Last January, Hazon began an organizational soul-search to explore how we could model our values by sourcing and serving healthy and sustainable food at our meetings and events. Our ultimate goals are lofty - we want to serve food that is:

• sustainable to the highest extent possible (local, organic, fair trade, etc.)
• healthy (nourishing, whole foods)
• kosher (accessible to all participants across the kosher spectrum)
• delicious!

In other words, we want to nix the obligatory bagel, cream cheese and unseasonal fruit platter (like the one we served at January’s board meeting) in favor of something that looked more like the menu we served at our April board meeting…

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Here are three not-to-miss Passover foodie events: a Slow Food Seder with Heeb Magazine, Seders in the Streets with the Shalom Center, and a matzah-making workshop at Bobolink Dairy.

Slow Food Seder. On the second night of Passover (April 20), locally-focused chefs Gayle Pirie and John Cook will prepare a special Slow Food Seder just for Heeb Magazine readers. The seder (held in San Francisco) will play upon traditional Passover dishes, and will be “kosher by slow food standards.”

Tickets are $75. Proceeds benefit the Chez Panisse Foundation and include a 4-issue subscription to Heeb. Reserve a spot soon as seating is limited.

More info and purchase tickets here.

Street Seders. The Shalom Center is calling on YOU to speak out against environmental degradation this Passover: “This year, Passover converges with Earth Day. And it does so at a time when the global climate crisis can no longer be ignored, calling for us to take bold action. Taking inspiration from “street theater,” we propose holding “street seders” during Passover to oppose the pharaohs in our own day. Find out more and plan your own seder, here.

Matzah-Making. On Sunday, April 13, Bobolink Dairy in New Jersey is hosting their annual matzah-making workshop. Kids and adults can make matzah the old-fashioned way with organically-grown winter wheat berries and rye. To make your own matzah that looks like it was “baked on a flat rock in the Sinai,” register here (it’s only $5!). And bring the whole mishpacha! Bobolink promises to make a special fuss for parties that include three or more generations.

Know about any other great Passover-food events? Let us know below.

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.

What do parsley, pickles, and charoseth have in common?  They constitute the exhaustive list of Jewish foods that fit neatly into a raw food diet.  The remaining arsenal of heavy, noodle-egg-and-shmaltz-filled dishes that dominate the world of traditional Jewish cuisine don’t exactly make the cut.

But now - proving that there is indeed an online community for every interest - there is a new Yahoo group for raw foodists who love Jewish food.  Members will swap Jewishly-inspired recipes created through vegan and raw techniques.  While I can see how borscht and hummus would be fairly straight forward to make raw, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my mind around an uncooked matzah ball…

Check out Jewish Raw Food here.

Photo credit: Judy Pokras “Raw Vegan Potato Latkes and Mock Sour Cream”

On Monday, Chef Gil Marks offered us a delicious array of recipes to fill your shalach manot basket with freshly-baked treats (hamentaschen, of course, but also baklava, almond horns, pecan tassies and even fortune cookies!) Now, he’s back with even more ways to surprise your friends on Purim with creative, DIY shalach manot.

Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning, Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food - Next week, Chef Marks will be back with a menu for a Purim Persian Feast!

Themed Gifts:
Besides giving baked goods and confections, theme baskets provide an outlet for your ingenuity.

Try an Italian motif with an assortment of pastas, homemade tomato sauce, pesto, balsamic vinegar, sun-dried tomatoes, salami, Italian bread or focaccia, biscotti, and a bottle of Italian wine.

For a sushi basket (most of these items can be found in health food stores) include some homemade sushi, short-grain rice, nori (seaweed sheets), rice vinegar, tamari, mirin (sweet rice wine), homemade pickled ginger, wasabi (Japanese horseradish), salmon caviar, dashi (soup stock), sake, and Japanese tea and enclose instructions on how to use everything.

For an English effect use scones, an assortment of marmalades or jams, Cheddar cheese, rice pudding, pound cake, shortbread cookies, English ales and beers, and an array of teas.

After you have gone to the trouble of making and/or purchasing special items for shalachmones, it seems only appropriate to put them into something special…

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This will be a great conference with lots of workshops, networking opportunities, and entertainment! I’ll be showcasing songs from my new CD ‘Eat Like A Rainbow’ (more about that in my next post). Lots of luminaries will be there, including some of our own readers! The 2008 program will focus on strengthening the resolve of children to eat nutritious, fresh foods by:

* connecting holistic food and nutrition messaging in our classrooms, cafeterias, after-school programs, homes, and neighborhoods;

* fostering relationships among school children and their communities that focus on food, cooking, and gardening;

* exploring the nuts and bolts of cross sector (i.e. health, education, foodservice, and agriculture) public and private collaborations; and

* promoting federal, state and local policies that strengthen economic and cultural bonds between local farms and schools, support the development of school gardens, and provide adequate funding for healthy, delicious school lunches for all students.

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Thanks to Chef Gil Marks for this wealth of resources and recipes that will brighten up your Shalach Manot basket. Chef Marks is the author of The James Beard Award-winning Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World, and the upcoming Encyclopedia of Jewish Food - Keep your eye out for more of his Purim ideas and recipes!

Sophisticated Shalach Manot - Recipes

The Megillah declared “… they should make them days of feasting and gladness, of sending portions (mi’sholach manot) one to another and gifts to the poor.” The obligation of shalachmones entails sending gifts of at least two ready-to-eat foods to at least two people. The most common Purim foods are sweets, a symbolic way to wish for a “good lot” or, in other words, a sweet future. It is for good reason that Moslems refer to Purim as Id-al-Sukkar (The Sugar Holiday).

Shalachmones has become a bit commercial lately, many baskets containing the same assortment of bags of snack foods, chemically-laden cakes and cookies, and candy bars. While store-bought foods certainly fulfill the letter of the law, they lack something in the spirit. Homemade goodies show special care and thought and they generally taste better. Granted, many people are simply too busy to prepare their own shalachmones, and they should not feel guilty. If you have the time and desire, prepare any or all of the following impressive treats:

Hamantaschen, Pecan Tassies, Individual Baklava, Leaf Cookies, Fortune Cookies, Flower Spritzes, Almonds Horns, Lemon Halos, Spice Sandwiches, Sarah Bernhardts, Chocolate Bells

Recipes below the jump and Purchase Gil’s cookbook, Olive Trees and Honey here.

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Celebrate Purim with The Jew & The Carrot’s:
Healthy, Sustainable Purim Resources.

Find tips and tricks on how to:

- Bake unique and healthy, homemade hamentashen
- Throw a Persian Purim banquet
- Pamper yourself like Queen Esther
- Make unforgettable shloach manot

Click here, to get your Purim celebration on - The Jew & The Carrot style.

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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It’s been about a year and a half since I hosted my first Shabbat dinner.  While I can’t remember exactly who came or what I served, I distinctly remember how freaked out I was about it!  Would there be enough food?  How could I possibly find time to cook - and bake challah! - for all those people, while getting my work done?  Would it be possible to accomodate my non-Jewish friends and help them feel comfortable around all the ritual-stuff?  How should I respond when people ask me if they can invite last-minute guests (which they invariably do)? 

Looking back, I now realize that Shabbat dinners kind of host themselves.  They take a bit of planning and forethought, but once you get the ball rolling, they somehow just kind of flow.  And miraculously, there always seems to be enough to eat and enough places to sit, despite the last minute add-ons.  Still, I wish I’d had Tamar Fox’s great Shabbat hosting guidelines back on that crazy Friday afternoon a year and a half ago - before I knew it was all going to be okay. 

Shabbat Made Easy Totally Manageable Read more »

Last summer, during the height of tomato season, The Jew & The Carrot blogger, Alix gave us this recipe for shakshuka.  Unless you live in Mexico, the tomatoes are nowhere near in season these days - but we can dream.  Thanks to the folks at Jewlicious for sharing their version of Shakshuka, from a bonafide Moroccan Mama.  We love the complete disregard for measurments and clear instructions this recipe has.  We also love the mere thought of perfect, ripe tomatoes - this receipe has us drooling for summer already…

Recipe for Jewlicious Shakshuka below the jump…

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To all the Hebrew-speaking foodies out there - here’s a challenge for you.  Hazon is working with Jewish day schools in New York to create Min Ha’Aretz (”from the land”) - a family education program.  In short, Min Ha’Aretz uses food and Jewish learning as focal points to create an innovative curriculum for day school students, a related beit-midrash (learning group) for their parents, and all-school activities (farm trips, cooking demos, nutrition classes etc.) where kids and parents have the opportunity to learn together.  The program aims to strengthen intra-family conversations about eating, Jewish tradition, and the world around us.

Here’s where you come in.  Our first partner schools have successfully launched Min Ha’Aretz - meanwhile, we’re always striving to improve the curriculum.  Since most day schools encourage their students to be bi-lingual, we are in the process of translating the curriculum’s lesson titles into Hebrew.  The thing is, we’re kinda stumped on a couple of them.

The question: how do you translate ”whole foods” (the concept, not the health food chain-store!) and “food miles” into Hebrew in a way that does justice to their nuanced meanings, while still making sense?  Any brilliant suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Find out more about Hazon’s Min Ha’Aretz day school curriculum here.

(Thanks to Jewlicious and  for the hat tip)

Last November, The Jew & The Carrot blogger Jeff reported on the newest treif sensation: Ham-flavored soda from the Jones Soda Co.  (It was part of the company’s Christmas soda line.)

Well, it seems the pork-infused drink thing is catching on.  Several different food bloggers out there have started making their own bacon vodkas - the most beautiful of which is featured at the Brownie Points blog .  For the record, the scariest looking bacon vodka I found is over at Si Blog.  Eegaads!  It looks like a science project gone terribly awry.

For those of you who dabble in things pork-related, I’d be curious to hear how this stuff tastes (though I don’t think it’s available on the market, so you’ll have to make it yourself).  Personally, I’m happy to stick with the homemade etrog vodka I recently tried at a Shabbat lunch.   

I’d love to hear other ideas about “Jewish foods” that could (or perhaps SHOULD) be infused into vodka.  Kosher dill vodka?  Hamentashen vodka?  The opportunities are endless…

Last night, some friends and I met for our somewhat bi-weekly, whenever-we-can-get-a-critical-mass-of-people-together wine club.

We gathered at a friend’s apartment to try out a variety of wines (each club member brings a bottle to share). The evening included a lot of sniffing deeply into wine glasses and swirling the juice of fermented grapes on our tongues to pick out the hidden flavors - a little raspberry or plum here, the scent of hot chocolate and smoke there. Along the way we nibbled on exotic snacks - spanish marcona almonds, a vegetable terrine, and baked camembert cheese with a balsamic reduction - and enjoyed feeling terribly sophisticated on otherwise ordinary Monday night.

The whole thing actually felt like a good Passover seder - it was relaxed and participatory, with people calling out interesting tidbits they found in the various “haggadot” we had available (Windows on the World Complete Wine Course and The Oxford Companion to Wine. And, of course, there were four - or maybe a few more - glasses of wine.

A few of the folks in our midst have some wine knowledge - I once worked on an organic vineyard, another couple has traveled in Europe’s wine regions, and a third - our resident expert - works as a sommelier at a kosher restaurant in Brooklyn. But as the hour turned late and the the last drops of deep red liquid pooled in the bottom of our glasses, I realized that it didn’t really matter. We were there to taste wine, sure - but really the whole “wine club” thing is just another excuse to get together and hang out. And I’ll happily raise a glass to that.

Start your Own Wine Night (below the jump)

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