Just a little event notice:

Jewish Values and Environmental Responsibility: Israel’s Environmental Movement
With Dr. Eilon Schwartz, Executive Director of the
Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in Israel.

Wednesday, January 23, 7:30pm at a private residence on the Upper West Side (RSVP for address).

The Heschel Center is one of Israel’s institutions helping create “agriculture which grows healthy food for all citizens while enhancing land and water quality.” Full info below the fold or RSVP here.

Read more »

I still remember the first time my suburban food-bubble was burst, when I realized the implications of fruit sold according to season. I was in Israel, and became completely dumbfounded when I couldn’t find the strawberries…”whaddya mean you don’t sell them in the winter?!?”

Of course, as my sister recently reminded me, even junk food lovers know the comforting seasonal rhythms of Cadbury Creme eggs in late winter (they’re only sold from Jan 1-Easter Sunday), Peeps in the spring, and, of course, Mallomars in the late fall.

Ah, Mallomars…If Proust had grown up in New York, he would have traded in his madeleine for a Mallomar. Respectable journalists have sung its praises to the heavens, this perfect confection, only available during the dark, baseball-less months of November through March, so delicate is its thin outer layer of chocolate, that it can’t survive the trip from factory to store in the heat of spring or summer. And what could be more Jewish than a cookie that comes eighteen to a box, 70% of which are consumed by New Yorkers?

The only cookie that comes close is its Israeli cousin, the Krembo. Similar in construction and seasonal availability, writers also wax rhapsodic about krembo season. Plus, according to its wikipedia entry: Read more »

As I enjoy my last week of vacation before I return to New York City for school, my mind starts to wander towards all sorts of issues that didn’t really apply to me in the last year, when I was living in the woods and farming at a Jewish retreat center. The biggest one is paying rent, which I didn’t have to think about in my prime forest real estate (granted, I don’t yet have an apartment to pay rent on, anyone looking for a live-in farmer?).

Another is teaching; in the last year I’ve found that I really enjoy explaining things that I care about, but for the next two years, instead of having a relatively captive audience of Adamanicks to work with and teach, I’ll be a captive audience myself, paying very close attention to my teachers…

Read more »

For three months I’ve been enjoying my new kitchen in deeply gratifying ways. It transformed my Thanksgiving experience (referred to as “The Super Bowl of cooking”) due to my increased refrigerator, freezer, countertop, cooktop and oven capacities. The new island configuration without the previous wall completely transforms my interactions with my children, family and guests.

I still bake challah every week, but now I have more refrigerator space for the dough to rise Thursday night. I tried baking the loaves in my new steam oven last week and they were extra moist. Next week I’ll try using the oven’s thermometer probe on the challah. Confessions of a kitchen geek. The kitchen was always the hub, but now it is open and accessible, and I reside in it with tremendous gratitude.

Today’s Harold McGee article on heat in the NYTimes provided me with a new level of validation.

Read more »

This past weekend, Hazon had the wonderful fortune of having Sharon Lebewohl - daughter of Abe Lebewohl who founded the (closed, but soon to re-open) 2nd Avenue Deli in New York City - attend The Food Conference. When I asked her how the plans for reopening were going, she told me that she was not working on the project…turns out, her 25-year old cousin, Jeremy is charged with task of reinvigorating one of New York’s most beloved delis. The interview with Jeremy below was originally published in New York Magazine.

You Can Take the Deli out of Second Avenue
New York Magazine
By Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite

It seemed like the whole city went into mourning when the deli closed. What made it so special?
You have other places in Manhattan that have good deli cases. But our kitchen—and I say this very confidently—nobody can touch. I won’t take away the counters from them, where you can get a good sandwich. But there aren’t that many places where you can get good soup. We have chicken fricassée, goulash, all these things that come from the kitchen. There’s not a single deli in Manhattan that can compare.

Read more »

The New York Post reported yesterday that Coca-Cola added five new hybrid-electric trucks to it’s 90-vehicle delivery fleet at it’s distribution center in the South Bronx.  NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg was reported as saying:

“What the company does is known to people around the world. The same can be said for New York City. That’s why it’s so important we take the lead on big issues like air pollution and global warming.”

According to the Post, Coke’s new trucks cost about 40 percent more than conventional diesel trucks and use 32 percent less fuel and are powered entirely by electricity, which produces zero emissions, when traveling at speeds below 30 mph.

As an occasional - and semi-closeted - Coke drinker (I only drink sometimes and only at restaurants with ice and a straw), I’m both excited and wary about Coke’s green leanings.  It’s definitely a step in the right direction for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s also a very small step.  Whole Foods offsets 100% of its energy use with wind power - couldn’t Coke (which owns, like, half the world) do a little better than 5 trucks? 

My friend (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Simon spent his day pulling feathers out of turkeys.  While I clicked away at a keyboard in my office, he plucked - getting these just-slaughtered birds ready for their Thanksgiving debut.

Simon is the founder of Kosher Conscience, an ethical kosher meat coop in NYC.  Don’t let the word ethical fool you.  A self described “vigorous carnivore,” he is about the farthest thing from a. a vegetarian or b. a hippie as one can possibly get.  He also has a seriously learned Jewish background on which he bases his ethical grounding - which is more than can be said for many Jews out there who wax zealous about ”eco-kashrut,” (ahem, myself included). 

Kosher Conscience has no intention of surreptitiously convincing Jews to eat less meat - you can leave that to PETA.  Instead, it answers the question: how do you enjoy the simcha of meat” without being soulless about it? 

Read more »

X-posted from Jewschool, Josh Frankel covers the growing Uri L’tzedek social justice beit midrash in Washington Heights. This week, the beit midrash covered food issues, including Agriprocessors:

Avi Lyon, director of the Jewish Labor Committee, told stories from his visit to Rubashkin’s meat’s AgriProcessors plant, in Iowa, and poor working conditions there, from intimidating workers not to speak to outsiders, to charging workers for their smocks and not paying them for the time required to get into and out of their safety equipment, to the high injury toll. Mike Schultz led a group brainstorm of any and all problems of workers’ rights or being an ethical kosher consumer that were really bothering the people in the room, and people had a lot to say, with a lot of fervor. Steven Exler outlined the cycle of community organizing, presented more facts on Agriprocessors, and asked people what they would be willing to do about it. Shmuly closed out the night by offering multiple opportunities for “homework,” ways to start acting on what we had talked about. 10 people signed up to table for workers’ rights at this weekend’s convention of kosher food producers, KosherFest. Others are planning to start working on pressuring local food providers to carry other meat options. Several people wanted to work on generating more of a halachic discourse on tzedek questions among the poskim.

The batei midrash will continue every 3 or 4 weeks, open and accessible to all, and now Uri L’Tzedek is starting to move into providing support and partnership for those who are ready to take the lead and get it done in the community. Started by three YCT students, Aaron Finkelstein, Mike Schultz, and Shmuly Yanklowitz along with the generous support of a Herbert Lieberman Award. For more information, contact Aaron Finkelstein.

What do you get when you cross: 

-A blend of 28 cocoas (including 14 of the most expensive and exotic around the globe)
- 5 grams of edible 23-karat gold, served in a goblet lined with edible gold
- 18-karat gold bracelet at the bottom of the goblet (with 1 karat of diamonds)
- Whipped cream covered in more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle, which sells for $2,600/pound?

The Frozzen (yes two zs) Haute Chocolate, a $25,000 desert from Serendipity 3 in New York City.  Here’s my question, why would you want to EAT gold?  Yes, yes, there’s the whole “you are what you eat,” thing, but would you really want to be an inert mineral that probably causes serious indigestion?

Let’s just say The Frozzen Haute Chocolate doesn’t top my Chanukah gift wish list this year - but if you want to get me something from The Sustainable Chanukah Gift Guide…

I’m going to out myself again as a newbie in the culinary and foodie world, but that’s my place on this here blog, so here we go. This morning I slept through all my alarms, both electronic and internal, due to the deep, deep sleep one gets when the body is fighting off a cold. Awaking late, I rushed out of bed, hit the subway, and ducked into the deli closest to work — only to find that breakfast was over, and only lunch food was about.

Thus this morning’s quandry: what do you eat for breakfast when you’re sick in New York City? Read more »

Hat tip to Jewschooler and NY Ride alumnus Josh Frankel:

After the tremendous success of its first beit medrash, Uri L’tzedek, the organization dedicated to engaging the Orthodox community in social justice, is back for more. “Ethical Kashrut, Workers’ Rights, the Kosher Meat Industry” is the title for this week’s program, and the word on the street is that Rubashkin’s should take cover. Monday night, 7:30 - 9:00 PM, at the Mount Sinai Jewish Center, 135 Bennet Ave, in NYC.

For more information, check out Uri L’tzedek’s new facebook group.

This past Shabbat, my boyfriend and I walked from Park Slope to Red Hook, Brooklyn (an hour each way - no, not uphill) to the Red Hook Harvest Festival.  He’d heard me yammer on for a while about the ”real life FARM” in the middle of Brooklyn, but as we passed the many corner stores and high rises that typify the borough, I think he started to doubt that such a place could really exist.  Until we arrived.

In the middle of a once dilapidated asphalt playground, 2.75 acres of earth and plants now thrive.  Brooklyn has a rich farming history - as late as the 19th century, Brooklyn was the second most productive agricultural county in the United States, second only to Queens.  But today, growing anything more than what fits in a window box or on a stoop seems nothing short of a miracle.    

The Red Hook farm was started by Ian Marvey, founder of an organization called Added Value, which empowers neighborhood kids and teens to learn farming and business skills (through farmer’s markets and sales to local restaurants), while strengthening the local community.  According to Added-Value’s website:  

“Twice in the past three years Red Hook’s only full-service grocery store closed, forcing residents to walk three miles and cross an eight lane road or take a $10 cab if they want to shop there. Red Hook was a textbook example of a broken food system and its effects on a community.  Now, we are becoming a model of how residents, businesses, social service agencies and religious institutions can begin to rebuild a food system that promotes social interaction and economic activity while nurturing our health and improving the environment.” 

Folks in the neighborhood know the farm.  Lost in an unfamiliar part of town, I asked a passing teenager if he knew where the corner of Columbia and Sigourney street was (unlike most rural farms, this one has an intersection).  He didn’t know.

“Um, do you know where the, uh, farm is?” I asked sheepishly.

“Oh yeah - the farm’s that way” he said, pointing us on. 

Read more »

Chef Peter Berley will share the love, and his skills, at the JCC in Manhattan on Wed, Oct 10 at a Hazon co-sponsored cooking demonstration. The blurb from the JCC says:

Join us for an exceptional guest chef demonstration with Chef Peter Berley, author of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen (winner of both The IACP Cookbook Award and the James Beard Award) and the newly released Fresh Food Fast, which offers
mouthwatering recipes that are easy to make and designed to satisfy all kinds of appetites. Enjoy an interactive cooking demonstration while you sample flavorful, sophisticated fare including toasted millet pilaf, savory kale with cremini mushrooms, lemon-thyme roast chicken, lemon-rosemary tofu, and vegan spice cake with extra virgin olive oil. Co-sponsored by Hazon.

Wed, Oct 10
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
$55.00 - Member
$65.00 - Non-Member

Your task at hand is fun and four-fold:

1. Register for the class at www.jcckitchen.org or by calling the JCC at 646.505.5708

2. Read The Jew & The Carrot review of Berley’s book The Flexitarian Table by R. Avi Finegold

3. Purchase The Flexitarian Table by clicking the book icon under the “Books we Love” section on this blog (see the left bar)

4. Check out Berley’s new “flexitarian” restaurant, Broadway East, opening October 15 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side

• Price of a Farm Aid Ticket: $52 (+ ticketmaster fees)

• Price of Fung Wah bus from Boston: $15

Standing among a crowd of New Yorkers, surrounded by equal parts marijuana haze, “Stop Factory Farms” t-shirts and average New Yorkers here to see Dave, Neil & the Allman brothers, listening to a Hasidic reggae artist talking about the taste of an unbelievable tomato and getting one’s hands back into the dirt to refresh the connection between humans and the earth: PRICELESS

For me, that was one of several exciting moments during yesterday’s Farm Aid concert, which, as the NYTimes noted, was u.nique in its ability to draw in average-Joe New Yorkers, just in it for the music, organic junkies, and farmers from across the country. Another was actually taking a photo with my co-workers in our new matching “Farmers Kick [Donkey]” t- shirts.

As a representative of a group who spent much of the concert inviting concert-goers to sign up for email action alerts about the Farm Bill, I think this was an amazing opportunity for the burgeoning food movement to move beyond its original supporters. What I told Max Fraser of The Nation yesterday, was that I hoped all of the excitement and publicity around Farm Aid would get concertgoers and other citizens more engaged with food policy i.e. the Farm Bill. My only wish is that I hadn’t seen the box of Sysco potatoes used to make the french fries I bought from one of the “all local, sustainable, organic” food vendors.

Update 09/19/07: Apparently Alice Waters also noticed the Sysco products (as well as the Silk, Chipotle and Horizon booths), and this yielded a panoply of comments on the NYTimes Diner’s Journal article on Farm Aid. Tuesday, Alice responded that she wasn’t intending to diss Farm Aid, but only to dream of how things could be in an “edible utopia.”