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.
Read more »
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.
Read more »
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.
Read more »
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…
Read more »
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)
Read more »
Thanks to Rhea Kennedy of the You are Delicious blog, for this guest post.
When I was a kid, my parents gave me weird food for lunch and packed it in weird ways. God bless them, they sent me off into the world with chunks of tempeh, entire raw portabellas, dark whole-grain bread with thick pieces of cheese inside. These treats were invariably wrapped in waxed paper, which my mother had deemed better for you than plastic baggies or packaging from a factory. As soon as I was old enough to notice this was different from the other kids’ cold cut sandwiches in neat Ziploc bags and individually-wrapped string cheeses, I became mortified.
Around the same time, I started attending Hebrew school in the evenings – something I approached mostly with dedication, although I occasionally dragged my feet about going. After all, it wasn’t the Christian kids’ religion class (which we all just referred to as Religion) that got them out of school early once a week. To me, those who went to Religion sat in the soft cloak of normalcy—and I didn’t.
Fast forward a few years. I now follow Jewish tradition with pleasure and am a zealous whole foods foodie. Although eating and religious study practices may be hard to take for an image-conscious little kid, I now understand eating whole foods, keeping kosher, saying brachot and other thoughtful ways of approaching food are central to my life. Indeed, I’d argue that observing these traditions - in combination - is rather revolutionary.
Read more »
Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right - you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.
Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto
has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma
as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.
Like any effective leader - Martin Luther King included - he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think - or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?
Read more »
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 »
SEDER: NYC
Tuesday, January 22, 7:00 pm
Join Hazon for our 6th annual Tu B’Shevat seder. Learn, be inspired, eat a delicious dinner and organic fruits and nuts, and drink four cups of wine as we celebrate the holiday of the trees. Examine how food connects us to Jewish tradition, to the Earth, to other people, and to ourselves. With special guest teacher Dr. Eilon Schwartz of the Heschel Center in Israel.
The seder sells out every year - so register today! Cost is $30. Registration required: www.jccmanhattan.org or 646 505 5708
Questions? Leah Koenig | 212 644 2332 | leah@hazon.org
SEDER: BAY AREA
Tuesday, January 22, 7:00pm
New Year. New Vision. Emerge from your winter sleep and start a new cycle as we celebrate Tu Bishvat, the Jewish New Year for the Trees. Join Tuv Ha’Aretz Berkeley, Eco-Jews By The Bay, Congregation Emanu-El and a host of other great organizations as they reinterpret this mystical ritual and raise consciousness with an eco-friendly, eco-kosher seder.
Cost is $10 advance and $12 at the door. Register here.
Questions? Jeff Levy jeff.levy@aegonusa.com | Adina Allen at adina.allen@gmail.com
OTHER SEDERS?
If you know of other great Tu Bishvat happenings across the country, share the details below. And if you’re planning your own seder and need ideas, check out The Jew & The Carrot’s Healthy and Sustainable Tu B’shevat Resources.
“You can trace the recent history of Tu B’shevat seders like branches on a tree.” - Nigel Savage, Jerusalem Post, 2004
The Jew & The Carrot Presents: Healthy, Sustainable Tu B’shevat Resources
Click here to peruse The Jew & The Carrot’s Tu B’shevat Resource List, for helpful tips and ideas to create your own Tu B’shevat seder, or celebrate the holiday of the trees in sustainable style. If you have any ideas or tips you’ve picked up from a Tu B’shevat past, please share them below.
