I’m reporting from the Hazon staff “cleanse” on a comfortable couch on Fire Island.  A ten minute walk in one direction leads to the Atlantic Ocean.  A ten minute walk in the other direction leads to the Long Island Sound.  The garden outside boasts beans, tomatoes, kale, and strawberries so red they almost look cartoonish.

Yesterday, our “advance crew” (5 hearty Hazon staff members) met on the Upper West Side with 20 boxes of mostly organic vegetables and sundry supplies from Fresh Direct, the farmers’ market, and Trader Joes.  We loaded the food onto the freight ferry and followed along on a passenger ferry where we picked it up and - if you can believe it - hauled it by wagon (no cars allowed on the Island) to Phyllis and Marco’s wonderful home.  The next several hours were consumed by organizing the explosion of vegetables (a veritable living room shuk) and kashering the kitchen for the weekend.  After all the questions and researching and debating from the last few weeks about kashering, I thought the actual process would be a nightmare.  But aside from the toxic Easy-Off sprayed into the oven to remove any essence of food from the metal walls, it was fairly straight forward.  Keep your eyes peeled for pictures next week of our adventures in boiling siverware and dipping the blade of our juicer in the Long Island Sound, which ritually kashers it.  For those of you into food porn, we’ll also post an amazingly sexy shot of our fridge, filled to overflowing with miso and green, leafy vegetables.

With kashering done, and the rest of the staff settled in to our beautiful weekend home, our real “work” of the cleanse can begin.  We eased into our sessions with our teacher Hale last night and this morning - discussing digestion and the ways that our eating habits serve as windows into other parts of our lives.  I will post more about the specifics of the cleanse and what we learn after Shabbat.

For now, the thing that amazes me most at this point is the amount of time our staff is spending preparing food together.  Our wonderful chef Linda is the superstar, whipping out nourishing, cleanse-friendly meals like roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed spinach, and savory zucchini and dill soup.  But being with my staffmates, chopping, stirring, preparing vegetables, cleaning up, and making spelt challah for Shabbat (bread products are not usually allowed on the cleanse) is truly amazing - it’s a type of staff bonding that couldn’t occur any other way.

On most staff retreats the food is relegated to the background and prepared by strangers.  For us food, and all of the rich connections our relationships with food hold, is the main occasion.  The reason we kashered the kitchen at this gorgeous Fire Island home was to ensure that all of our staff members could participate, regardless of their level of Jewish observance.  And as I watch my co-workers toast almonds, and take in the food wisdom of their own bodies, I am truly grateful.