration by none other than Ellie Krieger - an adjunct professor in the New York University Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health, and star of the Food Network’s hit show, Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger. (She also happens to be the sister of one of our Tuv Ha’aretz CSA’s core group members, and a genuinely warm and funny person to boot.)

In honor of the occasion, Ellie chose to focus on two themes of the seder: dipping, and the tension between bitter and sweet in the story, and the food that accompanies it. Ellie made two delicious recipes, adapted from her new cookbook The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life, which she has graciously allowed me to share, after the jump: Read more »

A few weeks ago, I wondered if biofuels were actually the green mitzvah they were touted to be — an ethical alternative to greenhouse gas-belching fossil fuels — or if they were a mitzvah ha’ba b’aveirah, a “mitzvah” coming out of a sin, the sin of unchecked environmental havoc due to biofuels’ “non-toxic” by-products.

The new waves of global food riots, though, have made me much more concerned, and much more wary of entrenching myself in the pro-biofuel camp.

The 2007 “tortilla riots” in Mexico, where some 75,000 Mexicans protested the rising cost of tortillas in Mexico City, followed an astronomical increase in the price of corn — some 400% in a three month span. The cause for the price hike lay north of the border, farmers planting “industrial corn” to be processed into ethanol, replacing the lower-priced food staple relied upon by millions of Mexicans.

Cooking oil is also turning into the world’s “other” oil problem. In Mumbai, India, residents are forced “to ration every drop” of cooking oil, with the price of palm oil having risen 70 percent in the past year. One store in Chongqing, China saw three people killed in a stampede when it offered a “limited promotion” on cooking oil. Half of the increase in worldwide demand for vegetable oils, the New York Times says, is because of biofuel demand.
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j. Weekly, the Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, features Hazon’s own Zelig Golden and Emily Freed in its cover story about young Jewish environmentalists.

Golden is an alumni of the Adamah program and serving as co-chair for Hazon’s Food Conference in 2008. (According to the article, he also makes a mean pickle martini — okay, I confess, I was the one who told that to the reporter, after Zelig made me one at my birthday Shabbos dinner earlier this year). Freed (whom, the article says, had her first candy bar at the age of 12!) is on the executive committee of the 2008 food conference, working to obtain food from local farms. And Jon Rosenfield, who is also featured in the article, will no doubt be at the Food Conference, we just don’t know what he’ll be doing yet.

You can read the full article here.

This month is New Voices magazine’s Radio Issue. (Check below for free subscription info.) In the “Best Jewish Podcasts” article is an amazing little bubbe who’s grandson podcasts her cooking to the world…just adorable…

Bubbe, of Feed Me Bubbe

In a shining example of nerddom gone right, sweet grandson Avram hosts a brilliant and wholesome series on his bubbe’s cooking. An irregularly published video podcast, the show features the charming and hilarious Bubbe making classic Ashkenazi comfort food: kasha varnishkes, borsht, tzimmes, kugel, and the rest. The recipes are simple to follow. There is also a Yiddish word of the day, spoken in Bubbe’s Boston accent.

“If I can be everybody’s bubbe, that’s wonderful,” says Bubbe.

Whether you grew up eating handmade matzoh balls at your own bubbe’s table or you’ve only heard tales from your Ashkenazi friends, Feed Me Bubbe is a funny, charming, and surprisingly well-made video podcast that might just inspire you to cook your own shabbes meal. Or to at least call your grandma.

Subscribe to Feed Me Bubbe at www.FeedMeBubbe.com or on iTunes.

New Voices magazine is the only independent Jewish student magazine written by and for Jewish college students. Subscribe yourself or your college-aged kinderlach for free by emailing here with as many full names and addresses as you want. And like I said, it’s free.

I just had one of the most revelatory food experiences of my life, and I didn’t even eat a single bite. Read on if you’d like to see how the Broadway musical South Pacific might inspire your Passover Seder this year. Read more »

Even though my school was eliminated from the NCAA Men’s basketball tournament in the second round, I’ve still got a slight case of bracket-fever. Taking a little inspiration from this book, I decided to try my hand at creating a Jewish food tournament. I created four Jewish food “regions” (beverages/desserts, shabbat/holidays, ashkenazi, and Israeli/sephardic) and ranked eight corresponding Jewish foods 1-8 in each region. Then I seeded them in the tournament, which I plan to play out in the next few weeks leading up to Pesach. Since I decided to go with a 32 “team” format instead of 64, there were necessarily some tough choices that had to be made (no apples & honey; only a generic “kugel” instead of a spot for both potato and noodle, etc.). 

You can see the results here, and even make your own predictions. I’ll be “playing out” this battle of the Jewish food all-stars over the next few weeks, so it’s not to late to get that office pool started! Feel free to post any thoughts, suggestions, predictions (and of course, complaints) in the comments here. I’ll be sure to keep them in mind for the 2009 tourney.

Are Passover snacks the new bees? Chametz-free noshes seem to be disappearing everywhere without a trace. First, TamTams disappear from the shelves, and now, the NYTimes reports about a historic New York social club that recently lost its source for the perfect macaroon.

It seems that the bakery which supplied the Century club with macaroons for over half a century has gone out of business, and this article describes the remarkable search by its members for a suitable replacement. I have to say, even as someone who disdainfully associates macaroons with those awful, sticky, cloying, calorie-laden chunks that come in the vacuum-sealed can, I can’t help but admire the passion and discernment by which Century Club members are conducting their search. Here’s how they lovingly describe the perfect macaroon:

“They had just the right amount of texture. They weren’t too crispy. They weren’t too gooey. You know, they didn’t flake or break. They kind of pulled apart. I would say they sort of had a nice elasticity. They displayed a particular combination of crustiness and tensile strength.”

Mmmm…tensile strength. Good luck with that. So much for Macaroons. The cheese(cake) half of this post is after the jump… Read more »

I admit it - I live in a bubble. A tiny, insulated bubble within which everyone cares about eating ethically, and while some people eat meat and some don’t, just about everyone can agree about the merits of garlic-sauteed kale. Inside my cozy world, I forget that a whole other world exists out there - but this week, my trip over to Midtown Lunch reminded me.

Midtown Lunch - an entertaining (and eminently useful!) blog that seeks out the dining gems within the culinary wasteland that is Midtown Manhattan - profiles a different Midtown employee each week. It asks them questions like, “favorite/least favorite foods,” and “if you could work anywhere in New York (just because of lunch) where would it be and why?” This past week I was profiled. I was pleased to have the opportunity to give shout outs to Hazon and The Jew & The Carrot and excited to share my dietary habits with a bunch of related strangers.

Turns out, Midtown is not the most veggie or kosher friendly place on earth. Here’s a smattering of the comments my vegetarian and kosher focused profile received:

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“Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.” - Anthony Bourdain, “Kitchen Confidential,” p. 70

Tell us how you really feel, Anthony!

Of course, vegetarians and vegan chefs were not about to take this crude, carnivorous cri de coeur lying down, and thus was born Hezbollah Tofu, a blog where vegan chefs are systematically veganizing chef Bourdain’s most celebrated recipes. They plan on selling the resulting compilation, and donating the proceeds to vegan causes (farm sanctuaries, public education, etc) in Bordain’s name. Take that, Anthony!

This topic brings up a whole host of questions for me, as a Jew and as a self-professed foodie who also strives to eat sustainably (although not regularly animal-product free):

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