(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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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.
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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?
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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 »
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.
There are a lot of opportunities to win things around here at The Jew & The Carrot. In this case, you can win a print of the stunning photo above, taken by Karl Schatz.
Karl is one half of the husband and wife duo who, along with his wife Margaret Hathaway, left New York City to embark on a cross-country research adventure on sustainable living and goat farming, and wrote a book about it called The Year of the Goat.
Karl kindly donated this beautiful print to be raffled off - the very print that will be sent (framed) to a lucky winner.
Simply purchase a $5 raffle ticket (or two, or seven!) to be entered in the raffle for Karl’s photo. All proceeds go to Hazon, and the winner will be announced on January 8th, 2007 at Hazon’s New York Ride Launch Party.
Buy your ticket here.
Read the exclusive interview with Karl and Margaret here.
purchase a copy of The Year of the Goat 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.
Just one short day after Blog Action Day, is World Food Day, an annual celebration of The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The theme this year (and shouldn’t it really be every year?) is The Right to Food.
I was struck by how the FAO’s framing of The Right to Food feels so akin to the Jewish obligation of tzedakah, which is often translated incompletely as “charity,” but actually comes from the root meaning “justice:”
“The Right to Food is the right of every person to have regular access to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and culturally acceptable food for an active, healthy life. It is the right to feed oneself in dignity, rather than the right to be fed. With more than 850 million people still deprived of enough food, the Right to Food is not just economically, morally and politically imperative - it is also a legal obligation.”
In celebration of World Food Day, here are four resources for you to check out - an inspiring article by food activists, Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappe, and three Jewish organizations that are working towards food justice.
“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.
Leadership of the JCPA (Jewish Council for Public Affairs) will be participating in the now-famous Food Stamp Challenge during the Days of Awe period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Sept. 14th-21st).
Executive Director Rabbi Steve Gutow and JCPA Chair Lois Frank will stick to the $1 per meal or $21/week budget of an average food stamp recipient, as part of the organization’s new Anti-Poverty Campaign, to highlight the connections between Jewish teachings surrounding poverty and the current Food Stamp reauthorization component of the Farm Bill.
JCRC leadership and Jewish communities around the country are being encouraged to also ”Take the Challenge,” coinciding with the Locavores’ September Local Food Challenge. Do any of us dare to take the double challenge? I think this would result in nearly an 11-day long Yom Kippur fast, or perhaps subsistance only on apples, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and the remains of nectarines and melon.
Ideally, an organized Jewish participation in the Food Stamp Challenge, including Rabbis and other national Jewish leaders, could have an impact on federal legislation, if it is publicized appropriately for advocacy. Hopefully, continued action surrounding Food Stamps will have an impact on the Farm Bill, which has yet to pass out of the Senate Agriculture Committee (expected in mid-October).
Get out your sustainable, local, affordable healthy food calendars, folks….
Because Farm Aid has released its lineup of HOMEGROWN Happenings surrounding Sun Sept 9th’s Farm Aid Concert on Randall’s Island in NY. The events, in partnership with many other local food and agriculture organizations, include a festival at Union Square from 10-4 on Sept 8th, and a week of farmfresh menu options at several NYC restaurants.
While the Farm Aid concert, for which tickets are still available, is the real peak of the homegrown happenings, don’t think it’s all over when the leaves drop from the trees- the festival will be culmniating with the theatrical debut of KING CORN, an amazing documentary about two twenty-somethings from Boston who decide to drive to Iowa and grow 1 acre of corn for 1 year, looking at the complexities of our food system in a nuanced and witty manner all the while their crop is growing. The film screening opens at Cinema Village on October 7 and runs for nearly 2 months.
Full Farm Aid NYC Calendar available here.
On the Friday night of last year’s Hazon Food Conference I said, “put your hands up if you eat meat - but would not do so if you had to kill it yourself.” And a good number of hands went up.
Then I said: “put your hands up if you’re vegetarian - but you would eat meat if you killed it yourself.” And a different group of hands went up. And after a brief pause, everyone laughed.
They laughed because the two responses revealed what a self-selected group we were - and how fascinating our different distinctions. The first group were essentially saying, “I do like eating meat - but I know the process of killing it is awful - it’s actually so awful that if I had to kill it myself, I just wouldn’t eat meat.”
The second group were essentially saying “I’m vegetarian because I hate everything about how animals are raised and killed in our industrial food economy. But if I actually took responsibility for killing an animal myself, I would feel I was acting with integrity, and in accordance with my beliefs - and therefore, in that instance, I potentially would eat meat.”
And my response, when the laughter died down, was to say “Great: next year we’re going to shecht (slaughter according to kosher law) an animal here at the Food Conference..”
And people went: “Oooohhhhhh..”
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