Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the New York Times published “I Love You, but You Love Meat” - an article that explores how dietary differences between couples impact their relationship - for better or for worse.  When it comes to eating with loved ones, the article suggests we all just need to be a little more “flexitarian.”

My boyfriend and I are included in this story - he’s strictly kosher and I’m a vegetarian.  See if you can spot us!  And let us know - how does food impact YOUR relationships?

I Love You, but You Love Meat
The New York Times
By: Kate Murphy

SOME relationships run aground on the perilous shoals of money, sex or religion. When Shauna James’s new romance hit the rocks, the culprit was wheat.

“I went out with one guy who said I seemed really great but he liked bread too much to date me,” said Ms. James, 41, a writer in Seattle who cannot eat gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye.

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According to PETA, their Kentucky Fried Cruelty advertisement - which focuses on the fast food industry’s blind eye towards animal cruelty - was denied commercial air time on Super Bowl Sunday. 

On the one hand, PETA should have equal right to advertising.  On the other, the ad does not exactly fit into the Super Bowl’s family-friendly image.  What do you think - should the ad have been allowed to play?     

(Warning: PETA’s ad depicts graphic violence, so watch with caution.)

The Jew & The Carrot blogger, Jeff Yoskowitz, has been on hiatus from the blog for a little while - but he has a darn good excuse.  He is currently living on a kibbutz in Israel.  On the one hand, like many kibbutzim, internet access is spotty so posting frequently is a challenge.  But Jeff’s situation is a little different.  Jeff is currently researching the (painfully ironic) pork industry in Israel.  His kibbutz happens to house an industrial pork feed-lot, which means he’s spending most of his time hanging out with animals he’d never personally eat.

The little bit of time Jeff’s not researching pigs, he’s logging in his experience at his personal blog The Wet Sprocket.  And while we understand his need to prioritize his web time, his stories are just too interesting not to share.  To find out more about Jeff’s extraordinary daily experiences check out his blog, and read a few key (and quite graphic) excerpts below: 

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Last summer, the British rock band Radiohead made waves by selling their new album, In Rainbows, on a pay what you can basis.

Now, a vegetarian restauranteur is taking this model to the food world, selling meat-free, globally-inspired cuisine to customers - for whatever they think is “fair” - at his non-profit eatery, Lentil as Anything, and a local college cafe.

Some customers are completely thrown by the concept, and continue to ask for prices at the counter, but others see it as a chance to give back to their community. Owner Shanaka Fernando said the most a customer ever paid for a lentil burger was $50. “There must have been something in it that I didn’t see,” he said.

What do you think - is this an inspired idea, or totally nuts? I’m not sure yet, but I do already have a name in mind for the potential kosher, vegetarian spinoff: Abraham’s Tent.

Read the full article about the restaurant and school eatery here.

Many people complain that it’s difficult to find a synagogue to join in New York City. There are just so many options, that none of them feel exactly right - you might call it The Shul-Goers Dilemma. These days, however, I’m feeling pretty good at Temple Bet Pollan.

Michael Pollan gets his fair share of love on this blog, and his new book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has already joined its predecessor, The Omnivore’s Dilemma as a New York Times Best Seller. Pollan is in the middle of his second whirlwind book tour in two years (I guess he sleeps on the plane) – and I hear the same account every where he goes. Huge venue, sold out show, knockout performance.

Like any effective leader - Martin Luther King included - he’s charismatic and big on the big ideas that change the way we think - or in this case how we eat. But as I devoured (pun intented) Pollan’s new book on my subway commute, I wondered what, if anything, does his worldview offer to the Jewish community? And, perhaps more interestingly, what wisdom does the tribe have to offer back to him?

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When the weather is storming outside, (and I say this knowing that what we are experiencing here in Northern California is relative to other parts of the country), there is nothing that satisfies quite like a bowl of piping hot soup.

While I am no lover of winter, I do love eating soup and salad for dinner, and I do that mostly in the winter.

A few months ago, we had a glut of broccoli from our CSA, and quite a lot of carrots, too. I found a recipe for a broccoli miso soup on someone’s web site, and tweaked it considerably. I’ve now made this soup at least a dozen times, for clients, and for us. Our CSA ran it in its newsletter too, so I thought I’d post it here for anyone in need of a new soup recipe.

While absolutely delicious, I will say that in order for the broccoli to be pureed, it has to be quite soft, and with the tamari and miso, rather than a beautiful vibrant green, this soup is a rather bland-looking brown. Ah well. At least it makes up for it in taste.

Recipe follows the jump.

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*Thanks to Michael Croland of Heeb N’ Vegan for this guest post.

In 2007, we witnessed the very beginnings of a revolution in the way farmed animals are treated. Thanks to a series of major announcements this year, the cruel confinement typical of factory-farming is, in several cases, on its way out.

In January, Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pig-meat producer, announced that it is phasing out gestation crates—which prevent pregnant sows from turning around—within 10 years. The announcement has already had a ripple effect in the pork industry, as Maple Leaf Foods (Canada’s leading pork producer) announced shortly afterward that it would phase out gestation crates and Cargill Foods said that it has stopped using gestation crates in half of its pig factory farms.

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In all honestly, I’m not completely sure I’ve fully digested the goat schecting enough to talk coherently about it, but here’s a first attempt.

About 70 people gathered at 7:00am, bleary-eyed and shivering (this time, because of the cold), to catch one of the shuttles down to the sadeh (Adamah’s field) a mile away from Isabella Freedman.  Once there, everyone huddled into small groups, wiggling their frozen toes and talking about the goat.

The shochet –dressed in shirtsleeves and a furry hat - prepared his knife.  Meanwhile, the mashgiach explained the process and answered participants’ questions, stopping to check that the knife was sharp enough by running it lightly along his fingernail. 

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This is the first of a series of updates from the Hazon Food Conference today through Sunday.

I spent much of tonight shivering.

Part of that has to do with being up in the Connecticut Berkshires, in December where 17 degrees is a normal morning temperature. But the shivering started in earnest when I walked into a conference session called, “Lifting the Cellophane Veil: Shecting a Goat.” The session was mandatory for anyone who is thinking about attending tomorrow morning’s schecting.

The Food Conference is, of course, not simply about the goat - we have four days crammed with sessions and a collection of 240 amazing people here at Isabella Freedman. But the schecting tomorrow will be - for me, and many participants - a once-in-a-lifetime and emotionally-charged event. The hope for tonight’s session was that, by introducing the key players (the goat farmer and caretaker, organizer, shochet,-ritual slaughterer, mashgiach-kashrut supervisor, and lead educator), the participants would be able to enter the space tomorrow morning aware of the process and feeling prepared (as much as possible anway).

I think the session served it’s purpose. The educator, Dr. Shamu Sadeh, and goat farmer, Aitan Mizrahi started off the conversation explaining the importance of getting a closer to our food choices - particularly where meat comes from, giving a history of the goats and explaining logistics. By the end of the night, about 70 of the 100-ish people in the room raised their hand to indicate they would wake up early tomorrow, get on a shuttle van, and weather the cold to witness the schecting.

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This morning, The Jewish Vegetarians of North America put out a press release that condemns the goat schecting at Hazon’s food conference.  As a Jew and a vegetarian, I support this statement.  Or rather, I support the legitimate concern for animal welfare and environmental integrity at the foundation of the statement.  Still, I think that unless the JVNA plans to condemn ALL the simchas, events, and conferences in the Jewish community that serve meat - then perhaps Hazon’s Food Conference is the one meat-serving conference they should endorse. 

Like the majority of Jewish events, The Hazon Food Conference will not promote mindless or wasteful meat consumption, nor will it violate tsa’ar ba’alei chaim by promoting animal mistreatment.  On the contrary, the schecting and consumption of the goats at the Food Conference will encourage participants to take responsibility for their food choices.

More importantly, the schecting will not happen in a vaccuum.  It will be one of several sessions throughout the weekend that get participants thinking about meat consumption (ethical, kosher, industrial, abstinence from and otherwise).  Regardless of whether or not participants attend the schecting or eat the goat meat, they will be surrounded by thoughtful conversations about JVNA’s central question, ”Should Jews be Vegetarians?”  For some participants the answer will be no - but if JVNA is serious about the question, they ought to support the Food Conference’s serious engagement with it.

I’ve been a committed Jewish vegetarian for 8 years, but I realized a long while ago that the day I once hoped for (the one where all Jews renounce meat forever) was simply never going to come.  And in the meantime, there is a lot of work to be done to ensure that the Jews who do decide to eat meat are doing it in a way that respects the land, the animal, and themselves.

Read the JVNA’s full Press Release below the jump.

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Not too long ago, I wondered on this blog “Could I play for the other team?” What I meant was after almost 20-years of being a pescatarian (a fish-eating vegetarian, but no meat of any kind for over half of my life), could I go back to eating meat?

I was reconsidering for a number of reasons, all of which are mentioned here, but what was troubling most was the change in identity I would undergo. I absolutely couldn’t — and still can’t — see myself as a carnivore.

The post even attracted the attention of a reporter from Reuters, who quoted me in a story about Compassionate Carnivores, as the voice who was thinking about making the switch, but hadn’t yet done so.

I wasn’t sure when I would be tempted to try meat again, but I had the feeling it was coming any day now, or possibly any month, or year. And I was right. Read more »

On the eve of Thanksgiving, The Jewish Daily Forward (which just this week ran the controversial “Kosher Food Safety Alert” ad) published an article I’m truly grateful for: Kosher Activists Strive To Slaughter With a Conscience. Below is the article in full, which gives shoutouts to Hazon, The Jew & The Carrot, Kosher Conscience, and Heeb n’ Vegan and - more importantly - is one more, very public indicator that the demand for ethical, kosher products is on the rise.

Kosher Activists Strive To Slaughter With a Conscience
Nathaniel Popper
November 21, 2007
The Jewish Daily Forward

After 18 months of planning, New York’s new kosher meat cooperative slaughtered its first animals this week, just in time for Thanksgiving.

It took the founder of Kosher Conscience, Simon Feil, many months to find a shochet, or Jewish ritual slaughterer, who could do the job, and then Feil needed to find a flock of free-range heirloom breed turkeys. But he was not content to deal only with the logistics. When the first turkey went under the knife, Feil was there to cradle it in his arms — feeling the “solemn experience,” as he put it, of life leaving a body.

“It was an emotional day, and I’m still trying to process all the reactions I had to it,” Feil said a few hours after the first turkeys were slaughtered. “You really watch something that is a living creature turn into meat.”

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It’s almost Thanksgiving again - that time of year when families get together around the table and vegetarians (like myself) politely decline the turkey, insisting that there’s plenty on the table they can eat.  Somehow - despite the mound of mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, braised greens, salad, green bean casserole, and roasted root veggies on my plate - someone at dinner usually asks me (in a very concerned voice), “But, are you going to have enough?”

For the last several years, health and sustainability advocates have encouraged people to eat less meat, or go vegetarian for a few meals a week.  When a meal does include meat, they recommend that it be treated as a “side dish,” - not as the primary food item on the plate. 

More importantly, traditional side dishes should not play second fiddle to a pile of turkey!  They deserve to be delicious and prepared with love, not as an afterthought.  So, whether your table includes a bird, a Tofurky (though, I don’t recommend it), or absolutely no turkey-like item, celebrate your sides!  

Leah’s Top 5 ”stand up” side dishes…

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As the logistics (and debate) of schecting a goat at Hazon’s Food Conference next month continue, Alexander Lane over at Chow, describes how he decided to “kill Thanksgiving dinner.” Lane writes:

“Here I am in Maine, having relocated in April after spending my first 34 years around major cities like New York and San Francisco. Strange things happen here, such as wild turkeys wandering out of the woods behind your apartment complex. Even stranger, you develop the desire to shoot and eat them...”

Lane then goes on to describe his choice to forego the shrink-wrapped, store-bought turkey, to have a go at killing and preparing a real live animal.

His food story fits into the newly emerging “do it yourself” genre, which has Brooklyn families running full-scale farms in their backyards, and former supermarket goers jumping at the chance to kill their own animals for meat. These, “how I decided to get in touch with the food system by….” stories seem to be a hybrid of post-Omnivore’s Dilemma” ethics and American’s obsession with reality TV.

Whether DIY foodism will become a mainstay of how American’s source their food, or stay sparse enough to continue being story worthy, remains to be seen. For now, check out Lane’s article, “Gobble, Gobble, Bang,” here.