Due to my son being an only child with little perspective on living with siblings- friendships, fights and loyalty, my husband and I adopted mans “best friend” with the hope it would become Jonah’s “little brother”. The big hope was that our gorgeous red and white cocker spaniel rescue dog was to would teach my son the responsibilities of caring for another dependent being. We had images of my son walking and feeding our new addition to the family.
What actually transpired was far from my vivid imagination. Flynn gravitated to me – I became his world and he, my shadow. Irrespective of my mood, Flynn was always happy to be with me and tail wagging to prove his point.

Being a rescue dog from an abusive environment, Flynn arrived at our home, skittish and fearful.  It was clear that my sweet Flynn with his honest spirit had been subject to tsa’ar ba’alei chayim : the infliction of unnecessary pain on animals.  Whenever I would offer my hand to pet him, his eyes would squint and his face would jerk, weary of a strike.

My Flynn with his expressive eyes, beckoned me to love, hug and protect him unconditionally. Flynn became my “baby”. Rather than Flynn becoming another sibling for my son, he became my toddler who needed all my attention and would reciprocate with loyalty, hugs and kisses.
Then it was almost two and a half years ago, that my husband and I were sitting around the Sabbath table with a roasted free-range chicken in front of us for dinner that I was struck with an epiphany. Looking at this headless chicken in its full form with the legs and everything intact, made me think of Flynn.

I asked myself, “How can I eat an animal and simultaneously live and love an animal?” I was definitely a product of our society, disassociating the head with the animal, not connected to a fellow mindful creature I was about to eat, but Flynn changed that all for me.

Before Flynn, I did not think too much about tsa’ar ba’alei chayim nor the innocent chicken living in cramped quarters, pumped up with hormones with the sole purpose to be my dinner.  It took Flynn’s gentle soul, my fellow companion to teach me that we are all connected to living creatures.

Suddenly eating this chicken became extremely unappetizing, and I just could not eat it.

My interspecies relationship with Flynn eventually raised my awareness that vegetarianism is life affirming. This was characterized by abstaining from all animal eating, embracing a vegetarian lifestyle related to gratitude for our animal kingdom, rather than entitlement and ownership.

Although I adopted Flynn from the harsh treatment of living with an abusive owner, Flynn in turn adopted me as well. He taught me that we are a part of nature rather than apart from nature. Flynn’s innocence and sweetness evoked a compassion for embracing cohabitation and respect for all animal life that I am grateful and has forever changed my life.

 I spent most of the day yesterday on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  Not literally.  I was reading Jane Ziegelman’s new book, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement.  I wanted to know what they ate in the days before Crisco, Cool Whip, corn syrup, and Cocoa Puffs. 

Besides the foods we commonly eat today, New Yorkers in the 1800’s ate buffalo, bear, venison, moose, mutton, otter, swan, grouse, and dozens of other species, both domestic and wild.  Organ meats included sweetbreads, hearts, livers, and kidneys.  Fish dealers offered eel, 15 types of bass, 6 types of flounder, and 17 types of perch.  Produce included purslane (I’m sure there is some growing in your backyard), salsify (a root vegetable), borage, burdock, beach plum, black currants, mulberries, nanny berries, black gumberries, and whortleberries.  Note the extraordinary variety in comparison to today’s offerings.

Breakfast often consisted of mutton chops, fish steaks, and porridge.  Oysters, whether raw or cooked, were abundant and extremely popular at all meals.  Herring was prepared in a myriad of ways, such as with sour cream and mayonnaise, pickled, fried in butter, smoked, rolled, stuffed with pickles, or as “chopped herring” salad.  I know this salad well because I used to help my Grandma Rosie make it. 

Grandma Rosie was born July 31, 1910, the fourth child in her family, and the first to be born in America.  Yesterday would have been her 100^th birthday.  Here’s her recipe:  Soak 12 pickled herrings overnight, drain, remove the skin and bones, and chop fine.  Add 2 cups cooked potatoes, 1 cup apples, and 2 hard-boiled eggs, all chopped.  Mince 2 medium onions, and add to salad.  Add 1 tablespoon each of oil and white vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste.  The book also called for 1 cup of beets and some capers, but I never saw Grandma Rosie put capers or beets in her “chopped herring.” 

Signature dishes on New York’s Lower East Side included hash, soups, and pies.  Pie was so popular that immigrants called Americans “pie-eaters.”  Mince pie, oyster pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, chicken pie, and “sweetbreads in pastry” were among the choices.  Leftover beef, mutton, pork and fish was frequently made into “hash,” and boardinghouse dwellers were called “hash-eaters.”  Soups were made from bones, root vegetables, turnips, potatoes, cabbage, and dried beans.  I learned an old Yiddish proverb:  “Poor people cook with a lot of water.”  In contrast, the American government chose from among pork and beans, beef hash, corned beef with cabbage and potatoes, pot roast, boiled mutton, and mince pie to feed to newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island. 

Smoked salmon is now considered a delicacy, but a century ago it was a food of necessity.  Without refrigeration, food was kept fresh and edible with four agents: heat, smoke, salt and acid.  Meats, fish and fowl were smoked, salted, or pickled.  Fruits and vegetables were pickled, jarred, or dried.  Corned beef, so named because of the large “corns” of salt used in its preparation, also belongs to the large family of preserved meats and fish. 

Here’s a recipe for turning cucumbers into dill pickles.  It’s very similar to the recipe Grandma Rosie gave me.  Pack 30 kirby cucumbers of approximately the same size into 1 large or 2 small jars, alternating the layers of cucumber with layers of dill (20 sprigs total).  Boil ½ cup kosher salt in 2 quarts water, and turn off the heat.  Add 2 tablespoons white vinegar, 4 cloves garlic, 1 dried red pepper, ¼ teaspoon mustard seed, 2 coin-sized slices of fresh horseradish, and 1 teaspoon of mixed pickling spice to the boiled liquid and pour over the cucumbers.  If necessary, add more salt water to completely immerse them.  Cover and keep in a cool place for a week.  If you like the cucumbers green, try one after 5 days. 

New York was famous for a squishy and gummy white bread called the “New York split loaf.”  In contrast, German immigrants made less expensive whole-grain rye and pumpernickel breads with dense, chewy textures and a sour, mildly nutty flavor.  These latter ones were the breads my family bought to slather with real or vegetarian chopped liver, depending on who was coming to visit.  Here’s Grandma Rosie’s recipe for vegetarian chopped liver:  Saute 3 chopped, medium onions in 3 tablespoons of oil until soft and golden.  Mash the contents of 1 large can of drained sweet peas, and add to the onions.  Add 1 ½ cups chopped walnuts and 2 chopped, hard-boiled eggs.  Chop by hand to desired consistency.  Season with salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper.

As Grandma Rosie said often, “Hearty appetite!”

A letter from CSA member Tara Broyhill

My kids and I had so much fun at Oxbow farm on Sunday I have to tell you about it. First off the farmer Adam is one of the most kind, generous and energetic people I know. I didn’t know him before introducing myself to him a couple of weeks ago at the Ballard farmer’s market, but now I feel like he’s a friend. After spending four hours at the farm learning about it from Adam, weeding the beets and cucumbers with Michele and my two sons, and eating produce right from the field – this is now my farm. I’m hooked.

It feels like the perfect place to be. It’s filled with love, friendship, respect for all life and natural beauty (not to mention really good food!). It was a mixture of hard work and calm relaxation that seemed just right. True, it was a beautiful day and that undoubtedly helped form my opinion, but that wasn’t all. It could have been a hot summer day spent weeding in a shadeless dirty field filled with bugs and sweat. It wasn’t.

My interview from earlier this month was featured on Our Hen House‘s podcast this weekend. We talked about Torah teachings about compassion for animals, how well Judaism and vegetarianism mesh together, kosher slaughter, the new Jewish food movement, and vegan versions of traditional Jewish foods.

To listen to the podcast, click here. My in-depth interview starts about a third of the way into the podcast. I encourage this blog’s readers to listen to the whole interview, but here’s an excerpt:

There is a lot of foundation for compassion for animals and vegetarianism and veganism in the Jewish faith. And I feel proud to be Jewish knowing that Judaism is one of the forebears of animal welfare in Western civilization.

And I feel that my views on whether you want to call it animal rights, animal welfare, animal protection, what have you, can really be summed up by a Jewish term, it’s in Hebrew, called tza’ar ba’alei chayim, which means unnecessary animal suffering. That is, we should prevent causing animals any unnecessary suffering.

How you interpret that could be deemed, on the one hand, as treating animals humanely with animal welfare and just trying to minimize their pain. Or it can be, in my case, saying that if we don’t need animals for meat or for other ways in which they are exploited, we’re better off without meat and without circuses and rodeos and leather and fur, etc. So if that kind of animal use is unnecessary and suffering is inherent in causing those products to be produced, then, in my mind, it’s tza’ar ba’alei chayim, or unnecessary animal suffering.

Ever since I read the New York Times article about the proliferation of food blogs, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about them. How did the number of foodies explode in what seems like all of a sudden?

I think back to when I was in college in the late nineties, a time when people weren’t yet using digital cameras or blogs, there was no social networking, and people were just starting to get into going online. So certainly people probably weren’t photographing every meal to post to the world; just food photographers would have done such a thing.

My own start as a foodie probably began back in college, when I was experimenting with vegetarianism and veganism, but I got into it for animal rights reasons, not necessarily for the love of food. As I learned more about where food comes from, I wanted to go straight to the source, and spent the summer after my�junior year of college working on an�organic farm. Not only did I love transplanting, weeding, working at�the farmers’ market, and harvesting (I was known as the fastest strawberry picker on the farm), but I loved eating meals with the farm owners. They always had fresh foods on the table -�hearty salads, berries, homemade pickles. Yes, this is where my “foodie-ism” probably began. The idea that one could eat year-round the fruits of one’s labor had a romantic and old-fashioned tone.

Then I read books – wonderful books – by the Nearings. If you don’t know who they were, check out some of my recommended reading. Maybe one day I’ll go into a full post about this homesteading couple who spent the latter parts of their lives living off their land.

And I taught kids about where their foods comes from, at Hawthorne Valley Farm, an organic and biodynamic�farm in Upstate New York.�I cooked with kids, taught them how to compost and garden, taught them to bake bread and churn butter. Another romantic and “back to the earth” kind of experience.

I wouldn’t trade these experiences for anything, and I feel like it was just the right process. Going from student and learner to teacher…once I gained the knowledge of growing food and healthy eating I was able to teach others how to do so. As long as foodies don’t become obsessed with food, I don’t have a problem with it. Actually, if it means the expansion of organics and local foods in America, then it’s for the better. It’s about time Americans wake up and realize they should be spending more money on good food for their health, the environment, their communities, and their livelihood.

What do you think: What’s with all the foodies?

And if you’re a foodie, when and how did you become one?

I come by my interests honestly.� I was reared in a home that still revolves around procuring the highest quality, freshest food.� Growing up on our parents� small New Jersey farm, I worked in the vegetable garden, my brother fed the steer and chickens, and my sister wondered what had gotten into all of us.� After college, I earned a Masters degree in environmental science and worked for an environmental consulting firm.� I spent 2 years in Israel, including 3 months on a kibbutz irrigation team in the Negev.� I entered medical school at Case Western Reserve in 1991.

I am married to Rabbi Eddie Sukol, and we have 3 children, the youngest in high school.� We keep a kosher home, and grow an herb garden by the kitchen door.� Two years ago, with the help of a friend,�we built a chicken coop, and then, last summer, eight beautiful laying hens came to live in it.� I�ve had a compost pile for 20 years, and�a small compost garden besides.��I am happy to report that�my daughter has expanded the garden considerably this year; the last of her extensive collection of seedlings are going into the ground today.��Finally, one of these days I�m hoping to salvage several antique quince bushes that are growing in the brush alongside our house.�

As a general internist, I�developed a specialty in the prevention and management of diabetes and obesity.� How bad is it?� If current trends continue, an appalling 30% of the children born in America in 2000 are predicted to become diabetic.� In other words, the typical American diet and lifestyle cause diabetes in 30% of the general population, and up to 50% of select subpopulations.� At work, I teach at-risk patients how to identify real food and craft meals that are healthy and satisfying.� �It�s not your problem,� I say, �it�s America�s problem, and we�re going to fix it together.��

Underlying my commonsense approach to life is a deeply held philosophy of connection.� Between living things and their environments, between one growing season and the next.� Compost becomes tomatoes becomes compost.� Children become parents become grand�parents.� The Japanese say that there is beauty in every stage of life, so I leave the dried flowers on orchids to witness the buds and blooms that follow.� There is no beginning and no end.� Everything is connected.� Learning to eat is learning to plant is learning to steward one�s environment is learning to make healthy choices is learning to nurture children is learning to learn again.�

I look forward to working together with my readers and the Jew and the Carrot to improve the quality of the food we eat.

Last week, I wrote about how I, dressed as “Chris P. Carrot,” had led the Veggie Pride Parade in New York City under my dual Jew-carrot identity. Now you can vote for a photo of Chris P. Carrot (with his “wife,” Penelo Pea Pod) from the event as the cutest photo in a PETA contest!

A post on PETA’s blog announced, “Calling all connoisseurs of cuteness: We need your help deciding which of the following pics from recent PETA demonstrations is the most aww-inspiring.” (Note: Although PETA owns the costume that I borrowed, the event was not a PETA demonstration.)

The other photos feature a little kid protesting against the cruelty of the dairy industry and someone in an elephant costume educating people about the abuse of elephants in circuses. Kids are formidable opponents in a cuteness competition, but I hope that I can count on The Jew & The Carrot readers to vote for the Jew and the carrot (i.e., me).

Yesterday, I embodied the dual identity of the Jew and the carrot once again to lead the third annual Veggie Pride Parade through the streets of Manhattan. Trailing a police escort and walking in front of hundreds of enthusiastic herbivores, I frequently shouted “Eat Your Veggies, Not Your Friends!” while dressed as Chris P. Carrot.

The event was organized by Pamela Rice, who frequently had control of a megaphone during the parade. While some of the cheers seemed corny (e.g, “Hey, ho, we’re so cool. Being veggie truly rules!”), she and other megaphone users tried to express a wide variety of reasons for embracing vegetarianism, including cruelty to animals, health, the environment, and many more. This should come as no surprise, as Rice is the author of 101 Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian. Her book helped inspire my 2007 “Counting the Omer” blog, which offered a different reason to go vegetarian for each of the 49 days of the sefirot. Considering that tonight marks the 49th day of the omer, it’s a good opportunity to take a look back at Counting the Omer.

Photo by Robyn Lazara

I eat in a pretty healthy manner. I cook most of my own meals, and even when I eat out or at other people’s homes I’m careful what and how much I eat. [I also keep kosher, so I guess by definition I think a lot about what I eat or don't eat, but it's rote by now--I've been doing it most of my life.]

Over the past few years, I’ve developed a host of food intolerances/allergies (still not sure which they are yet, still working on that part) and in addition to making sure I eat healthily, I also have to make sure I don’t eat things that make me sick.

I’ve gone through fits and spurts of eating organic, cage-free, preservative free, artificial flavors & ingredients free, home-grown…you get the idea. It’s not that I don’t care about environmental sustainability, or even the fact that organic, cage-free, or local produce is more expensive or not as accessible; honestly, for better or worse, it’s just not in my frame of reference. I buy things without thinking how far my bananas have traveled to get to me, or how the field workers who picked my grapes were treated.

Having food allergies has made me infinitely more mindful about what I’m putting in my body because of the ill effects certain things can have on me. But it has also made me think a lot more about food sustainability and food ethics in general, and how the choices I make about food impact others. Sure, I’m only one person, and what kind of environmental impact am I really having by buying bananas that have been shipped from Chile? What point does it make if I buy ethically raised meat? But if everyone thinks like that, then everyone is contributing to problems rather than helping to solve them.

At this point in my life (and budget), I can’t commit to completely changing the way I shop and eat; I know it wouldn’t stick. But I’m taking small steps to buy more local produce, ethically raised meat, and free trade items, and hope to incrementally adapt my habits in the long term.

Food allergies have made my life complicated, but they’ve also opened my eyes to how the choices I make about food can have a significant impact on more than just me. Silver lining, I guess?

Do you have food allergies or intolerances? How have they impacted your life?

Gluten or dairy free? Check out my food blog for some recipes!

Think of the last time you saw something that pissed you off enough to do something amazing about it. Maybe it was a long grocery line or a bumper sticker for the Tea Party, or maybe it takes a humanitarian crisis like Haiti to really get your adrenaline going.

For me, it was orange chicken.

A year ago, I found out that UC Berkeley’s first national fast food chain, a Panda Express, was slated to open its doors adjacent to the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. Like Slow Food in reaction to a McDonald’s next to the Spanish Steps in Rome, we rose to the occasion.

We dredged up some surprising details (all Panda’s menu items except steamed rice are over 50% fat; even their steamed veggies are cooked in meat) and drew hundreds of students to protest. We also gave the administration something they could say yes to: we raised over $100,000 for a student-run caf� and sustainability hub. The administration eventually rejected the chain, and the Berkeley Student Food Collective was born.

Now, this summer, the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFed)will train student leaders on campuses around Northern California to create local, organic, community-run cafes on their campuses. Imagine students hosting fermentation workshops and panels of local food movement leaders in the same space that they and their friends buy an affordable, organic salad and fair trade coffee for lunch (check out the lovely Sprouts Cafe in Vancouver or the raucous Maryland Food Collective).

CoFed is:

• A best-practices business plan to create a financially sustainable platform forfood movement organizing – a community-run cafe.
• A support network of food system stakeholders, thought-leaders and student activists dedicated to a more cooperative food system. CoFed is has formed alliances with these organizations: Slow Money, Slow Food on Campus, Real Food Challenge, FeelGood, Food Coop 500, California Students for Sustainability Coalition, The Food Alliance, United Farm Workers, Veritable Vegetable, The California Center for Cooperative Development, Hazon, Thanksgiving Coffee,
• An intensive, peer-based training: June 15-20th, CoFed will host an intensive boot camp in Northern California, bringing together students from all around the West Coast. Participants will be mentored by local farmers and chefs, create a plan for their campus food co-op, and build their project teams.

Why do we need student leadership?

During college, students are searching for powerful learning experiences and vibrant communities as well as cementing the habits and values that will guide them for their adult lives. By supporting real student leadership towards sustainability, universities can be centers for cultural change, allowing urgently needed systematic shifts to ripple out through newly trained leaders.

In the next two years, CoFed will create a network of self-sustaining hubs for, train hundreds of new leaders to advocate and organize towards, and allow thousands of students to participate in a just and sustainable food system.

It’s time to put cooperative communities right at the center of the struggle for fair and sustainable food. Our fight is greater than cleaning polluted water streams or mitigating climate change, our real challenge is to restructure the values that underpin our social, political and economic institutions – to move our culture’s (and our own, our friend’s and our government’s) focus from fast to slow, from markets to places, from commodities to people. To do this, we’re going to need a vision that includes everyone, we’re going to need to start training a lot of new leaders and we’re going to need a lot of well thought out plans.

Are you ready? CoFed is brand new and needs you! Email yoni@cofed.org to get involved or join the mailing list.