This entry is cross-posted at marriedwithbackpacks.com

It’s now been seven weeks backpacking through this meat-lovers paradise, tough going for a pair of Jews spoiled by home cooking and New York’s great vegetarian restaurants. Vegetarian cuisine in Peru and Bolivia is, like their economies, ‘developing.’ We were pleasantly surprised at the number of vegetarian restaurants in Lima, Arequipa and Cusco. In many of them we had a set menu consisting of a soup, a main, tea and possibly desert for $1.50-$5. Now it could be that South American vegetarian cuisine is relatively immature, or did the Spaniards run off with all the Inca’s seasoning as well as their gold… because all most all of our Andean meals were quite bland. The vegetables or grain soups would have been enlivened by adding almost anything. The mains usually consisted of rice, eggs and glisteningly oily fried vegetables. Most of the vegetarian restaurants rely heavily on eggs and cheese, so if you are travelling vegan, it might end up being the rice and oily vegetables for meal after meal. If you risk eating at a non-vegetarian restaurant, the vegetarian menu usually consists of pizza and spaghetti. I should mention that it wasn’t all bad news, we did enjoy a veggie version of a traditional Arequipa dish (at a restaurant called Lakshmivan), a large pepper stuffed with vegetables, tofu and chillies, as well as scrumptious burritos at the Hearts Café in Ollantaytambo.

When it comes to snacks there is more to get excited about. Street vendors roast potatoes over coals, although unfortunately for us, always together with chunks of meat. At night, bands of mobile popcorn makers roam the streets providing a cheap and delicious snack, available salty or sweet. One can also find puffed Quinua and other Andean grains, available in small bags or pressed with honey into a type of granola bar. In the right hostel you can find a breakfast of yoghurt, sweet puffed grains and fresh papaya and bananas – delicious. When it comes to fruit, we didn’t try as many exotic varieties as I would have liked, but we did enjoy a juicy cherimoya in La Paz.

On one occasion our diet was supplemented by some wild protein. On a jungle trip in the Bolivian Amazon we were fishing for piranhas using hand reels when I was luckily enough to drag in a fish around a foot long. After checking for fins and scales, we decided it would be a welcome addition to what were some otherwise meager jungle rations. I killed the fish, a first for me, using the most readily available means, the oar of our canoe, and the fish was cooked up for lunch the following day.

Civil unrest in Bolivia led us to fly early to northern Argentina, where we traded charming street markets for expensive, industrialized supermarkets where everything contained corn syrup, beef fat or both. The cattle industry is so enormous that the excess fat makes its way into bread, crackers and other baked goods. Additionally, in many places vegetarian food is nowhere to be found, indeed one should not be surprised to have one’s vegetarianism openly mocked. In this region we did a fair bit of self catering, utilizing our pot to make pasta and tomato sauce.

Upon reaching Buenos Aires, home to around 100,000 Jews and some of the world’s best kosher restaurants, we joined in the gluttony of the locals. An upmarket sushi chain has a kosher branch where we paid through the nose for a roll featuring mango, salmon and fried cheese, and another featuring citrus marinated salmon. At the Al Galope restaurant we enjoyed a traditional Argentinian parilla, meat grilled over a wood fire. The steak, sausages, sweetbreads, meatballs and tripe were brought to our table on a mini grill with its own coals to keep it warm. The leftovers lasted two lunches but the meal itself was well, too meaty. It was tough to go straight into that much plain roasted unseasoned meat.

Now I don’t think I have ever ingested a McDonald’s hamburger in my life, but if you are in Buenos Aires and for some reason there is a kosher McDonalds, why not? OK, I can think of many reasons why not, but we went for what would be a first time and last time experience. My frustration began when the worker took minute after gratification delaying minute to put together our already prepared meal. This is supposed to be fast food! Then I almost threw a fit trying desperately to open their tiny ketchup packets, which cannot be opened with greasy fingers. The bun was soggy and the meat bland – I’m assuming this is standard – not an experience I’ll miss. If I can give them credit for something is that their prices appeared to be the same as the non-kosher McDonald’s. And of course, the sight of a frum woman standing in the middle of a McDonald’s kitchen checking lettuce for bugs is priceless.

The culinary highlight of our trip is a restaurant in Buenos Aires called Asian. After trying a few albeit delicious options we realized their pineapple, soy and ginger marinated steak ($22) is quite simply the best thing we can ever remember eating. Quality kosher wine is served by the bottle only, but for only $13 a bottle there is no fear in erring on the plentiful side. It was very expensive by Argentinean standards, but with quality and service that shamed anything we had experienced in the US, even at top dollar New York kosher restaurants. Argentineans eat ridiculously late, restaurants are usually packed at around 11pm, such that when we came at 8pm we had the whole place ourselves. A great way to finish off the first continent in our round-the-world trip. Bring on Australia.

Birthright trips are a wonderful opportunity for 18- to 26-year-olds to travel to Israel for free. I sometimes receive e-mails from vegetarians and vegans who are going on Birthright trips and came across my old posts on heebnvegan via a Google search. Here is a compilation of the tips I give them.

Food Advice

• First and foremost, you should communicate with your trip organizers in advance to let them know about your dietary restrictions or food allergies. You should also let your trip’s staff know when you meet them on the first day.
• More often than not, you won’t have any trouble as a vegetarian or vegan. Still, I recommend taking some protein bars (sealed and unwrapped) with you just to be safe; double-check the rules for bringing food into a foreign country before heeding my advice. Meals on my trip varied greatly: Sometimes we had lavish buffets at fancy hotels, and sometimes we had a half-hour to grab falafel (or shwarma, for the meat-eaters) while walking through a village. But in addition to finding the best falafel and hummus you’ve ever had, you’ll find a lot of fresh veggies and creative salads at many of the meals. I also wound up having a lot of figs and other fresh fruit, nuts, potatoes, and couscous. All in all, it was likely a healthier diet than the mock-meat-centered diet I was eating in the U.S. at the time.
• Almost everyone speaks English, but it’s conceivable that there’d be some places you go to where you’d have to special-order and the people wouldn’t speak great English. Ask the trip staff for assistance in these situations.
• Most of the accouterments for falafel in a pita (or a laffa, which is another bread option), including tehini sauce (sesame-based), are vegan. Tzadiki sauce has dairy, and you should ask for your falafel without tzadiki. This is an easy accommodation.
• Vegetarian schnitzel (cutlet) is a popular alternative to chicken schnitzel. Think of it as though you were getting a veggie burger in a restaurant in the US. It might have some egg or dairy ingredients you don’t know about, but whether you eat it anyway depends on how strict a vegan you are.
• Shakshouka is a popular vegetarian dish, but it has a whole egg in it and isn’t vegan.
• The presence of meat might mean that some dishes are vegan! I realize that this is counter-intuitive for those who aren’t familiar with kashrut (the noun form of “kosher”). If you go to an all-kosher restaurant or are looking at packaged foods marked kosher, there are three categories: dairy, meat, and pareve. Meat and dairy cannot be mixed together (in individual dishes or even in the same meal) in kosher facilities, so if you know that a restaurant is certified kosher and that meat is present, the mashed potatoes are definitely dairy-free. (“Pareve” means no dairy or meat with regard to kashrut, but pareve foods might include eggs or fish, so “pareve” does not necessarily mean vegan.)

Miscellaneous Advice

• Some trips include camel rides. If you have an ethical objection to supporting a touristy business that likely overworks camels even in extreme heat, tell your trip staff up-front that you plan to avoid this activity.
• You’re allowed to bring two bags (not including a carry-on bag) with you. Find a way to bring only one. You don’t want to be schlepping two around with you the whole time.
• On my trip, we arrived in Israel in the early morning (Israeli time) and had a full day of activity, and then a lot of us wanted to stay up at night for social reasons. I got one hour of sleep on the plane because I was excited, which meant that I was quite exhausted on Day 1 (and that exhaustion stayed with me for the rest of the trip). One woman sitting near me on the plane took an over-the-counter sleeping pill and slept through the entire flight, and she was raring to go. I normally avoid pills whenever possible, but I think she had the right idea. Use the flight to Israel to sleep, because the rest of the 10-day trip is push push push and you’ll regret not sleeping on the plane.

Today is the first of periodic blog posts about food at Ramah Outdoor Adventure. Because the food we eat at camp will play such an integral part in supporting the overall mission of the camp, I thought it appropriate to focus some of the blog posts leading up to camp on the use of food.

For those who missed the announcement the other day, The First Lady, Michelle Obama, launched the “Let’s Move” campaign. She has correctly singled out childhood obesity as a major epidemic facing America. Her campaign aims to get kids off the couch, away from video games, and eating more wholesome food. For anyone who has been aware of the growing food movement in America these past few years, nothing that she said yesterday is too surprising. It is an indisputable fact that as a society, our children today are less healthy than they were a generation ago. Anywhere from 25%-30% of American children are overweight. As Mrs. Obama pointed out, today’s children are the first generation whose life expectancy is shorter than that of their parents.

As an American, I am saddened by these statistics. Of course, it only takes a walk into a supermarket to see why this is the case. I am not going to rehash all the arguments made by Michael Pollan in The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food, but one thing is certain: eating healthy food is an expensive proposition and one that is not available to many people in this country. It is easy to criticize parents who choose to serve their families 1,000 calories that cost $3.00 at a fast food restaurant rather than 1,000 calories of fresh greens that might cost $10 in the vegetable aisle. But in reality, every family has to make their own choices given many influencing factors. Cost is but one concern for some families. Others are health, convenience and taste.

But the issue of what to eat extends way beyond a family’s kitchen. Michelle Obama mentioned the role that school lunches play in affecting the health of American students. As a Jewish educator running a not-for-profit summer camp, I would argue that all institutions that serve meals to minors must consider the food that they are serving and think about how the food affects the long term health of children.

An institution like Ramah Outdoor Adventure is not immune to making the same sorts of choices about food that parents living on a budget must make. We too have a finite amount of time and financial resources available to us. But in the final calculations, I believe that the choices we make in the kitchen must reflect the values by which we will run the rest of the camp.

When planning the budget for this new Ramah camp, I took a look at the budgets of other Kosher camps in North America. I saw that the average camp spends three dollars per camper per day on food (not including labor). One need only do the math to see that the quality of food that the camp is serving is miserably low. Try living a healthy balanced diet on four dollars per day and notice the quality. This low amount translates into a plethora of white refined carbohydrates, tons of frozen vegetables, and a lot of processed foods. All the camps I visited this summer have also added salad bars to their offerings, though often these salad bars are filled with canned vegetables and beans in addition to a few fresh greens. I do not believe that these camps serve any appreciable number of organic foods.
And frankly, I understand why a camp director would choose this route. In most camps, meals are a time to consume energy for the next activity. Often the dining halls are noisy, meals are rushed, and campers spend a few minutes shoveling food into their mouths. While many Jewish camps take time after the meal to sing and build community, I have not yet seen one that stops during the meals to engage in educational programs about the food they are eating.

Our goal at Ramah Outdoor Adventure is to completely change the way that we approach food at a summer camp. We have budgeted much more money for food than typical camps. Although I have yet to hire our head chef, the question I have asked each applicant is to tell me how they can help make the food they are serving fit within the broader mission of the camp. Anyone who does not see a direct link between the program in the kitchen and the program on the ropes-course cannot be considered for the job. Admittedly, this has made hiring our head chef all the more challenging, because I am not only seeking someone who understands Kosher food, but also someone who understands the intersection between sustainable foods and wholesome cooking.

So what are some of the commitments we have made for 2010? Here are four:

1. Throughout the week, we will be engaging in programming about food during our meals. We will be adapting elements of the Hazon Min Ha’Aretz Curriculum for use at camp.
2. We will make an effort to buy no white carbohydrates. This means, whenever possible, we will purchase whole-wheat pasta, brown rice and whole-wheat bread. We realize that there will be exceptions and of course we are limited to what we are able to purchase with a Kosher symbol. Luckily Colorado is blessed with wonderful kosher organic whole-wheat bread and organic whole-wheat pasta that is certified by the OU.
3. We will serve mainly whole grain cereal and oatmeal for breakfast—only on occasion serving typical “camp breakfast foods” like waffles and pancakes.
4. Campers will take an active role in preparing food at camp. This will enable everyone from the youngest camper to the oldest staff member to take ownership of the food that we will be eating. When the food is great, we will know who to thank. When the food is bad, we will know who is responsible.

As Michelle Obama suggested, eating healthily does not mean never eating any junk food. Who does not love pizza, fries and burgers? And living a life of denial from all “junk” food is certainly not a way of leading a healthy and happy life. However, it is also imperative to eat all of these in moderation, which we will be modeling at Ramah Outdoor Adventure. For example, our menu will be vegetarian most of the time except for a weekly Bar-B-Que where we will eat meat cooked on a grill. Would we all be healthier if we chose to forgo these burgers and hotdogs? It is possible, but there is also a value in having fun and hanging out around a Bar-B-Que enjoying the late summer afternoon.

At this point, we are still in the planning stages about the food aspects of our program. We have a long way to go before we will be able to look back and see how well we have achieved our goals. But building a camp is a process. If we do not set lofty goals we will have no way of achieving change in our community. I hope that we will become the model for how camps will rise to the First Lady’s challenge and begin to reinforce the value of eating healthy food and of making smart choices in our diet.

I’m stuffed. Not from my Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family in the US – although everything on the table was delicious – but from five days of intellectual, spiritual, and gastronomical nourishment while participating in Hazon and Heschel’s first Israel Sustainable Food Tour. From November 15th though 19th, twenty-seven foodies and I explored Israel from the perspective of sustainable food. We met with farmers, chefs, community gardeners, a permaculture expert, a food scientist, volunteers at an innovative soup kitchen, the founder of a food co-op, an expert on food insecurity in Israel, and many other passionate people who shared their experiences working on sustainable food issues throughout the country.

Our group, fearlessly led by Natasha Aronson of Hazon and Jeremy Benstein of The Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, was an incredible mix of individuals with varied backgrounds on food and environmental issues: farmers, nutritionists, public health analysts, journalists, CSA coordinators, and many more.  The stimulating conversations I had with the other participants were certainly one of the most memorable parts of the tour.  And on the final day, we joined over three hundred people at the first annual Israel Sustainable Food Conference in Tel Aviv.

Over the next few weeks, as I continue to digest this fantastic experience, I’ll be sharing some of the highlights of the trip here on The Jew and the Carrot. One theme that I had not anticipated, and that I found most moving throughout the tour, was the role that memories played in many people’s understanding of food sustainability. It was touching to hear how sharing memories through food – often memories of an older generation, a simpler time – was a means for putting sustainability in action. Our first meal together, at the Eucalyptus Restaurant in Jerusalem, included a cooking demonstration with chef Sofian Ayash, who explained that his culinary degree came from MMK University – “my mother’s kitchen”. Thus, his dishes often reflect his earliest memories and knowledge he gained from cooking with his mother. As the trip progressed, I realized that the group and I were creating our own memories – with each other, with Israel, with the phenomenal meals we experienced – just as others shared their own memories of food with us. Our understanding of sustainability was undoubtedly affected by the people we met, the sites we took in, the stories we listened to, and the foods we tasted. Powerful nourishment, indeed.

Photo by Evan Namerow, taken at the Machaneh Yehudah outdoor market – “the shuk” – in Jerusalem.

Calling all New Yorkers!  If you’re around on Sunday, December 13th at 2pm, join me at this fun Jewish food event!

CULTURE IN THE CUCINA
How Rome’s Jews are Cooking up the Past and Future

While Jews have lived in Italy since the 2nd century BCE and are credited with popularizing staple ingredients like eggplant, fennel and pumpkin, the notion of an “Italian Jewish cuisine” is difficult to define. Still, a handful of traditional dishes – like Carciofi alla Guidia (deep fried artichokes) and Pizza Ebraica (a fruit cake-like dessert) – have managed to endure over time.

Food writer, Leah Koenig, will discuss how certain traditional recipes have attained iconic status in Italy’s oldest and largest Jewish center, Rome. She will also explore how today’s urban Jews relate to their culinary heritage. New York’s Jews have their bagels, knish and egg creams. What dishes do Italians turn to when they need a nosh, and how do these foods connect them to their past and their future?  *Bonus! Italian Jewish Chanukah recipes and tips on where to find Jewish Italian food in NYC.

EVENT DETAILS and more photos of Rome’s delicious food culture below the jump…

Culture in the Cucina
Sunday, Dec 13 – 2:00pm
Park East Synagogue 164 E 68th St.
$5 admission
Presented by the Jewish Historical Society of New York

Woman lunching in the Jewish ghetto

sweet, fried dough dessert - Pizzarelle

Rome's ancient Jewish bakery, Boccione

Menu at a Ghetto restaurant

Kosher Italian wine

Pizza Ebraica - charred to perfection

Shabbat challah, Friday afternoon

all photos: Leah Koenig

And, of course, when it comes to food, I took it for granted that we are the headquarters of the new food movement: Alice Waters and Michael Pollan both live here, after all, and didn’t Hazon move its food conference to the Bay Area because it is the epicenter of all that is happening in food?

I thought so, until two weeks ago. That’s when my husband and I set out on a road trip vacation, through the Pacific Northwest. I’ll admit that as an almost-native Californian (I moved to the Golden State at age one-and-a-half) I had never visited my northern neighbors until recently.

Two years ago, I visited Oregon for the first time, and that short visit left me wanting to come back. So this time, on our road trip, we got to see much more: Ashland, Crater Lake, Bend, Sisters, Eugene, two natural hot springs, and ending up in Portland on what was perhaps the hottest day of the summer.

Ashland is pretty close to the California border, and being about a six hour drive with no stops, it made the perfect starting and ending place for our road trip. My husband being a bit of a beer geek (and a wine geek and a food geek not to mention a computer geek) always loves to try the local brewery, so we stopped in for a drink at the Standing Stone Brewing Company before dinner.

Both this one and the Deschutes Brewery in Bend wrote that the burgers served at their breweries came from cows that were grass fed until the end, when they were fed leftover grain from the brewing process, allowing the grain to be used in yet another way.

I also came across the signs that are pictured, prominently displayed near the restrooms (pretty much guaranteeing that anyone will see them). I especially loved the statistic telling us what percentage of employees biked, walked or carpooled to work — 75 percent!

At dinner later that night, it took quite some time to get through the menu, mainly because the names of so many farms were listed as to where the food was sourced.

At a lunch spot in Eugene, we stumbled into the first place we found off the freeway. It had a sign in the window that all of its food came from local organic farms and its meats were humanely raised. On Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, we dined on local lamb that was raised right on the island, and tasted some of the best cheeses I’ve ever had in its farmer’s market. By the time we made it up to Vancouver, we saw menus with the approval symbol from the Vancouver Aquarium next to fish offerings, to show that they only served fish that was not overfished.

While we had some fantastic food on this trip and saw some beautiful places, I came away realizing that there are plenty of other places nearby that also qualify to be the epicenter of the food movement. Oregon and British Columbia don’t get the same press we do, but they’ve been farming and eating sustainably for years, without all the hype that we have.

Bagels. They’re delicious with butter and jam, as a vehicle for an egg sandwich, topped with cream cheese and lox, or filled with tuna or hummus. I love a good, fresh bagel for breakfast or lunch, so when traveling, I’m sure to check out the best options.

A few times this year I’ve had the opportunity to visit Montreal. Each time we made a trip to Fairmount Bagels, makers of the original Montreal-style bagels. Unlike the dense and chewy New York style bagels I grew up with, the Quebecois variety are lighter, smaller, and sweeter; they are also cooked in a wood fired oven, rather than boiled.

Throughout my years, many times when my family visited New York City, we made sure to pick up a dozen or two bagels. But now that I’ve tried Montreal bagels, I feel torn to choose a favorite.

To read more about Montreal bagels, check out this article.

Which do you prefer?

You are invited to apply (by June 15!) for a highly subsidized five-day Tour of Israel (November 15-19, 2009), from the unique perspective of: food!

Brought to you by Hazon and the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership, this tour will not be a culinary Tour of Israeli gastronomy (though there will amazing eating). Instead, this one-of-a-kind mission will highlight developments in Israel towards more sustainable food production and consumption, including:

* the booming fields of organic agriculture (farmers, distributors, co-ops)
* community supported agriculture (producers and consumers)
* slow food, artisanal, and traditional Hebrew and Arabic cuisine, as sustainable alternatives
* cutting-edge arid lands agricultural research
* permaculture and eco-living
* the halacha and aggada of food and Jewish tradition
* food, poverty and the environment: nutritional security and food safety
* livestock – problems and prospects in the Israeli dairy and meat industries
* sustainable agriculture as a focus of Israeli/Palestinian coexistence
* open-air markets, fair trade initiatives and the urban perspective
* and more…

We will:

* meet the innovative and entrepreneurial people—Jews, Arabs, farmers, scientists, activists, educators—whodeveloping these new projects;
* go to the places—the fields and farms, the research stations, the communities, the stores, the restaurants, the NGOs—where it’s all happening;
* learn the issues, and eat the produce and cooking that represents one of the newest and brightest developments in Israeli environmentalism.

The Tour is targeted at people from all professions and backgrounds interested in the environment, in Israel and sustainable food, whether familiar with the country or not.

Apply by June 15!

For more information about logistics, the application and pricing click here.

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.

What makes this better than a printed list culled from a website?
The iPhone specific features are excellent. (Note that the app also works on the iPod Touch, but without the GPS features.) The app allows you to use the GPS feature of the iPhone to find local restaurants, ranked in descending order of distance. You can also browse a global list of restaurants, and you can search for a specific place using various filters to narrow down the results (meal, cuisine, price, etc). Once you’ve found somewhere to eat, you can hit the map button to find the location using Google Maps and even get directions from your current location.

This makes Kosher app perfect for travellers visiting an unfamiliar city. In Cape Town, Tokyo, Moscow, Budapest or Rio de Janeiro? You’ll be able to find a comprehensive list of kosher establishments or places selling kosher products (groceries, butchers, restaurants, cafes, bakeries and so on). Here’s an example of the location of an Indian restaurant we visited in Paris:

There’s also a phone button that allows you to call the restaurants directly to make a reservation or to ask questions. Not wanting to pay for an unnecessary international call, though, I didn’t manage to test whether clicking on a foreign restaurant’s phone number works: all the telephone numbers seem to be formatted for local dialling from their respective countries, which might cause problems for direct dialling using the iPhone from abroad before your trip. The London phone number of this restaurant, for example, is formatted for dialing from within the UK, not from abroad:

What are the best reasons to get the application?
It’s really great to be able to search such a comprehensive database from your phone: it’s a helpful resource for tourists, travellers, and for those who prefer to eat only in restaurants certified by a particular rabbi or hashgacha, or who want to avoid a hashgacha they consider untrustworthy, since they can restrict their search to a specific kashrut certification.

You can save a list of favorites to your phone, which makes it easy to access the phone numbers and locations of places you visit often, or places you’ve been abroad and would like to recommend to friends, but don’t want in your main iPhone phonebook.

The app is also a great resource for religious eaters: it has the full text of Hebrew blessings before and after meals in several different traditions (Ashkenazi, Sepharad, Sephardic and  Chabad).

If you prefer to buy only certified food, or need to do so for a friend who keeps a stricter standard of kashrut than you do, the list of hechshers is a wonderful resource to have while you’re in the supermarket, since it lets you compare a symbol on a packet with an easy to read, comprehensive list.

You can submit your own review of a restaurant to the Shamash database, which is a nice feature. Here are the existing reviews of a fantastic place in Los Angeles:

Kosher app also links to the website of a restaurant (if available) and lets you email a listing to a friend.

Any caveats?

• Information on kashrut certifications is sometimes visible on the page of a specific restaurant, but doesn’t appear in a search for symbols on products: for example, the Sephardi Kashrut Authority in London appears in restaurant lists, but strangely, not in list of hechshers under “England” although, as far as I know, they certify packaged products under their own hechsher as well.
• When choosing a filter before searching for a restaurant, the bottom row of filter buttons is too close to the bottom icon bar of application options. This makes it easy to click “Near Me” by mistake when in fact you wanted to limit your search to Sephardic restaurants. The organization of the options in the “Filter” box could be clearer: it’d be better to have separate lists for cuisine, meals, and type of establishment. That way, you could choose “cafe/deli” or “caterer” from one list,  ”breakfast” as opposed to “dinner” from another, and “Sephardic” as opposed to “Mexican” from a third.
• One minor correction: the Sephardi blessing over wine ends with “hagefen” not “hagafen”.

What improvements would we suggest?

• It’d be really nice to rotate the iPhone and be able to view Birkat haMazon in landscape view, since the Hebrew text is quite small.
• What about being able to browse restaurant menus inside Kosher app without having to open the Safari browser? This would probably entail adding a feature to the Shamash database, but it could be as compelling a proposition for restaurant owners as for their customers: imagine easily being able to plan what you’d like to eat before a trip abroad to a culinarily-diverse location like Paris, where there are numerous kosher restaurants.
• What about being able to view photos of food from the restaurant, or photos of the restaurant interior itself?

The Shamash database really needs cleaning up. Kosher app itself is excellent, but sometimes its iPhone specific features don’t work perfectly because the entries in the Shamash database feed it erroneous data. Since the restaurant database can be edited by users and consists largely of submissions from people who’ve visited the restaurants in question, rather than professional reviewers, one should probably expect this sort of inconsistency. Nonetheless, perhaps RustyBrick can convince Shamash.org to spend some time checking the phone numbers and addresses for accuracy. Because of these database inaccuracies:

• Locations are classified somewhat inconsistently: sometimes under city name and sometimes by city name and zipcode. This is a merely cosmetic problem, but makes the listings appear slightly sloppy and makes it less easy to see restaurants in a particular neighborhood grouped under one heading, at a glance. (For example, after Zurich in the list of cities, there’s a load of incorrectly alphabetized cities. I’m not sure why they are there and not in the main list.)
• More seriously, when a restaurant is not correctly listed (such as one in Casablanca Morocco, which had the Massachusetts state abbreviation MA at the end of the address) the Maps application can’t show it correctly on screen. Viewing a location using Maps only works if the address from the Shamash database is perfectly formatted. Searching for a restaurant we visited in Paris (shown above) first brought up nothing. Since this was a test to find a place whose location I already knew, I was able to correct the address by deleting an extraneous street name and the bracketed name of the restaurant after the actual address which I knew to be correct. Only then did the map appear correctly, but this would have stumped a casual tourist trying to find an as yet unknown location.

But all in all, these are minor gripes: Kosher is an excellent and well-designed program. In our view, it’s well worth the $5 price. You’ll find all sorts of kosher restaurants and stores you might never have known about, you’ll be able to get directions and phone numbers for your favorite haunts in seconds from your phone and you’ll be able to upload a review of your meal as you sit digesting dessert and waiting for the bill to arrive.

I’ve just returned transformed after five days in the California desert with sixty fellow Pesach journeyers. The whole experience was so totally outrageous that it felt completely natural. Who would have thought that getting back to the land, connecting in community, praying and creating ritual, and taking time for ourselves could be such a transformative experience? Well, we did have an idea I guess…

So we did it: we examined our own mitzrayim (narrow places) while reconnecting to our ancestors’ liberation from Egypt. We supported each other on our paths and connected to the power of the desert. This was truly a personal journey in community.

From our opening circle to our closing prayers, from our communal kosher for Pesach meals to our song and drum circles, from our tribal seder around a campfire to our silent walks in the desert, from the connections we made with one another to the hot pink blossoms of the beavertail cactus, from our text studies to our yoga classes, from our women’s circles to our dances around the bonfire, from the sparkling sunsets to the spacious sunrises, we came together in community. Sharing responsibilities, love, and support, everyone seemed to show up as their highest self to make Pesach in the Desert the beautiful event that it was.

Plus, any community that starts banging on drums and singing Kabbalat Shabbat while physically holding down our shade structure during a windstorm is a community I want to be a part of. I feel so honored to be a part of this magic.

Wilderness Torah creates earth-based festivals in California for Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot and TuB’Shevat. If you want to join them for Shavuot on the Mountain, send them an email.

And you can check out some of their pictures from Pesach here.