The raid on the kosher meat-processing plant in Postville, Iowa, threw us a bone in the shape of a vigorous new debate on whether it is fitting and proper to designate as “kosher” products made without regard for animal welfare, fair wages, and the environment. To these I would add human health. What does it mean to approve the manufacture and distribution of products that are known to compromise the health of those who consume them? Is there a distinction to be made between contaminants that do their work quickly, like salmonella, and those whose destructive effects are slow and cumulative, like trans fats?
The affects of our crazy winter weather are not passed us yet. Generally, we think of bad weather as leading to increases in the prices of food. Examples include, damaged oranges when the temperatures drop below freezing or farmers having to charge more since, they had to remove 3 feet of snow from their potato crops. But this time, the cold winter is going to make your produce cheaper.
Florida’s cold weather caused a delay in the harvest date for Florida’s strawberries. The delay caused Florida and California to strawberries to hit the markets at the same time. Last week, 80 million pounds of strawberries were picked – a new record for this time of year. In 2009, a pound of strawberries cost $3.49, while this year strawberries will go for $1.25 per pound.
Check out this great article in the L.A. Times about the Progressive Jewish Alliance organizing a tour of food deserts in Los Angeles. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Jewish community groups aim to broaden the growing local and national campaigns to attract more supermarkets to poor neighborhoods, where limited access to healthful food has been linked to obesity, diabetes and other diseases. Programs are sprouting up in Louisiana, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania.”
Read more here.
This blog is not the right place for it, but still, Roger Cohen has really gotten on my nerves over the last year or so. His ranting about how wonderful Iran is and how great it is for the Jews there made me question my devotion to the New York Times. His piece “Advantage France,” in Sunday’s paper, about some of the differences between the French diet and the American diet, may have me beginning to change my mind. I’ve only spent a few days in France, and only in Paris, but I’m guessing he’s exaggerating somewhat. Nevertheless, the idea of Americans adopting any diet (or lifestyle, really) that required not only combining the ingredients and cooking them, but processing them to begin with (filleting the fish, making the pasta, etc) does sound beautiful and absurd. The idea of connecting to food on a “gut” level and a geographic one far predates the terroir of which Cohen writes, at least in Jewish tradition.
(reprinted from The Forward)
The other night I had eggs for dinner. Two of them fried over easy, slipped onto a slice of toast and plopped next to some sautéed zucchini with garlic. My total cooking time clocked in somewhere around 12 minutes — about as much energy as I had on a muggy summer evening after a day spent prostrating myself in front of a laptop. There was nothing gourmet about what I ate, except perhaps the pinch of za’atar that I sprinkled over the eggs en route to the table. But according to a recent New York Times Magazine article by Michael Pollan (author of “In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”), my dinner practically qualified for a James Beard award, the food world’s most prestigious prize.
Why? Because, as unfussy as my meal was, I cooked it. From scratch.
Now that my Tuv Ha’Aretz (Hazon CSA) has started this year, I’m starting to get into a pleasant routine of planning meals around my weekly bounty (and my boyfriend’s kitchen). The last two weeks we have seen beautiful fresh spring greens perfect for fun and interesting salads that I’ve dressed with (in various combinations) grated raw beets, honey and almond oil, crushed raw cashews, whole grain mustard and balsamic vinegar.
We’ve enjoyed the meals, and fortuitously there always seems to be enough salad left over for a hearty lunch the next day. Each time I carefully put the salad in a container to take to work with me – and each time I promptly leave it on the kitchen counter. A practice that leaves me both without a lunch that day and a wilted salad back at my boyfriend’s place.
Getting beyond my feelings of guilt that I’ve wasted otherwise very good food, it did get me thinking. Is it more economical to buy a salad out than packing my own?
You know it’s spring in the northeast when you can find fresh rhubarb at your local farmers’ markets, food co-ops, and green grocers. This bitterly pungent, stringy plant, that is actually a relative of buckwheat, can be eaten cooked or raw. However, its leaves contain a poison, making just those lovely stalks edible for consumption. Because it has such a high oxalic acid content, eat rhubarb in moderation. Rhubarb is high in vitamins C and A, and in potassium. When buying rhubarb, many people tend towards the redder stalks, but you can choose any shade of color. Smaller stalks have a more tender flavor.
This optimistic article points to an issue felt acutely in “inner cities” around the country: a lack of fresh produce being sold at market. This problem was controversially or famously addressed in my city by the New York City Green Cart initiative but this certainly hasn’t solved it and plenty of other cities have the same issues (NYC isn’t even mentioned in the article, though LA, Newark and Detroit are, and the article is mainly about Chicago.) Could it be that looking to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s as examples, however, are more detrimental than good? As big a supporter of organics as I am, I think encouraging people to eat “conventional” produce would be a big boon over Mickey-D’s and would be a lot cheaper and easier than the “greenest” route. Even frozen produce makes a nice, healthy, easy and inexpensive meal most of the time.
This is the first in a new series of reviews of food-related apps for the iPhone that can help you find local, organic and kosher food at local markets, restaurants and on your travels. We’ll be reviewing a range of apps, many of them free, but we start with a look at a paid program: Kosher, by RustyBrick, which currently costs $4.99 from Apple’s iTunes app store.
Kosher‘s interface is cleanly designed. Essentially, it’s a front-end viewer for a database hosted on Shamash.org, which has listings of restaurants, groceries, butchers, kosher food stores and even caterers. The database also contains reviews that visitors to these establishments have submitted. But the app also has a host of iPhone specific features and goodies that make it a compelling purchase for any iPhone user who keeps kosher or has friends who do.
You know how it is in late August, when your vines are loaded down with ripe fruit, but you’ve got a deadline in the morning, or a pile of sweaty summer laundry, or a kid with a dentist appointment, or all three. You’re thinking, I’ve got four burners, two three-gallon pots, a couple of dozen quart jars and not a minute to spare. You feel guilty letting all that good produce go to waste, but you know it’s nothing to how you’re going to feel in January when you’re pouring off another can of pureed tomatoes trucked three thousand miles from California, thinking, I could be eating my own right now.
That’s the situation Peter Pehrson of Schoharie, NY was in last season, with more tomatoes than time. “I said to myself, there must be others in my situation. Turns out there are, and they range from home gardeners to commercial apple producers” he said.
Out of that realization comes the Schoharie Community Cannery, where local growers of any size, from backyard gardeners to commercial farms, will be able to use communal canning equipment to process their vegetables, fruits and perhaps eventually their poultry products as well.
Disney has found a way to infiltrate breakfast, by branding eggs with images of Mickey Mouse and other loveable Disney characters. These eggs are (naturally, I suppose) neither cage free nor organic – but they sure put the fun back in breakfunfast. I have many questions, but I’ll start with three:
1. What is Disney thinking, offering customers a daily opportunity to crack Mickey’s head open?
2. Is there anything scarier than waking up in the morning and opening up your egg carton to find MICKEY MOUSE GRINNING UP AT YOU?
If ever there was a day for foodies to curl up with a mug of fair trade coffee and the newspaper, today’s the day. The New York Times Magazine’s (first ever, I believe) Food Issue hit stands this morning, so if you haven’t already scanned the whole thing online, find yourself a comfortable chair and a couple of hours to savor it the way papers were originally intended to be read.There’s a LOT of good stuff inside – enough to be slightly overwhelming. So before you dig in, take a look at The Jew & The Carrot’s recommendations on what to read, skim, and skip. Get the most out of the magazine and still have some daylight left to play. Below the jump!
The Midwood section of Brooklyn, a largely Orthodox neighborhood known for it’s busy thoroughfare, “Avenue J,” where kosher eateries sprout like mushrooms (and where, ironically, I consumed one bite of the most disgusting mushroom pizza I’ve ever come across), is getting a culinary face lift. The newly opened Pomegranate, a 20,000 square-foot supermarket, exclusively sells kosher-certified products. The store, which houses three kitchens (dairy, meat, and parve) also features items that are not regularly found in kosher stores like organic produce, panko breadcrumbs, and fresh mozarella.
Agriprocessors, America, Coffee, Eco-Kashrut, Food History, Food Safety, Food Writing, Grocery, Health, Honey, Kosher, Obesity, Parve, Supermarkets
