After months of the largest religious party’s membership waffling on participation in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coaltion - on issues as divisive as partitioning Jerusalem and a ceasefire with Hamas - Olmert might find his coalition collapsing over an unexpected blindside: matzah.
As the Forward reports, a landmark ruling by the Israeli court system abrogated a law illegalizing the sale of leavened bread during Pesach (NY Times article from 2001 on the chametz police here). The ruling cited that restuarants and stores are private property and thus not violating any “public display” of bread.
But further, the judge ruled that “Hametz prohibitions as they are outlined in the Halacha,” are not relevant. The secular law only prevents the display of goods that look like bread, such as “bread, rolls and pitas.”
Needless to say, the ultra-Orthodox are pissed. Read more »
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 »
(x-posted at Lilith)
Today, I disagreed with Michael Pollan. (I know - I’m a little bit scared too.) According to an article in today’s NY Times, my favorite foodie believes that the rising price of commodity crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans is a good thing. The Times reports:
“[Pollan] likes the idea that some kinds of food will cost more, and here’s one reason why: As the price of fossil fuels and commodities like grain climb, nutritionally questionable, high-profit ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup will, too. As a result, Cokes are likely to get smaller and cost more. Then, the argument goes, fewer people will drink them.”
In other words, if the price of a Big Mac goes up high enough, then people will switch to purchasing vegetables at the farmers’ market. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am happy to be member of Pollan’s shul - I buy his argument that paying more for “good” food like free range eggs or organic milk is worthwhile, and that cheap foods are falsely cheap (though perhaps not for long).
But I think Pollan’s assertion that: A (foods made with commodity crops) + B (higher prices on those crops) = C (consumers purchasing more fruits and veggies from small farms) doesn’t necessarily hold up for the majority of the country’s eaters.
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One of the biggest criticisms of the organic, locavore, sustainable food etc. lifestyle is that it costs too damn much to be realistic. In other words, I may know that an organic red pepper is better for me and the world, but at $8/lb (versus $2/lb for the conventional pepper), I can’t always justify spending the extra money.
The problem is, the epicure in me gets a little twitchy if I don’t have a fairly regular influx of artisanal cheese or fresh, organic greens in the house. And these days my weekly feeding schedule includes Shabbat dinner and lunch, which, by way of being festive meals, deserve better-than-average food. So how do I satisfy my need for good food without breaking the bank?
Family lore tells me that my grandma Martha was able to stretch one chicken into a nourishing meal for six people, with leftovers. I unfortunately did not inherit this gift, but I have picked up some tricks for eating well on a budget without resorting to dumpster diving (don’t worry Mom, I’m over that phase), or existing on the starving artist fare of rice and beans, or - gasp - bologna and Wonder Bread.
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I never replied to the comments on an older thread from Bravo for liberated day school teacher: “Bacon’s delish” in January, but I intended to and it’s never too late to blog.
Isaac congratulated me but brought up that “Judaism is my religious field for reasons that transcend choice.” I disagree. Perhaps the odds are not in your favor that you’ll leave Jewish identity behind completely. It will surely leave an impression on your life permanently. But you can renegotiate its particulars anytime you want. Kashrut or no kashrut, the right is yours.
RivkaK was shocked that un-kosher friends pretend to be kosher for their parents, but perhaps this is food for thought for Isaac. Kashrut is often familial turf which, outside it’s religious value, endears or estranges some of us from home. I’ll get that in a moment.
It seems anarchist lawyer didn’t like what I said, challenging me by asking “Don’t you think we have an obligation to our forbears to respect the traditions of the past?”
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Last week, an alliance of consumer groups and environmental organizations in the UK called on Heinz to drop its bogus million-dollar advertising campaign that its soups contain: “ingredients that you would find at a Farmers’ Market.” It reminded me of a similar commercial I recently saw that advertised Campbell’s soup as made from “farm-grown” vegetables - something that sounded so delicious and wholesome that even my finely-tuned (read: cynical) advertising ear almost missed the deceit.
When it comes to attracting customers, some food companies will bend over backwards to connect their products to the current zeitgeist, even if the link is tenuous at best. Sustainweb reported:
“The mainstream food industry is keenly aware that descriptions such as ‘local’, ‘seasonal’ and ‘farmers’ market’ are attractive to consumers…disturbingly, our survey showed that such efforts are being hijacked. Big food companies and supermarkets have begun to abuse these valuable descriptions by applying them to products and practices that we believe do not deserve such ethical or environmental credentials.”
This news is not surprising: in-the-know food consumers already understand that a happy cow on a bottle of milk does not necessarily mean the milk is ethically-sourced. The remaining question is, when it comes to lying to customers - how far is too far? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue…
(x-posted at Lilith)
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately. In comparison to the stereotypical “I use my oven as an extra shoe closet” New Yorker, I’ve always cooked a lot for this city. But since I started freelance writing two days a week last summer, and especially since the New Year when I renewed my commitment to preparing my own meals, I’ve found myself spending much more time in the kitchen.
I’ve also discovered that there’s lots of time to think when one cooks - even if NPR is playing in the background. As I’ve tinkered with various types of cookies and tried out new recipes from my favorite Chanukah present, Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook
(thanks Mom!), I’ve started to wonder, “what makes food feel Jewish?”
Yes, there are the old standbys - Chicken soup with matzah balls, fresh challah, pastrami on rye. And then there are the mysterious, and often severely unappetizing foods that you find in the “kosher food” section at the supermarket - gefilte fish, pickles, Manischewitz, and Tam Tam crackers. Honestly, I can only imagine what folks who aren’t familiar with Jewish eating must think when they see a supermarket shelf of glass jars filled with gelatinous objects suspended in a bunch of different colored murky liquids.
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I’d like to put in a good word for the DIY folks. DIY (do-it-yourself) might simply conjure images of people who turn sweaters into skirts, make t-shirts, pave their patio with mosaics from old china, or make their own candy bars. But in fact, these people approach the world with the attitude that if the thing in question can be cooked, grown, built, or otherwise pulled off by themselves or a few of their friends, then it’s something they out to be involved in. I’m not sure whether Judaism is inherently DIY—but I do think there’s room for it.
The prevailing philosophy seems to be one of narrowing. Specialize in your field. Corner the market. Find the best possible place to grow blueberries then plant eight thousand acres of them. But actually that attitude is disempowering, because it implies there are so many thing that others can do better than me, I shouldn’t even bother (and, by extension, if there isn’t something I can do better than anyone else, what am I?)
So instead I’d like to suggest a philosophy of dabbling. Read more »
We’re all familiar with the saying, “you are what you eat.” But two recent articles got me thinking that perhaps this old adage would be better stated, “you are what you think you eat.”
The first is a unnecessarily hateful article called “Extreme Eating” by Joel Stein in this week’s Time magazine. Stein decides to stick it to the “luddite” locavores, by making a meal strictly with ingredients grown 3,000 miles from his Los Angeles home and purchased at Whole Foods. (He must mistakenly believe that locavores revere Whole Foods as some sort of local food Mecca.) Stein writes:
“I want the world to come to me, to see it shrink so small it fits on my plate. I want Maine lobster in broth flavored with Spanish saffron. I want Alaskan salmon, truffles from Europe, a bottle of Beaujolais, a damn pineapple. And I want them much more than I want that carrot you grew in your garden. Because I know you’re going to talk to me for 20 minutes about your carrot.”
I’m not about to fight to the death for locavores or stop supplementing my CSA share with the occasional avocado or grapefruit. And as I’ve said before, there’s bound to be some backlash against sustainable food this year. But Stein’s “distavore” meal is little more than a petulant and obvious attack on a movement that has caused a lot of people to consider more carefully the impact of their food choices.
In his article, Stein likens his meal to one fit for a “European king.” Well, he’s right. European kings were known for cutting off people’s heads to get what they wanted, and in a sense, that’s exactly what his meal (ahem, publicity stunt) accomplished. Read more »
Throw it all off. Flee the restrictions. Leave it all behind — bacon is tasty. Or so says the pseudonym “Sarah” in Time Out New York’s article No religion, who purports to be an Orthodox-raised day school teacher in Manhattan.
So one Saturday morning, I went to the Botanical Gardens with my sister who doesn’t keep Shabbes. It was a beautiful day in May. And I remember thinking, Wow, Saturday is another whole day! You don’t only have to go to shul or sleep late and stay at home—you can do other stuff! And that was a huge epiphany. I went to California that summer. And that summer, I had a nonkosher steak taco on the side of the highway.
That was different—I was very nervous, and I ordered very nervously. And I sat at this picnic table on the side of the highway, and the guy to my right was eating a steak taco, and the guy to my left was eating the same thing, and I thought, I am a person. I am a regular human being. I am no longer a “Jew.” And it was so liberating.
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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 »
*Thanks to Michael Croland of Heeb N’ Vegan for this guest post.
In 2007, we witnessed the very beginnings of a revolution in the way farmed animals are treated. Thanks to a series of major announcements this year, the cruel confinement typical of factory-farming is, in several cases, on its way out.
In January, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pig-meat producer, announced that it is phasing out gestation crates—which prevent pregnant sows from turning around—within 10 years. The announcement has already had a ripple effect in the pork industry, as Maple Leaf Foods (Canada’s leading pork producer) announced shortly afterward that it would phase out gestation crates and Cargill Foods said that it has stopped using gestation crates in half of its pig factory farms.
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This morning, The Jewish Vegetarians of North America put out a press release that condemns the goat schecting at Hazon’s food conference. As a Jew and a vegetarian, I support this statement. Or rather, I support the legitimate concern for animal welfare and environmental integrity at the foundation of the statement. Still, I think that unless the JVNA plans to condemn ALL the simchas, events, and conferences in the Jewish community that serve meat - then perhaps Hazon’s Food Conference is the one meat-serving conference they should endorse.
Like the majority of Jewish events, The Hazon Food Conference will not promote mindless or wasteful meat consumption, nor will it violate tsa’ar ba’alei chaim by promoting animal mistreatment. On the contrary, the schecting and consumption of the goats at the Food Conference will encourage participants to take responsibility for their food choices.
More importantly, the schecting will not happen in a vaccuum. It will be one of several sessions throughout the weekend that get participants thinking about meat consumption (ethical, kosher, industrial, abstinence from and otherwise). Regardless of whether or not participants attend the schecting or eat the goat meat, they will be surrounded by thoughtful conversations about JVNA’s central question, ”Should Jews be Vegetarians?” For some participants the answer will be no - but if JVNA is serious about the question, they ought to support the Food Conference’s serious engagement with it.
I’ve been a committed Jewish vegetarian for 8 years, but I realized a long while ago that the day I once hoped for (the one where all Jews renounce meat forever) was simply never going to come. And in the meantime, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure that the Jews who do decide to eat meat are doing it in a way that respects the land, the animal, and themselves.
Read the JVNA’s full Press Release below the jump.
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Organic. Pancakes. In a can.
End of civilization? Or dawn of a new era of enlightened convenience foods?
Discuss.
