This is a tale of two cities, each with a venerable Jewish culinary legacy that claims boasting rights to the world’s best bagel. Until now, these parallel universes have existed at a safe distance. But Mile End – a new Quebecois-style restaurant opening next month in Brooklyn - will bring the long-standing New York/Montreal bagel standoff to a head. In preparation, I consulted the experts about which “roll with a hole” steals their hearts, and their stomachs.

Read what they said below – and for more on Mile End, check out my article in Edible Brooklyn.

Today’s New York Times features several letters to the editor in response to “Experts Worry About Feeding the World as Its Population Grows,” an article published on October 22. The letter writers call attention to several issues: the political realities that perpetuate global food insecurity; the relationship between access to contraception and reduced food demand; and a desire for integrated farming strategies that combine conventional farming practices with agro-ecological approaches. What the letters do not include, however, are examples of grassroots organizations that are implementing many of the creative solutions the authors are seeking.

An August garden is pregnant with expectations.

The garden I share with my friends, Karen and Kate, has a tomato jungle. The three plants have over run three concentric layers of “cages.” They’re now trying to colonize the carrots.

Unrelenting weeks of sun and heat have battered our 10 by 14 foot plot in Karen’s backyard. LA’s water rationing has taken its toll as well. No matter. The tomatoes seem to ripen from pearl green to bloody red as you watch.

Cross-posted at davka.org

Tiny Vial of Pharisäer

What do you put in your coffee?

Pharisees of course

Ever-sensitive to appearances of Jewish references in popular culture, I was a bit surprised to read Maureen Dowd’s headline in the New York Times on Sunday, July 19, 2009: “Pharisees on the Potomac”

I did not see any mention of late antiquity in her column and it was not until a number of hours later that I realized she had used the Christian allusion to Pharisees as hypocrites! Shame on her and shame on her editors (I wonder if William Safire saw the column). As the Wikipedia makes quite clear:

Thanks Nina for posting the trailor of Food, Inc. last month and for folk’s comments.

I recently had the fortune to join a group of community members from Boston’s Moishe/Kavod House Food Justice Campaign for a screening of the film. Here’s my review of the film–the good, the bad, and the ugly:

• I was first struck that the film would make an excellent education tool for students in grades 5-12 and beyond. Robert Kenner divides the film into chapters that do a nice job framing and connecting the dots on the key industries in our current food system–livestock issues, genetically modified organisms (GMO), the hidden costs of food and the ubiquity of corn. Showing this in health, science, political science or other classes would be a great way to provide students with a primer on where food comes from as well as a powerful, if at times graphic, illustration of what’s wrong with it.

While most of us in the Northeast who are plugged in to local agriculture are reveling in our early CSA bounty, many of the producers of this bounty are worrying about the future of this year’s crop.

Laura, a friend in Cambridge, MA, who is a participant in this summer’s Adamah Fellowship in Falls Village, CT, writes on her blog that the Adamah CSA, which delivered its first share this week, is in danger of losing its crop due to the high volume of rain received by the Northeast US in the past few weeks. This amount of rain, combined with the fact that the rain is predicted to continue for several more days at least, and the fact that the farm is located next to a river, mean that it could cost them the viability of many crops, especially so early in the season.

While reading Eli Margulies’ recent recipe for poached pears using apple juice, I was reminded of my favourite apple juices. For our readers in England, this is a reminder of two delicious products they may already know about. And for our other readers, here is something you’ve probably never heard of, let alone even tasted. These juices are something I always look forward to drinking whenever I visit the UK. Even if they were exported (and I’m not sure they are: the food miles would be fearsome and the quality might suffer significantly!) there’s something about English apples that always makes me delighted to come back to the UK. So first, here are some thoughts on apples in general, in the US and the UK; for the juice recommendations, you’ll have to read to the end.

Everything comes together at this time of year. We meaningfully commemorate the Exodus, dutifully begin to count the Omer and then the darkness of Yom HaShaoh slaps us in the face. And after that, this year, the next day is Earth Day. Given the state of the economy and the recent warning by the EPA that carbon dioxide emissions endanger human health, my family and I were tired of abstraction. I wanted to look these holidays in the eye, here and now. This is the story of how a Pesach in the desert inspired us to plant an indoor organic vegetable garden in our NYC apartment.

Eat The View‘s white house garden broke ground a couple of weeks back, and it’s by no means the only government lawn to go over to edibles. The City Hall in Baltimore, Maryland will give over everything but the tulips to a wide variety of vegetables, including two plots meant to demonstrate backyard growing to feed a family of four. Volunteers will hang around the gardens at lunch time to answer questions about gardening and the chef at a nearby soup kitchen is ecstatic at the prospect of thousands of dollars worth of produce in her kitchen from City Hall’s dirt.

Baltimore insists that it isn’t copying the fed. The article linked above quotes the city’s Mayor Dixon saying, “This was being planned before the White House…We are not copying!” But others are unabashedly hopping on the demonstration garden bandwagon. Among the confirmed government

As an exhibitionist ex-academic, I was delighted to participate on a Public Humanities panel on Food and Sustainability at Portland State University last week. The panelists were asked to keep their presentations short (6-8 minutes) so that there would be ample time to for the audience to participate in conversation.

Contrary to all ethnic stereotypes, I actually obeyed the short presentation format better than the other panelists. Here’s an even briefer recap of my brief comments . . . and an invitation to extend the conversation here.

Thank you! Was it you who tipped off the organizers of the 2^nd annual Philly Beer Week that they should have it on Purim? What a great idea to have such a dynamic festival in Philadelphia, possibly reminiscent of many a Persian banquet of yore, at this exact time of year. Well whoever it was that pulled off this heist must be from Philly but for those of you peons who don’t know… Philly is quite the beer town. It is worth a look see and a draft.

From March 6 through the 15^th the City of Brotherly Love is expecting around 30,000 revelers to participate in over 670 events in the general area. The events range from numerous “meet the brewer” opportunities to tastings, classes, beer bus tours, and beer brunches, dinners and lunches. But that’s not all, move over Hazon, the organizers have even planned a 60-mile brewery bike ride where riders get to dismount at breweries, have a drink and then ride at a leisurely pace before dismounting at the next joint. Now how does that compare to your last ride?

My father’s all-purpose costume for Halloween and Purim turned him into a five-foot-eight sunflower, a three part transformation that made an American Jew into an American seed into a symbol of Jewish passing in ancient Persia.

Essentially, he would put on a green turtleneck and his green courduroy pants, dot his face with my mother’s eyebrow pencil and strap on the piece-de-resistance, a coronet of petals cut from yellow construction paper and tied with a ribbon. Thus attired, he and five to eight additional Budabin McQuowns (there were really a lot of kids in my family) would venture off to synagogue for the annual Purim party. I can’t remember everyone else’s costumes, but I was mostly Hamman, my brother Nick was mostly Vashti, and my brother Mike was mostly Esther, or sometimes King Ahasuerus (when given the opportunity to cross-dress, my family never demures). My mother came at least once as “Barefoot and Pregnant” which was both a quick costume and a clever nod to the swarm she had in tow.

Here at Jcarrot there’s been plenty of talk of Adamah, whether about its pickles, its delivery truck that runs on used vegetable grease, or its role in the food conference.  

Now Adamah staff members, as well as summer and fall fellows, are keeping  a blog of their own to update about the Adamah experience.  Right now it’s especially interesting to learn how Northeast farmers spend their winter months. Watching their progress from now until the planting and growing season should be especially fascinating.   You may see some familiar faces from the Food Conference and recognize at least a few writers from Jcarrot.  

For all the pomp about the circumstances of cuts to spending in the Senate’s version of the stimulus bill, the Senate has actually included some better child nutrition provisions than the House.

Either way, there are significant differences in the child nutrition (and other nutrition-related) provisions in the House and Senate bills. FRAC has an overview of the differences between the two versions. As details are being ironed out as we read, call your Representative and Senators and let them know that these are both important safety net for the growing number of unemployed Americans, as well as some of most far-reaching ways that taxpayer dollars can be use- SNAP (formerly food stamps) generates $1.80 for every dollar spent.

Some key differences:

• School Food Service: Senate has $100 million for