Just a thought, but could the new food credo of “Eat food not too much, mostly plants,” be a threat to the Kashrut industry as we know it?

I just finished watching a promotional video from the OU. Targeted to the food industry, this video demonstrates the process by which a product receives certification. Using a fictional cake made by Drakes (of Seinfeld lore), the OU rabbi shows how, early in the process the ingredient list of the new cake is sent to the OU to ensure that all ingredients are kosher. Some of the ingredients are found to be problematic, the red sprinkles on top and the emulsifiers that in the words of Rabbi Moshe Elefant “make ingredients mix when they normally can’t.”

According to Rebbe Michael Pollan, food is defined as something your grandmother would recognize. I would bet a big bunch of kale that your grandmother didn’t use emulsifiers to make sure her cake was delicious.

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Laura Frankel is not your typical kosher chef. For those of who have been reading her recent posts, she has little tolerance for fake foods and refuses to kowtow to clients who demand kosher versions of otherwise unkosher food. I recently had the opportunity to sit and chat with her about her thoughts on food and the nature of food in Jewish society.

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The recent controversy regarding the custom of Kapparot (see article in the Forward) made me realize that Kapparot is virtually the only remaining ritual that uses an animal sacrifice as an atonement for human sin. In Temple times, any inadvertent sin had a corresponding animal sacrifice that was intended to cause the sinner to contemplate the nature of sin and how this animal is now losing its life instead of the sinner. pretty powerful stuff, if your environment is agrarian and animals are preciously traded commodities. Today however, things are much different. Read more »

Two long months with hardly any rain. That is the dire situation we have been facing this season. Our CSA provides shares to 85 families in the Washington, DC area.  Long ago this past April, we missed a month’s worth of rain, kicking off a season of high and dry windy weather. This has been tough on everything and everyone around.  During this season’s severe extended drought we’ve been dealing with a 2-pronged “war”. On one hand, we must keep every new seedling and translant happy and moist, on the other, we must keep the deer at bay.

The deer come out around mid-August every year as their food runs out in the forest. This season, they were here in July. Entire plantings of green beans, sweet potatoes and edemame, were gone. Badly eaten were the new and still tender tomato and cucumber plants.

Earlier in the season we cought 6 groundhogs over the course of a month and a half, and safely transported them to a wooded area a few miles away. Now we have an early deer problem, and a drought like we’ve never seen before.

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We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog posting to bring you this brief announcement: “The Jew and the Carrot” has been nominated for two Bloggers Choice Awards! If you have a moment and are so inclined, please vote for us in the “Best Food Blog” category and the “Best Religion Blog.” You can do so by clicking on the Bloggers Choice images in the sidebar, or by clicking on the links below:

* The Jew & The Carrot totally rocks! I’m voting for them in the Best Food Blog category. Click.
* The Jew & The Carrot is the best! I’m voting for them in the Best Religion Blog category. Clickity click.

Thank you for your support! And now, back to our regularly scheduled posting…

You know you’re addicted to blogging when, despite spending much time on your own site, you jump at the opportunity to also blog on someone else’s. That is my story, and this first post on JCarrot is an introduction of sorts - which is another way of saying that Leah asked me to write a little about myself and my mind promptly went blank. Ahem.

My name is Ariela and I’ve been writing about food on my blog, Baking and Books, since September ‘06. For me, food has been a tremendous means of exploration. I’ve learned about my family’s history by speaking with my grandmother and researching dishes she grew up with in Mexico City, and about other cultures as I’ve delved into their recipes and the stories behind them. I have a Masters degree in Jewish Studies from Columbia University and am currently a graduate student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, so it should come as no surprise that Jewish cuisine is a particular fascination of mine. From honey-vanilla challah to Transylvanian Pongyolas Alma to making pita in the desert, food has transformed the way I look at Judaism and Jewish culture. I hope you will join me on that journey as I share new recipes and bits of culinary history here on JCarrot.org. I’m thrilled to be joining Hazon’s community and look forward to learning more about you in the comments!

Recently, a friend asked me if I was a foodie, a question which caught me thinking quite a while for an accurate response. “Well, I used to be” was the only thing I could think of. Reflecting back on that answer, I found myself questioning what and how I eat and how that differs from what one many think of when they think of a foodie.

Typically your average culinary fan tends to place a high value on taste and other palate-based pleasures. Different tastes and cuisines are prized and much is made of importance of the finest ingredients. Star chefs, award-winning cookbooks, and the finest tools become things to live for. But, I like food. I like to eat good food. What makes me feel that I am different that this? I pondered this and came to the conclusion that perspective was key.
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This evening, as my roommates and I were finishing up an exhausting round of stripping the dirt and chametz from our kitchen, I found it unfortunate that I had to throw several jars of salsa and tupperware of chiles down the garbage disposal. I wondered if the disposal could handle this amount of “hotness,” as an American garbage disposal would presumably not be accustomed to such intensity. On Passover, probably spurred on by the choice of packaged foods available and promoted by the local supermarket’s “Passover Aisle,” American Ashkenazi Jews traditionally retreat into the deepest recesses of Jewish culinary tradition; to me, it seems completely unnecessary to eat cold fish jelly or kishke for 8 days straight.

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The most popular question we’ve been asked by far is: So, what do you do in the ‘off-season’? True, the person asking often has the intention of continuing the conversation. But implied is the idea that farming is our ‘day job’ and that among other hobbies and past-times, we enjoy a long ‘off-season’, searching for something fun and exciting to do. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Show me a farmer who spends months traveling the world during the ‘off-season’ and I’ll say, That is not what farming is about.

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I am longish, and orangish. But I am not always straight, nor pointy, and sometimes I twist my way around rocks and roots, and come up entirely twisted.

Apparently, I am good for seeing things at night. But lest you spend the afternoon uprooting your neighbors vegetable garden in search of night vision, take note: I can only take you so far.

In this blog, I as The Carrot shall write about food issues from a food perspective. I will, for instance, rail against Stop & Shop, where I went this morning to buy a few last minute supplies for cooking demos at the food conference. I’ll bemoan that in Canaan, CT, it is easier to buy 50 lbs of oranges from Florida than 50 lbs of beets — which you can grow (and they do grow!) just up the road. I’ll talk about how out of place I felt in the wide aisles — with all the unfamiliar brand names, how I realized, why would anyone have to cook a THING when there are indeed 57 varieties of Heinz and other sauces available to douse my canned vegetables in? And also that there is such apparent abundance, the shelves thrusting forward, full of promise, I could have filled my cart with items that suggested themsevles skillfully onto my plate, that I didn’t even know I needed, or was hungry for. All this only in the pasta aisle.
I am The Carrot. I will tell you about the crunch of the salad, the soft smush of the roasted garlic and goat cheese in olive oil that was set out on each table at dinner tonight — so tasty — so fresh! I will celebrate the vegetables of our world, and the people who grow them and bring them to us, and the people who cook them and the people who eat them. I’ll write to you about all of the deliciousness in the world, in our food, in our relationships, that there is to enjoy — and the real ugliness that looms: agribusiness, oil-based agriculture, low-paid farmworkers, E. coli, and the struggle to stay human, and eat real food, in the midst of it all.

I am The Carrot — stay tuned!