Thanks to Rebecca Bloomfield for this guest post. Rebecca is an alumni of the Adamah program and a garden teacher at The Edible Schoolyard, a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation and founded by Alice Waters.
The highlight of my week this week involved watching two of my students fight. Dodging the carefully-cultivated garden beds, one student ran after another. I hurdled over the strawberry patch to intercept the pursuer and was met by a stern pout that melted into a grin with the words, “she stole my snow peas.” I heard giggling and crunching behind me as the winded friend approached us both, handing us the peas. We snacked and returned to harvesting.
The Edible Schoolyard, in Berkeley, CA, is a force of healing and transformation for middle school students. As children turn soil, plant seeds, harvest produce, and build compost piles, they deepen their connection to food. As the garden transforms, so do the students. It is a space for things to change from that which is to that which can be: seed to sprout, compost to fertile soil, flower to fruit. Like the Mishkan that the Jews were commanded to build during the Exodus, the garden is a sacred space where a divine presence dwells. School gardens the nation over provide space for children to learn that they have choices when it comes to their food, their bodies, and their environment: things do not have to be the way they currently are.
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Jayne Cohen, author of the stunningly gorgeous new cookbook Jewish Holiday Cooking (witness above) is officially a new poster-woman for The Jew & The Carrot. A talented and creative chef and food writer, Cohen loves traditional Jewish dishes as much as she loves improvising with them, and has a weakness for the farmers’ market to boot. Welcome home, Jayne! She spoke with The Jew & The Carrot about her passion for fresh vegetables, the benefits of occasionally going pot-luck, “foodie poets,” and why real Jewish foods deserve real butter.
Below the jump: The full interview, Jayne’s recipe for blintzes, and a chance to win a copy of Jewish Holiday Cooking.
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Okay, so you signed up for a CSA - (lucky you!) After weeks or even months of patient waiting for the earth to “yield its produce,” all of a sudden your kitchen is flooded with a flurry of real. live. vegetables. From now until the end of the season, you will be blessed with the opportunity to eat delicious green things, without even really having to think about it. However, some weeks it is difficult to eat all of those green things before they turn brown. I know this from experience - last summer, an early delivery of beets sat in my fridge, unloved all summer until my roommate quietly threw them out on my behalf.
To help you maximize your vegetables and avoid the guilt of throwing away soggy, wilted compost, The Jew & The Carrot offers a list of Top 10 Must Haves for the CSA Kitchen - Stir, chop, freeze, puree, and store your way to a waste-free CSA summer.
Rabbi Rebecca Joseph is a conservative rabbi, a cultural anthropologist, and a Tuv Ha’Aretz member! Her blog, The Parve Baker is filled with delicious recipes and (equally delicious) words of Torah. Over the summer, she will spearhead The Jew & The Carrot’s “Unboxed” segment - periodic posts that aim to demystify summer’s most seasonal produce.
A couple of weeks ago, I was visiting my cousin who lives year-round in a largely rural, but fast-developing part of Bucks County in southeastern Pennsylvania. Beth is a great cook and friendly with several local farmers. We stopped by Jim and Kathy Lyons’ Blue Moon Acres for organic micro-greens and spent a morning in the lavender fields at Carousel Farm with another organic grower, Niko Christou. At None Such Farm Market, which sells produce grown across the road and on other nearby farms, we acquired asparagus and rhubarb, the true harbingers of harvests-to-come in the Northeast.
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It’s true. As mentioned in a previous post, this summer corporate behemoth, Wal-Mart, is jumping on the “eat local” bandwagon. According to the state of Maine’s official website:
The Maine Potato Board, Wal-Mart Supercenters, Bushwick Potato Company, and Guerrette Farms have embarked on a campaign to bring the freshest tablestock potatoes to Maine consumers. Wal-Mart Supercenters across the state will feature ten-pound bags of potatoes with the “Get Real, Get Maine!” logo.
The irony of one of the largest, community-crushing corporations supporting local farmers is not lost on me. But over the last few years Walmart has made strides to clean up its act (or it’s bad image, which has at least some of the same impact as cleaning up its act) - donating money to charitable causes, and engaging in sustainability work. According to the Maine website, Wal-Mart’s Vice President of Produce, Ron McCormick could have been quoting a locavore activist when he said, “It’s important to Wal-Mart to support local growers…”
Maybe Wal-Mart has heard the siren call of the booming local foods movement, or maybe their head honchos’ hearts are in the right place. But do locavores really want Wal-Mart batting on their team?
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Singer-songwriter (and The Jew & The Carrot contributor) Jay Mankita recently teamed up with The NY Coalition for Healthy School Food to create Eat Like a Rainbow - a “rocking, funky, danceable collection of quirky kids songs about healthy food and sustainable living.”
Sounds great, but would kids actually listen to a CD about eating fruits and vegetables? Last weekend, I tested it out on the experts, my three daughters.
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Can anyone hear fava beans and not think of Anthony Hopkins?
“I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice chianti.” (The movie is Silence of the Lambs, in case you missed it, and the infamous line was said by Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter.)
But references to cannibalism aside, our Tuv Ha’Aretz has started here in Berkeley, and we’ve got more fava beans than we know what to do with. Which, when you get down to it, really isn’t that many at all. Read more »
I am beyond mortified. I think I missed out on my chance to join a CSA this year.
For three years, I ran Hazon’s Jewish CSA program, Tuv Ha’Aretz. During that time, CSA-related thoughts (vegetables yes, but also spreadsheets and volunteer coordination, and organizing Shabbat potlucks, and donating leftover produce to soup kitchens, etc.) dominated vast swaths of my brain, crowding out other important information like friends’ birthdays and the need to wash my bath tub.
I would complain regularly - even daily at certain times of the year - about people who could not get their act together in time to register for a CSA. Outwardly I was compassionate, of course, but inside I had no sympathy for those people who would send me frantic emails the night before vegetable pick ups started asking, “Is it too late to sign up?” What did they think this was, Fresh Direct?
After all that experience, you’d think I’d be a pro at signing *myself* up for a CSA. The first gal to send in her check, right?
Ehh..well…no. Read more »
Last month, right before Passover, David Elcott ripped up his lawn. This White Plains-based author/lecturer was out to prove - to himself as much as others - that you do not need years of experience to grow your own food. All you need is a desire to eat great food and a piece of fertile ground - like your lawn (or nearby community garden for city dwellers). Partnering with the COEJL blog, To Till & To Tend, we’re excited to bring you David’s first hand accounts, frustrations, and victories from the “front lines” of his lawn farm.
Operation Lawn Farm: Part 1
I was going crazy today. Tech problems with my printer took hours. Nothing accomplished. A lousy conference call committee meeting. Exhausted. At five in the evening, I took the world into grip and, like Superman, ripped off my work clothes, put on my dirty sweats and headed out to the farm.
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Last Thursday, Hazon’s Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan hosted a “Meet Your Farmer” night, conjuring up the age-old question: can Papaya Dog and fresh, local vegetables co-exist?
What do parsley, pickles, and charoseth have in common? They constitute the exhaustive list of Jewish foods that fit neatly into a raw food diet. The remaining arsenal of heavy, noodle-egg-and-shmaltz-filled dishes that dominate the world of traditional Jewish cuisine don’t exactly make the cut.
But now - proving that there is indeed an online community for every interest - there is a new Yahoo group for raw foodists who love Jewish food. Members will swap Jewishly-inspired recipes created through vegan and raw techniques. While I can see how borscht and hummus would be fairly straight forward to make raw, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my mind around an uncooked matzah ball…
Check out Jewish Raw Food here.
Photo credit: Judy Pokras “Raw Vegan Potato Latkes and Mock Sour Cream”
What would you say if someone offered you a box of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables delivered to your home every week? Ella Heeks is willing to wager you might be interested.
Heeks is the Managing Director of Abel & Cole, an Organic Delivery Service in England. Through Abel & Cole, customers order a weekly bounty of pesticide-free produce and schedule its delivery to fit into their busy lives. It’s convenience and ethical eating, waiting patiently on the porch.
While you can find Organic Delivery Services in most American cities, Brits have taken a particular liking to their weekly veg box - and also to ODS pioneer Abel & Cole. 30-year old Heeks spoke with The Jew & The Carrot about working with an idealistic company, soaking up farmer wisdom, and Able & Cole’s response to some customer’s requests that they boycott Israeli-grown produce. Read more »
Long before “green Shabbat” referred to stacking biodegradable dishes on the synagogue kiddush table, “Corned beef and Cabbage” became my family’s green Shabbat.
When 6th grade ended and my best friend, Shauna Ritchie, returned to Ireland with her family, I was devastated. The summer passed and middle school started. Life continued, but not without the distinct sense that something important was missing.
Mid-March arrived, and with Purim over and Pesach still in the future, my mother decided she needed an occasion in the interim to bring our family together. In honor of Shauna, my mom declared the arrival of “Corned Beef and Cabbage” Shabbat - a celebration which, not-coincidentally, coincided with the week of St. Patrick’s Day.
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Thanks to Jonathan Bloom for this series of photos. Jonathan is writing a book on wasted food in America. He became interested in the topic after a day volunteering at D.C. Central Kitchen. Seeing the truckloads of rescued food that would otherwise have gone to landfills made him wonder how much edible food does slip through the cracks.
As a journalist, Bloom set out to learn why and how Americans waste more than 40% of the food produced for consumption. He started a blog dedicated to the topic and worked at a grocery store, farm and catering company to better understand the problem.
The photos below depict the incredible amount of food wasted in America, and also some hopeful examples of food recovery.
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