Long before “green Shabbat” referred to stacking biodegradable dishes on the synagogue kiddush table, “Corned beef and Cabbage” became my family’s green Shabbat.

When 6th grade ended and my best friend, Shauna Ritchie, returned to Ireland with her family, I was devastated. The summer passed and middle school started. Life continued, but not without the distinct sense that something important was missing.

Mid-March arrived, and with Purim over and Pesach still in the future, my mother decided she needed an occasion in the interim to bring our family together. In honor of Shauna, my mom declared the arrival of “Corned Beef and Cabbage” Shabbat - a celebration which, not-coincidentally, coincided with the week of St. Patrick’s Day.

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We’ve now been in Vietnam for well over a week. And while I continue to be, well, pretty much disgusted by the way animals are treated (today we saw a common site here; two live pigs tied to the sides of a motorbike — photos will have to wait until I’m home), I am also partially awed by the Vietnamese willingness to see food as it really is before they eat it.

As I mentioned before, it is nearly impossible to keep kosher here, or for me to remain a vegetarian. I was doing a pretty good job of it so far, but this morning, when served noodles for breakfast with bits of pork in it, our guide reminded our host that I don’t eat meat. We were staying at Ba Be Lakes in a “home stay,” with a family that is incredibly poor, and makes extra money by taking in tourists. Food is plentiful, though, here, even with the poor. Anyhow, after the reminder, he promptly made me my own noodles — in a bowl of chicken broth.

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Dog. Cat. Porcupine. Deer.

The ‘Lonely Planet’ Guidebook describes the Vietnamese people as “fiercly omnivorous,” and I couldn’t think of a more apt description. We are not uploading photos so I can’t illustrate this post properly but today we took numerous photos of a skinned pig’s head, pig’s feet, live goats tied to a back of a motorbike, same with live chickens in a mesh cage, pigs tied in tortuous ways, the list goes on.

Greetings from Vietnam, the most unkosher place on the planet (kosher-keepers, never, ever come here, unless you plan on packing a month’s supply of canned tuna). Read more »

Thanks to Maria Russakoff for this guest post, originally printed in the Arizona Jewish Post.  It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything about Hazon’s Food Conference or the controversial goat schecting, but this piece is worth sharing. 

The handwritten sign over the shiny percolator reads: “Chai tea - made lovingly with raw goat and cow milk, brewster honey, sadeh hot peppers, blackstrap molasses, black tea and ginger.” I haven’t the faintest idea where brewster honey comes from or what makes hot peppers “sadeh,” but I know from the first sip that I have come to a place that will nurture my stomach, mind and soul for the next three days. I breathe a contented sigh of relief, happy to have made it in one piece from sunny Arizona to the Connecticut Berkshires in the dead of winter, happy to be back at the Hazon Jewish Food Conference in its second year.

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The Jew & The Carrot blogger, Jeff Yoskowitz, has been on hiatus from the blog for a little while - but he has a darn good excuse.  He is currently living on a kibbutz in Israel.  On the one hand, like many kibbutzim, internet access is spotty so posting frequently is a challenge.  But Jeff’s situation is a little different.  Jeff is currently researching the (painfully ironic) pork industry in Israel.  His kibbutz happens to house an industrial pork feed-lot, which means he’s spending most of his time hanging out with animals he’d never personally eat.

The little bit of time Jeff’s not researching pigs, he’s logging in his experience at his personal blog The Wet Sprocket.  And while we understand his need to prioritize his web time, his stories are just too interesting not to share.  To find out more about Jeff’s extraordinary daily experiences check out his blog, and read a few key (and quite graphic) excerpts below: 

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Thanks to Rhea Kennedy of the You are Delicious blog, for this guest post and two delicious recipes. 

As yet another plate of lamb careened toward the table, the scene at my boyfriend’s aunt and uncle’s Shanghainese house started to feel very familiar.  I’d already discovered that latke-like potato cakes are a staple street food in Shanghai.  Now, as my boyfriend’s aunt’s chopsticks moved from serving plate to individual bowls, clunking down pieces of meat in front of the people she’d decided should eat them, I realized that eating Chinese food on Christmas is not the only thing that bonds Jewish folks with our friends in the Far East.

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It’s winter in Vancouver — wet wet winter. Yet after just finishing a plateful of jerusalem artichokes, harvested this afternoon from my mom’s vegetable garden, sauteed with garlic from Stephen Gallagher (the amazing farmer who’s working with the Tuv Ha’Aretz site at Har El in North Vancouver) — I realized this isn’t the first meal I’ve had this winter where the food was fresh-picked.
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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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Last year, my freelancing musician boyfriend took a side gig teaching Hebrew school at a neighborhood synagogue on Sunday mornings.  Like, 8:00am on Sunday morning.  I understood his desire to teach and make some extra money, but it frustrated me to relinquish him to a bunch of strangers’ six-year olds during prime pancake and omelet hours.  (Especially since, in my new mostly Shabbat observant life, Saturday morning was also out). 

Luckily, all those early mornings paid off.  The synagogue changed its Hebrew school structure - he now teaches during the week, clearing up Sunday mornings for New York Times reading, bluegrass listening, and - of course - brunch.

This morning, we celebrated with coffee in the Turkish tea glasses he recently found on the street (ahhh, Brooklyn!) and french toast.  Made with leftover challah and organic free-range eggs, and topped with pears softened with agave nectar and ginger, it was french toast fit for The Jew & The Carrot.  Check out the recipe below the jump. 

Now that we have Sunday mornings free, we need more recipe ideas!  I’d love to hear some of your favorite healthy (or more indulgent) brunch meals…

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I grew up in a non-kosher home. My Bronx-born father was strongly Jewish, but an atheist, and my mom was raised Catholic from ages 2 to 6; her life was saved by her gentile nanny in Poland during the Holocaust, who raised her as her own daughter. Her favorite food during that period: bacon. And even when she reverted back to Judaism, she never lost her love of all things pork.

My grandparents on both sides didn’t keep kosher either. Nor did any of the Jewish families we knew, except maybe one or two. I grew up eating ham and cheese sandwiches, and thinking nothing of it. Except for one great aunt in New York who kept a strictly kosher home, but ate pork and shrimp every time we went out to dinner with her, I had very little exposure to it.

Looking back, I wouldn’t change that. I was one of two Jews in my high school, always feeling very much “the other.” If I would have had to decline eating at a friend’s house because of kashrut, I don’t know how I would have managed. It just would have been another reminder that I am more “other” than I like to think.

But despite the fact that kashrut is pretty much still a non-issue for me, the fact that I care so much about where my food comes from is making me feel more and more kosher all the time.

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Following the lead of such projects as Yale Sustainable Food Project and inspired in no small measure by the popularity of such books as Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, sustainable food has become an increasingly hot topic at college campuses around the country. Over this past summer and semester I have been involved in a collaborative project with two biology professors, Betsey Dyer and Deborah Cato, and over 30 First Year Seminar students to educate ourselves and the broader Wheaton College community about food and sustainability.

We concluded our semester earlier this month with a sustainable banquet using food which we ourselves harvested, got from local farmers’ markets, supplemented with Wise kosher organic chickens, and cooked - inspired by the “perfect meal” at the end of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which was the required summer reading for all first year Wheaton students. The students from my seminar, “The Rituals of Dinner,” having studied dinner rituals ranging from Plato’s Symposium to the Passover Seder, the meals in Genesis, Leviticus, and the Gospel of Luke to Babette’s Feast and Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, designed the ceremony for our sustainable harvest banquet. For me personally, it was a way in which my Jewish foodie and environmentalist commitments moved me into increasingly broader circles of connection with other people and with nature. The whole project was an intensely Jewish experience for me, even though I was doing it primarily in a non-Jewish context. The project itself was featured in the Winter 2008 edition of our alumnae/i magazine, the Wheaton Quarterly and you can read the full text of the article after the jump here: Read more »

12/10/07

The boots had been sitting in a bag for weeks. They’d been moved from front hall to bathroom to tub and outside as needed, and I didnt know what to do with them. I’d worn my galoshes when I’d gone to help slaughter 3 turkeys the Thursday before Thanksgiving at a farm in upstate NY. That powerful first for me went very calmly and cleanly and my boots remained unmarked. I was surprised, but pleasantly - I had worn the boots and my raincoat with the expectation that they would get covered in blood - ruined.  I wore them again that Monday when I went to help slaughter the 24 turkeys we (my ethical kosher meat venture, Kosher Conscience) would need for the holiday. I was out of my mind with details and satisfaction and fear, but also relieved that I’d had the warm up the week before so I knew what the process would look like, feel like. That day went very differently from everything I expected and my boots by days end had quite a bit of blood on them, as did my  clothes and my skin. My skin and my clothes needed to be washed, no question. If only for sanitary purposes if not for comfort as well. But the boots became less clear, for reasons I didn’t see coming.

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Below is the full text of Friday night’s keynote at The Hazon Food Conference.  The keynote was given by Nati Passow, co-founder of The Jewish Farm School.  It’s a long post, but definitely worth the read - even if you have to print it out (on recycled paper of course!) and take it home.

(Nati’s on the right, next to Simcha Schwartz.  Photo by Sabrina Malach.)

Hazon Food Conference
December 6-9, 2007
Keynote Address: Nati Passow 

Thank you Nigel. Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach. It is a great honor to be here with you all tonight. Nigel suggested that I begin by sharing my story with you, my connection and relationship to food, which I think is a great way to begin this talk, because one of the things I like most about food is that sitting down to a meal is a great excuse to spend time with friends and listen to each other’s stories. So here is a little bit of mine.

Seven years ago I took a Sabbatical. I left university for the year and traveled in Israel. I studied in yeshiva, toured the country and then settled into an apartment in Jerusalem. After having little success finding a job, I decided to enjoy my sabbatical for what it was time to just be present. This was when I discovered good coffee, which for any honorable coffee drinker is a moment you never forget. An older friend of mine sat me down and said that if I was going to drink coffee everyday, I should make it good. Buy whole beans, grind them myself and brew something delicious.

The coffee was my gateway drug to the world of slow food.

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This is the first of a series of updates from the Hazon Food Conference today through Sunday.

I spent much of tonight shivering.

Part of that has to do with being up in the Connecticut Berkshires, in December where 17 degrees is a normal morning temperature. But the shivering started in earnest when I walked into a conference session called, “Lifting the Cellophane Veil: Shecting a Goat.” The session was mandatory for anyone who is thinking about attending tomorrow morning’s schecting.

The Food Conference is, of course, not simply about the goat - we have four days crammed with sessions and a collection of 240 amazing people here at Isabella Freedman. But the schecting tomorrow will be - for me, and many participants - a once-in-a-lifetime and emotionally-charged event. The hope for tonight’s session was that, by introducing the key players (the goat farmer and caretaker, organizer, shochet,-ritual slaughterer, mashgiach-kashrut supervisor, and lead educator), the participants would be able to enter the space tomorrow morning aware of the process and feeling prepared (as much as possible anway).

I think the session served it’s purpose. The educator, Dr. Shamu Sadeh, and goat farmer, Aitan Mizrahi started off the conversation explaining the importance of getting a closer to our food choices - particularly where meat comes from, giving a history of the goats and explaining logistics. By the end of the night, about 70 of the 100-ish people in the room raised their hand to indicate they would wake up early tomorrow, get on a shuttle van, and weather the cold to witness the schecting.

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