Tuv Ha Shavua at Shearith

News from the Meat Eating World

2009-11-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Rubashkin convicted on 86 charges

November 12, 2009

(JTA) -- A jury convicted Sholom Rubashkin, the former owner of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse, of 86 out of 91 fraud charges.

The 12-person jury decision on Thursday in Sioux Falls, S.D. likely means that Rubashkin, 50, will spend the rest of his life in prison; combined sentences could reach over 1,250 years.

Federal authorities launched investigations into the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, Iowa after a May 2008 immigration raid. The jury took four days to deliberate after a monthlong trial, and convicted him on a range of fraud charges, money laundering and failing to pay his suppliers. Rubashkin's lawyers had argued that he was an incompetent businessman.

The trial was moved to South Dakota after an Iowa judge agreed that the juror pool had been prejudiced by media coverage.

Top Chef goes Veggie, Regional and Seasonal

2009-11-10T19:22:00.000-08:00

If you are like me and follow Top Chef religiously, you know that this episode, and winning recipe by Atlanta's Woodfire Grill owner and Top Chef contestant Kevin Gillespie is a few weeks old already - but it sounded and looked so good I just had to share. The challenge was to cook a meal for Natalie Portman, who is a vegetarian. It was so funny watching the chef's reactions tot this "devastating" news! This is not the easiest recipe we've ever posted (I don't know anyone who has a cold smoker lying around their kitchen) but with a few adjustments - I'm sure this will be a wonderful use of our CSA turnips and kale - if anyone experiments and has tips - please share!

Duo of Mushrooms, Smoked Kale, Candied Garlic and Turnip Purée

Chef
Kevin Gillespie Kevin Gillespie

Top Chef, Season 6, Episode 10, Elimination Challenge Winner
Yield

12 SERVINGS
Ingredients
For Braised Morels:

* 2 cups morel mushrooms
* ¼ lb butter, unsalted
* 2 tablespoons water
* 1 teaspoon cream
* Salt
* Lemon juice

For Garlic Syrup:

* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup cider vinegar
* 10 cloves garlic, peeled

For Turnip Puree:

* 2 cups turnips, peeled and sliced
* 2 tablespoons heavy cream
* ¼ lb butter, unsalted
* 1 teaspoon sugar
* 1 cup water
* 3 turnips, quartered (for garnish)

For Pistou:

* ½ cup tarragon leaves
* ¼ cup pistachios, toasted
* 2 cups parsley
* ½-1 cup extra virgin olive oil

For Greens:

* 2 bunches kale
* 1 onion, brunoised
* 1 clove garlic, minced
* ½ teaspoon chili flakes
* 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
* ½ lb butter
* 1 quart water

For Sautéed Hen of the Woods:

* 3 cups hen of the woods mushrooms
* 1 teaspoon butter, unsalted
* 1 tablespoon canola oil
* 1 celery stalk, fine brunoised
* 1 lemon, zested and juiced

Directions

For Garlic Syrup:

1. Caramelize sugar in a little water until a deep amber color.

2. Add vinegar and boil until the mixture redissolves into liquid.

3. Add garlic and reduce ¾ to a syrup consistency (about 1 hour). Reserve.

For Braised Morels:

1. In a small saucepan, emulsify butter into water and cream. Season with salt.

2. Braise mushrooms until tender. Season with lemon juice.

For Turnip Puree:

1. Melt cream, butter, and sugar together until dissolved.

2. Add turnips and cook covered until tender.

3. Pour into vita prep and puree until smooth. If too thick, thin with a little water. Adjust seasoning.

4. Roast the remaining turnips in butter until golden. Season with salt. Reserve.

For Pistou:

1. Combine all ingredients in vita prep.

2. Puree and drizzle in olive oil to emulsify to desired consistency. Season.

For Kale:

1. Smoke kale in cold smoker for 5 minutes.

2. De-stem and wash until cold running water until not slimy.

3. Trim away any brown or discolored parts. Cut into ¼” chiffonade.

4. Emulsify butter into water and add remaining ingredients. Add kale and cook to desired tenderness (5-20 minutes). Adjust seasoning with sugar and salt.

For Sautéed Hen of the Woods:

1. Melt butter with oil. When golden color, add mushrooms, celery, lemon juice and zest.

2. Let sit on heat until golden brown and tender, trying not to stir too much.

3. Take off the heat and season.

To Serve:

1. Spoon pistou onto plate.

2. Set kale next to pistou.

3. Spoon turnip puree on the other side of the pistou. Place quartered turnips on top of puree as garnish.

4. Top kale with mushrooms.

5. Drizzle garlic syrup over pistou.

Box Items This Week:
apples
sweet potatoes
butternuts
collards
kale or asian greens
grits

Enjoy!

Next Thursday, November 19th - The Turkey free Thanksgiving Table
Whether you are consdiering a birdless meal, or just want some inspirational side dish recipes - join Rabbi Norry for a delicious evening of cooking, eating and gratitude.

Come at 5:30 if you can for minyan, then stroll over to the kitchen for a pre-holiday treat to be truly thankful for! After the class we will share the prepared meal together to culminate another wonderful CSA season. Please RSVP to naomi.rabkin@gmail.com - space is limited!

Reflections On the End of the Season

2009-11-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

By Madeline Guzman,
Newsletter coordinator and member of Hazon CSA in Rockville, MA

Tikvat Israel has now experienced almost three seasons of CSA produce. For most of us, being part of a CSA has been a new experience. The reaction to participating in our CSA has ranged from ecstatic to greatly disappointing. Those who have enjoyed the experience aresigning up for the next season. Those of us less pleased are either dropping out or giving the CSA “another chance.” This has led me to think about what each of us is expecting of a CSA. If one comes into this experience expecting a delivery of the “right” quantity of vegetables in perfect size, shape, and flavor that are most enjoyed by your family, you may be disappointed. If one comes into this experience learning to accept what the land produces, one might be amazed by what the earth (and our farmer) have to offer.

As our summer CSA season drew to a close, I reflected on the responses to the produce received by our members. I’m not sure everyone fully appreciates the meaning of a CSA. To me, it means the shared responsibility for bringing fresh food to our table. In conjunction with my CSA membership (and inspired by Danny Bachman), my husband and I started a vegetable garden. Like the experiences of both Danny and Pam Stegall, our CSA farmer, not all has gone according to plan. Some of our produce came out unlike what we expected, some better than expected, and a few crops were even a total loss. The results in my own vegetable garden were probably a mini-experience of what Pam feels throughout her growing season. The difference is that her commitment is to many more people than my own.

True, CSA produce is not perfect. The pesticides and fungicides used on conventional produce do not protect organic produce. Sometimes this means being very careful to wash away animal pests or cut away a damaged portion of a vegetable. Like us, animal pests (and even bacteria and fungus) find our veggies tasty! We need to be a bit gentler and forgiving of what the earth produces.

One particular Hazon CSA in Tenafly NJ, has been hit particularly hard this year. When Steve Golden (Tenafly’s site coordinator) visited the farm, he saw first hand the inexplicable fact that the beets did not grow, despite being planted in the best soil of that particular field. Indeed, the other rootcrops – turnips, carrots and radishes – did not really produce. So too the arugula, as well as the broccoli – which looks like it had some leaf disease which limited its growth. Not to mention the horrible late blight that killed all of our tomatoes and those in neighboring Rockland County and throughout the Northeast.

Crestfallen, Ted (another one of our famers) brought us the few cherry tomatoes which were not completely rotting in the field even though they too were infected (if you left it on your counter to ripen, as we did, the blight overtook the little fellow overnight). We all sympathize with the Stephens who will now have to pull up all the myriad tomato plants and burn them. What a great shame – so much painstaking care and tending going up in smoke. Thankfully, the squash did much better, although the green zucchini harvest was only a fraction of what we would have had if the season were “normal.” That goes for the first planting of cucumbers and string beans. All in all, the spring/summer harvest has been a devastating experience for the Stephens family. (excerpted from The Jew and the Carrot blog, “A Difficult Summer: A Letter from the Tuv Ha’aretz in Tenafly” by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster)

Reading afterward about the support provided to the devastated farming family in this situation was heartwarming. My point is simply that CSA members are literally sharing the successes and failures of farm life. So, dear members, thank you for thinking hard before you commit yourselves to this practice and immersing yourselves in it completely once you have.

Nine Faiths, One Vegan Lunch at Windsor Castle

2009-10-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

On the Agenda — The Largest-Ever Commitment To Take Environmental Action
By Leah Koenig
Published October 27, 2009, The Forward

On Tuesday November 3, His Royal Highness Prince Philip will host over 200 guests for lunch at Windsor Castle, the 900-year-old palace that serves as an official residence of his and Queen Elizabeth’s. But this lunch will be noticeably different from the roasted quail and crème fraîche typical of castle meals. Instead, the menu is entirely vegan and centered on seasonal, regionally sourced ingredients.

The reason: an interfaith conference called “Many Heavens, One Earth: Faith Commitments for a Living Planet,” to be attended by leaders from Jewish, Bahai, Buddhist, Christian, Daoist, Hindu, Muslim, Shinto and Sikh backgrounds. Co-sponsored by the Unite d Nations Development Program and Alliance of Religions and Conservation (or ARC, a faith-based environmental organization co-founded by Prince Philip in 1995), the conference has the goal of presenting unique seven-year commitments that outline each religion’s plan to foster action around climate change within the participants’ communities.

The seven-year framework resonates deeply within Jewish tradition, which mandates a weekly day of rest on Shabbat and a septennial resting of agricultural land in Israel during the shmita year. At the conference, eight Jewish delegates — a collection of educators, entrepreneurs, rabbis, activists and politicians from the United States and Israel — will present a commitment that calls upon Jewish individuals and organizations to “play a distinct and determined role in responding to climate change” between now and the next shmita year, which starts September 2015.

“Jewish people have moved through history by marrying small steps with big vision,” said attendee Nigel Savage, whose organization, Hazon, played a lead role in crafting the Jewish commitment. Now is the time, he said, to connect small actions — like switching to energy-efficient light bulbs or planting a synagogue vegetable garden — with education and advocacy.

While not the first gathering to marry faith and sustainability, this conference marks the largest-ever commitment by faiths to take environmental action. “Religions have the unique capacity to think beyond the next business cycle to long-term generational change,” said delegate Rabbi Yedidya Sinclair, who founded the Jewish Climate Change Campaign in Israel.

Not coincidentally, the conference has been scheduled to precede the international climate-change talks that will be held in Copenhagen in December. “The U.N. and World Bank (which will attend both gatherings) are among the world’s biggest, multilateral organizations,” said Rabbi Sinclair. “These organizations are beginning to realize that religions have a crucial role in addressing climate change.”

So what about that lunch? The meal at Windsor will be, in effect, a model for the type of eco-minded choices that the delegates hope to encourage within their constituencies. Co-conference organizer Victoria Finlay said that ARC chose vegan food to provide a low-impact meal that accommodates the widest spectrum of the delegates’ dietary needs. Daoists, for example, cannot eat onions, garlic or other ingredients that might cause a disruption of airflow within the body. Religious Hindus avoid meat and eggs and observant Muslims eschew pork and meat that has not been ritually slaughtered. (Understandably, the organizers avoided the logistical headache of offering separate meals that cater to nine different religions.)

The resulting menu includes roasted pear salad with cobnuts and chicory, Portobello mushrooms stuffed with artichoke and herbs, pearl barley risotto and organic wine bottled by Orthodox nuns in France’s Rhone Valley. This will be the first-ever vegan effort undertaken by Edible Food Design, one of Windsor’s regular catering companies. Head chef Sophie Douglas-Bate said her “heart sank at the thought of cooking without butter and cream,” but she ultimately enjoyed the challenge.

Despite the organizers’ least-common-denominator approach, however, the lack of a mashgiach and separate dishes means that kosher-keeping Jewish delegates will not be able to eat the lunch — they are the only participants unable to do so. And although they were offered the option of ordering food from an outside kosher kitchen, some of them declined. “I realized I’d be eating food that was triple-wrapped in plastic with disposable cutlery at an environmental conference,” said Rabbi Sinclair of the kosher offerings. “That was a moment when I realized kosher is important, but not enough.” Instead, Sinclair plans to eat fruit, salad and “a few granola bars,” brought from home.

While Rabbi Sinclair’s lunch might not be entirely satisfying, ultimately the more important challenges lie beyond one lunch at Windsor. “We’re interested in what happens next.” Savage said. “The next shmita year is far enough away to imagine big changes, but near enough that it’s not pie in the sky.”

For Hazon, the seven-year plan is part of a larger campaign that has already begun to galvanize action around climate change in the Jewish community. Delegate Naomi Tsur, a seasoned environmental activist who recently became deputy mayor of Jerusalem, intends to use the plan as a springboard toward a more thoughtful approach to the shmita year in 2015. “Shmita is big business in our city, but the way it is currently observed is a tragedy,” she said. Tsur hopes to involve Jerusalem’s city gardens in raising awareness around sustainable agriculture’s connection to climate change. “This is our opportunity to think globally and act locally,” she said.

Addendum

2009-10-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

Neglected to include that the first recipe is for INCREDIBLE pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Riverview and Recipes

2009-10-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

Box this week:

apples
sweet potatoes
collards
arugula
lettuce
grits
muffins
turnips
cilantro

We enjoyed a beautiful day up at Riverview Farm on Sunday. We got a full tour of of the farm - pet pigs, saw where the corn is milled into the grits we get to enjoy this week, and sampled turnip greens and cilantro along the way. Of course we shared a delicious meal that ended with some seasonal and super yummy dessert - the recipes generously shared by Robin Rosen and Louise Spiro

INGREDIENTS

1 cup canned pumpkin (try subbing some pureed sweet potatoes for some of the pumpkin)

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 bag semisweet chocolate chips 12 oz.

DIRECTIONS

Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.

Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.

Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

Apple Coffee Cake

3 cups flour
1 /2 cup orange juice
2 1/4 cup of sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup oil
3 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
3 1/2 tsp baking powder

Combine and beat for 3 minuets

apple mixture

4 apples sliced

add 3 tsp cinnamon and 3 Tablespoons sugar ( I used brown sugar)

optional to add to apples:3/4 cups melter butter (or margarine)

2 cups graham cracker crumbs 3/4 cups brown sugar

3/4 cups chopped nuts

Grease and flour tube pan. pour 1/4 of batter into pan and place 1/2 apples on top. Add remaining batter and cover the top with remain apples. Bake 350 degree for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until brown.

Upcoming Events:

Vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes with Rabbi Norry

Whether you are thinking about a bird free feast, or simply looking for some new vegetarian sides and option - join us for an evening of inspiration with Rabbi Norry. Be in touch (shearith.organic@gmail.com) if you are interested in participating, as space will be limited (Tentative date, Thursday, November 19th)

A Contrarian View on Apple Picking

2009-10-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

This article comes from Slate.com, and it's a rather cranky view of Pick-Your-Own Apple operations. We tend to get very righteous and rhapsodic about fresh food in our CSA, so just for "fun" I thought a contrarian point of view might generate some thinking or comment. By the way, our visit to Riverview Farm yesterday was magical and delightful -- a great outing and community builder. Anyway, if you'd like to respond to this article, I'm happy to post other points of view. Just send an email to ninarubinatl@gmail.com

Against Apple Picking
Why pick-your-own orchards are a wasteful scam.

By Daniel Gross
Updated Saturday, Oct. 24, 2009, at 7:00 AM ET

Every autumn, as the leaves change and brisk winds banish all remnants of summer, many of us head to the country to participate in a feel-good seasonal tradition: apple picking. But as Daniel Gross argues in this article from October 2006, it's delusional to think that the activity is good for the environment, farmers, or the economy. Apple picking may be a satisfying ritual and pleasant day out with the kids, but it's also a wasteful scam.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times ran a poignant article about anguished fruit farmers in California. Because of a crackdown on illegal immigrants, they couldn't find workers willing to pick their pears, even at $150 per day. And as a result, perfectly good fruit rotted in the fields.

Perhaps the California farmers, who depend on migrant Mexican labor, have got the wrong business model. Instead of paying workers to pick their fruit, they should try another strategy: making customers pay to pick the fruit themselves. Savvy farmers all over the country have discovered a practice that might not work as a nationwide agricultural policy, but that has allowed some economically inefficient orchards to thrive: Encourage yuppies and their progeny to come pick your fruit—they'll pay handsomely for the privilege, buy more than they'd ordinarily consume, and then shell out for all sorts of other value-added products. It's the best use of child labor since Manchester's early 19^th-century textile mills.

Apple picking is a cherished rite of fall, a wholesome and fun family outing, a throwback to a simpler time when people weren't so disconnected from the production of their sustenance. I look forward to it every year. It's also a wasteful scam.

We've been educated (or bullied, depending on your outlook) by foodies like Alice Waters and Dan Barber to adopt the European concept of terroir—the best stuff to consume is the stuff grown in closest proximity. For people in the Northeast, that's fine in the summer, when the Union Square greenmarket bursts with locally grown exotic greens, yellow squash, and heirloom tomatoes of such flavor (and cost) as to make a gourmand weep.

But in the fall, while the region's landscape lights up with foliage, the farm stands' color palette becomes more drab: potatoes, root vegetables, pumpkins, gourds, and, of course, apples. And so, to the pick-your-own orchards we go.

Silverman's Farm, the farm I frequent in Fairfield County, Conn., is a pick-your-own farm for Type A's: a high-volume, diversified joint. It attracts pickers from New Haven, New York, and all points in between. (You can rusticate and still be back to Park Slope in time for dinner.) Several tractors take turns hauling wagons with families up the slopes, and then back to the large store, where pumpkins, jams, ciders, pies, and flowers are sold. After jostling through the crowds—gaining access to the choice apple trees and a quick checkout lane requires the same level of competitiveness, foresight, and sharp elbows as winning admission to top nursery schools—it's across the street to the petting zoo for the exquisite pleasure of having llamas and goats lick pellets out of your hands.

On Sunday, we experienced a more laid-back, echt version of apple-picking on a postcard-perfect day at Bartlett's Orchard in the Berkshires.

The apple-picking experience sheds light on some unflattering truths about the American economy.

First, we regard nature as a realm to be conquered and tamed for our recreation, not to be preserved and nourished for its own sake. At the orchards, kids are instructed on how to pick apples—twist them gently—in such a way that leaves the tree intact. (Of course, for every child who closely adheres to the instructions, there's another who shakes the branch heartily, sending a cascade of smaller apples, leaves, and branches down to the ground.) But these trees are hardly natural. They aren't the sort of majestic, voluptuous apple trees you would have found in the Garden of Eden. They're dwarf apple trees, stumpy bushes engineered so that their fruit grows just a few feet off the ground. They're the veal calves of the fruit world.

In the United States, overconsumption is encouraged as a positive good (see under: McMansions, SUVs, all-you-can-eat buffets). Add pick-your-own apples to the list. At Silverman's Farm, pickers have a choice: $14 for a small bag and $24 for a large bag. At Bartlett's, it's less: $9 for a peck (10 pounds), $15 for a bushel (20 pounds). But even though consumers here avoid all the supply-chain costs they would pay at a grocery store, it's not that much cheaper. At Peapod, a three-pound bag of apples goes for $2.79, about 93 cents a pound.

And, just as people who visit wineries end up walking away with a case instead of a bottle, it's a given that people leave pick-your-own orchards with a surfeit of apples. We left with two almost-full small bags, about 20 pounds, or between 60 and 70 apples. In a good week at home, we'll go through a dozen. Pickers tell themselves they'll put the farm-fresh apples to good use: making homemade apple sauce, or whipping up an apple pie. But most people don't have the time. Besides, pick-your-own orchards sell the processed versions right there, in the irresistible form of apple cider and apple-cider donuts. (Even when they go to pick fresh produce, Americans use it as an excuse to consume deep-fried, carb-loaded junk.)

Apple-picking also makes us vulnerable to that peculiarly American malady: the paradox of choice. Sophisticated American consumers must develop the ability to pick and choose among hundreds of varieties of wine, cheese, chocolate, and coffee. Well, like everything else in life, apple connoisseurship can be reduced to a convenient spreadsheet. Did you know that Granny Smith apples are tart and are superb for pies but poor for sauce, while Sun Crisp are tangy sweet and are very good for salad but only fair for pies? And how can you keep track of all the different varieties once they're in the bag? If you thought comparing apples to oranges was a fruitless endeavor, try comparing apples to apples.

Daniel Gross is the Moneybox columnist for Slate and the business columnist for Newsweek. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com and follow him on Twitter. His latest book, Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, has just been published in paperback.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2233467/

Visit our famer -- Sunday October 25th

2009-10-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

1. Box Items this week:

apples, greens, lettuce, peppers
Charlotte's neighbor made the cane syrup from sugar cane he grew and hand stripped and turned into syrup - great for baking and biscuits!

2. Reminder - this Sunday, October 25th 2:00 PM - if you haven't responded to the evite - let us know if you're planning on coming (via evite or write to me at naomi.rabkin@gmail.com - We'll send out directions and caravan/carpool information on Friday morning.

3. A few of us have been discussing the possibility of donating a portion of the Tuv Ha'Aretz administrative fees to the relief efforts of local farmers after the flood. Please respond to the poll when you RSVP to the farm visit event, or email naomi.rabkin@gmail.com by Friday, October 23rd.

Naturally Wrong

2009-10-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

By, Liat Racin, found of kosherslowfood.org
This piece was adapted from the Jew and the Carrot Blog

“These are the bad guys,” I whispered to myself in dismay as I exited the Natural Products Expo East at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Hall. I felt disappointed and ‘empty,’ even though my bag was completely full of free food and beverage product samples. I came to this three day exhibition with high expectations. I envisioned a room full of like-minded entrepreneurs and retailers, dedicated to selling and promoting organic and environmentally sustainable products. Though businesses and their respective products were cannily marketed in this manner, they seemed anything but. It was a clear exhibition, rather, of how industry is undermining the true mission of the organic movement.

As I roamed past the 1,500 some booths, most of the products on display seemed identical. In addition to most food samples being distributed with plastic cutlery (with no recycling bin in close proximity most of the times), ‘organic cookies’ followed by ‘organic ready-made dinners’ and ‘organic electrolyte filled’ beverages seemed to be the major trend within the food section. It all seemed like one big fast food and sugar-albeit organic- loaded event wrapped up in a convenient microwavable plastic package. Sadly, only a few businesses seemed to market genuinely sustainable and natural products.

Disheartened, I traveled a few hours north to attend Maine’s annual Common Ground Country Fair, organized by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. It was a breath of fresh air. Family owned farms and businesses offering a unique assortment of organic food, fiber, cosmetics, and wisdom reminded me that local economics is the most natural and environmentally sound production and distribution practice. With no bottled plastic water beverages in site, I happily drank the ‘naturally’ electrolyte filled local tap water while celebrating local culture and traditions. I was forced to question my consumption habits rather than convincing myself that the most difficult change I would have to make was buying organic or natural at the nearby supermarket giant.

In retrospect, my mistake was simple; I falsely equated organic and/or natural foods and other consumer products to being sustainable and healthy. But to really go natural, we must be able to look past the shiny packaging and see the true product inside along with the people who helped produce it. For many of us who are busy and work full-time, the shrewd industrial marketing schemes are indeed dangerous. As a general rule of thumb, it’s best to follow this simple rhyme: anything that may appease our conscious about going ‘green’, while conveniently requiring minimal changes to our daily routine, is naturally, naturally wrong.

Bounty and Deprivation – Reflections after the Harvest of Sukkot

2009-10-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

By Liz Schwartz
Liz, a member of the Portland Tuv Ha’Aretz, allowed us to adapt this drash which she gave during Sukkot. We share it now as the topics it addresses of food’s abundance and scarcity, are still relevant.

Judaism is particularly connected to food and Sukkot, especially, to the bounty of our fall harvest. In Portland, now is the time for the first apples of the season, in all their amazing varieties, for winter squashes, for root vegetables, and for the last of summer’s abundance: the tomatoes, the zucchini, the pesto made from homemade basil. It is a time to celebrate the simple pleasure of growing and cooking and eating.

The flip side of Sukkot, the season of bounty, is deprivation. While my sweetie and I have been able to eat like kings this summer from our very own front-yard garden, many in our community never get to eat a fresh tomato or cucumber or any other produce, for that matter. My neighborhood in NE Portland, which is mostly low-income, was, not too long ago, a food desert. Now we have the grocery stores, New Seasons and a Safeway within walking distance. But despite this, fresh produce is still not a regular part of many of my neighbors’ diets.

Awhile back, I had several discussions with friends and acquaintances, including a local farmer, about why low-income people don’t eat local, fresh, organic food. I was surprised at their responses (I’d characterize these folks as liberal progressives). One person said that if people just stopped buying soda they could afford fruits and vegetables instead. Another said that if people took the money they spent on drugs and alcohol and used it for food, they could afford to eat properly (he was apparently equating the term “low-income” with “substance abuser,” something that really surprised me). Several people commented, in rather disparaging ways, that if people understood more about nutrition and health they’d make better choices. Not one of the people I spoke with talked about the cost of food as a barrier to eating more produce. As a low-income person myself, I was amazed at these responses.

Portland’s chapter of Tuv Ha’Aretz has been involved in trying to help with some of these issues through our gleaning parties. We’ve gone out to our partner farm, Sauvie Island Organics, three times now (and we hope to go more), and with the help of over 20 people, we’ve been able to harvest over 700 lbs of food, all of which we’ve donated to local food pantries. It’s been a wonderful experience to be out on the farm picking beans and squash, getting to know new people and, most of all, saving good food that would otherwise go uneaten and giving it to those in need. Your CSA can do this too!

As we move from the bounty of Sukkot, let us be mindful of those who long to buy apples for their children but regretfully pass them by. These people are our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, even perhaps ourselves. Let us recommit ourselves to the true promise of Sukkot, and work to provide healthy affordable and delicious food for everyone.

Great Zucchini Recipe

2009-10-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Zucchini is still much with us, even as the weather cools and the days shorten. If you're absolutely sick of using zucchini in ratatouille or stuffed baked zukes and want to try something really simple, here's chef Michael Symon's Zucchini Crudo. Photo by Donna Ruhlman from a forthcoming cookbook by Symon.

Zucchi Crudo

2 zucchini (about ¾ pound), thinly sliced
2 yellow summer squash (about 1½ pounds), thinly sliced
1 tablespoon plus ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 shallot, finely sliced
Grated zest and juice of 3 lemons, or to taste
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
1⁄3 cup slivered or sliced almonds, toasted
1⁄3 cup chopped fresh dill

Combine the zucchini and yellow squash in a colander in the sink and sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the salt over it. Toss to coat, and set aside for 10 to 15 minutes, no longer. In a large bowl, combine the garlic and shallot, sprinkle with the remaining ¼ teaspoon salt, and whisk in the lemon zest and juice. Whisk in the olive oil in a steady stream, then the almonds and dill. Taste for seasoning and acidity (it should be nicely acidic). Add the zucchini and squash to the dressing, toss, and serve immediately.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

This week's Box

2009-10-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

Apples

Sweet Potatoes

Butternuts

Eggplant

Greens

Radish or Turnips

Peppers

Eggplant "Pasta"

Ingredients

2 medium-large eggplants

Kosher salt, for purging

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon chile flakes

4 small tomatoes, seeded and chopped

1/2 cup cream

4 tablespoons basil chiffonade

1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Freshly ground pepper

Directions

Peel each eggplant leaving 1-inch of skin at the top and bottom unpeeled. Slice the eggplant thinly lengthwise, about 1/4-inch thick. Evenly coat each slice with the salt and purge on a sheet pan fitted with a rack for 30 minutes. Rinse with cold water and roll in paper towels to dry. Slice the pieces into thin strips to resemble pasta.

In a large saute pan heat the oil. Add the garlic and chili flakes and toast. Add the eggplant "pasta" and toss to coat. Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes. Add the cream and increase heat to thicken sauce. Finally add the basil and Parmesan and toss to combine. Season with pepper, no salt needed as the eggplant will have residual salt from the purge. Serve immediately.

Alton Brown Food Network Website

www.foodnetwork.com

Reusing and Recycling Your Lulav and Etrog

2009-10-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

Adapted from The Jew and the Carrot Blog, by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

As a teacher of Judaism, I am often at a loss to explain one of the most beautiful and yet most pagan Jewish rituals: the celebration of Sukkot with the four species (arba minim) of the lulav and etrog. For me, the beauty of the lulav and etrog is often bittersweet, since my time with the two is so fleeting. Unlike other Jewish ritual objects (like candlesticks or a shofar), the four species are living objects. I have to enjoy them before they wilt away.

But that doesn’t mean you need to throw them out when Sukkot is over. I was inspired by my colleague Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner (founder of the Foundation For Family Education, Inc, a source of interactive Judaic programming, as well as www.jewishfreeware.org), who shared the following list of ways to “recycle” the four species. With his list in mind, I can continue to bring the happiness of sukkot, and the diverse symbolism of the four species, into all corners of my Jewish life for the rest of the year.

Rabbi Lerner wrote: “I save the etrog and use the peel and/or zest to make a vodka or tequila liqueur used on Hanukkah as a historical connection between Sukkot and Hanukkah, either in recipes or as a beverage. With a “kosher l’pesah” potato vodka, I use etrog zest and peel to make a liqueur for the Seder. When the children were young, we saved their etrogim in a vase with their name and the year written on it in Hebrew.

Some people like to insert cloves and cinnamon bark into the etrog and use it as a solid “besammim” (spices) for Havdalah. Others use the etrog as it dries to keep drawers of clothing smelling fresh.

I use the lulav itself to brush hametz during bedikat hametz (checking for hametz before Passover) and then burn both together.

Another use is a decoration for the sukkah in following years, writing in Hebrew the name of the user(s) and the year of use. I use the myrtle leaves included with other spices for besamim for Havdalah. The stems I cut into lengths and then cut a pen point as on a feather quill for writing small Jewish ritual texts such as mezuzot or tefillen. (I should add that I teach how it is done in theory, but I am not a sofer.)

I root the willows because they are not the “weeping willow” with drooping serrated leaves but a special species known as the “River Willow” or “arvei nahal” with a reddish-brown twig and long, smooth and narrow leaves. After they sprout roots in vases with water, I transplant them into containers with soil. Thereafter I distribute them as a Jewish “Johnny willow tree” to as many who would plant them. They can be raised into trees or large bushes as I once did in a congregation from which I had students cut fresh aravot for the lulav each day and then ultimately to tie hoshanot, for Hoshana Rabbah.

I use the box from the etrog for a tzedakah box, although as one person told me “you can always use another box.” They are wonderful for storing Jewish collectibles, and if fragile, they also have today a foam rubber lining.

I used the flax in which the etrog once used to be wrapped to twist into wicks as is described in the Mishnah, and I show how well they work in Hanukkah workshops using my collection of clay oil lamps from the Bronze through Byzantine Israel. Now, because flax is rarely used, I have turned to use the foam rubber in the etrog box from which to cut and create decorations for our Sukkah.

The plastic bag for the lulav becomes a wonderful quiver for my arrows for use in my Lag BaOmer programs of archery and arrowheads, and even a Bible lesson on David’s use of artillery.” Happy Recycling!

Effects of the Storms on local Farmers

2009-09-29T22:02:00.001-07:00

DOUGLASVILLE, Ga. -- As Judith Winfrey walks the seven acres of her organic farm, there's little evidence that just days ago almost all the rows were green with one growing vegetable or another.

"This soil used to be so fluffy I could gently push my hand in and go all the way down past my wrist. Now i can barely force my fingers into it--it's all clay and silt," said Winfrey.

Monday's flood caused the nearby Anneewakee Creek to overflow it's banks and submerge Winfrey's Love is Love Farm under an estimated 10 feet of water. Two-thirds of the crops were destroyed. The floodwaters detroyed a bevy of vegetables including kale, spinach, endive radishes and carrots. A number of the fields were days away from harvest.

The farm itself sustained damage. Ancient, canopy trees were ripped from their roots. A bridge over the creek was washed away. The irrigation system is broken along with a pump that worked on the property's pond.

Winfrey's farm provides food to hundreds of people around Metro Attlanta. She and her partner, Joe Reynolds, run a small food stand next to the Atlanta restaurant Baccanalia and paticipate in the Peachtree Road Farmers Market.

"It's really devastating to think about how much care, time, effort and money was poured into this place and into this soil. It's hard to look at it and see it all gone," said Winfrey.

Winfrey's farm is one of several that's reported losses from the recent flooding. The Georgia Department of Agriculture is working on a dollar estimate of damage and has crews on the ground doing assessments. They hope to have some totals by the end of the week.

Meantime, Winfrey and Reynolds aren't wasting anytime in getting back to work. While it could take weeks or months, friends and fellow farmers have already offered to help with cleanup and re-planting.

"We've got to start over. There are a lot of people who depend on our organic food and this is more that just about our farm, this is a community that provides quality food for Atlanta," said Winfrey.

The Georgia Farmer Flood Relief Fund has been set up to take tax-deductible donations, administered by Slow Food Atlanta. To donate to the fund, checks can be made out
and sent to :

Georgia Flooded Farms Relief Fund

P.O. Box 2641

Smyrna, GA 30081

SOURCE www.11alive.com

This Sunday's Field of Greens festival at Whipoorwhill Hollow Organic Farm from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM brings together locally grown food, live music, and green living education all in a family friendly environment ($15 for adults, kids under 12 FREE!)

www.fieldofgreensfestival.com

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED AT SPLIT CEDAR FARMS (Neil Taylor's

Farm) They were also affected by last week's storms and need volunteers to do hand cultivation. If you are interested in volunteering as a group, get in touch with naomi.rabkin@gmail.com or Contact Volunteer Coordinator at taylorganic@bellsouth.net to find a time to go up on your own.

For more information about the fund and upcoming fundraising events you can also visit

www.slowfoodatlanta.org

UPCOMING EVENTS:
Sukkot Potluck Thursday, October 8th 5:30-6:45
Farm Visit Sunday, October 25th 2:00-4:30 (RSVP for both to naomi.rabkin@gmail.com)

How to Plant Garlic

2009-09-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

By Madeline Guzman
Newsletter coordinator from the Rockville, MD Tuv Ha’Aretz site

The best time to plant garlic is after the first frost date, this translating into mid-October in Maryland and much of the Northern regions of the country, which is coming up soon! Garlic is part of the allium genus (the onion plant family) which also includes scallions, chives, onions, shallots, and leeks. All of these are perennial bulbous plants which contain cysteine sulfoxide,a chemical which gives these plants their distinctive taste and odors There are about 1,250 species of this genus, making it one of the largest plant genera in the world!

Garlic is very easy to grow. It would make the perfect vegetable for the first-time vegetable gardener. You may begin with just one bulb of garlic. Obtain it from a farmers market, a seed company, your CSA farmers, or even a garlic festival. Do not use garlic from the grocery store, as those bulbs are usually imported and may harbor disease. Begin by dividing the garlic bulb into cloves. Each clove, with its thin, white, papery skin, will be a seed for a new garlic bulb. Allow the cloves to dry overnight before planting. Choose a garden site that is sunny, but not too damp.

Prepare your garden by loosening the soil and adding a scoopful of compost, working the compost into the rest of the soil with your shovel. Do not use any cloves that appear damaged. Plant each clove one inch deep and 4 inches apart. Each bulb of garlic usually contains about 20 cloves. You can plant as many of these as you want, and use the rest for cooking. It might be best to label the garden spot so you do not confuse the long leaves that will emerge as weeds (a sad experience I had last year within over-zealous garden helper in my own flower garden).

After planting, firm up the soil around each clove. Cover all with a layer of mulch or straw. Mulching the ground will prevent weeds from sprouting around each plant and will protect each clove from the biting cold of winter. The mulch does not have to be removed in order for the plants to emerge.

Your garlic bulbs will be nearing harvest time when you see the leaves withering and turning yellow (if you are in the northeast, this won’t be until about July). When the leaves appear almost completely dry, gently dig up each bulb without removing the dead leaves. Allow the bulbs to completely dry by spreading them individually on a screen or newspaper. When dry, cut off the leaves and stems to within an inch of the bulb. Store the bulbs either in a cool area of your home (the cooler, the better) or in your refrigerator. Never store garlic in plastic bags which does not allow the living bulb to “breathe.”

Your garlic is now ready to use. Once you harvest your own garlic, you’ll be so proud of having grown a self-sustaining (a word we love) vegetable. If you grow too many, simply bring them in to share with other CSA members or friends at work. Happy gardening!

Nutritional Labeling - Beware of So Called Smart Choices®

2009-09-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

From Food Democracy Now!

Ever get the feeling that multinational food corporations are just trying to sell you a bunch of junk in a pretty package? Well, the new Smart Choices® Program proves that hunch to be true. Recently, an alliance of over a dozen giant food conglomerates and some industry “experts” came up with a new nutrition labeling program meant to help consumers make “smarter food and beverage choices.

You might be surprised what they define as a “Smart Choice”: products like Froot Loops®, Keebler Cookie Crunch® and Lucky Charms®.

Are they serious? In an age when childhood obesity and type II diabetes has become an epidemic, labeling sugar cereals as smart choices is unacceptable. Please join us in telling the FDA and USDA to investigate the Smart Choices® Program and put an end to deceptive labeling. http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/

The new Smart Choices® label, a large, bright green checkmark, is starting to appear on packages of processed food across the country thanks to the help of major corporations like ConAgra, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Kraft, PepsiCo, Tyson Foods and Unilever.

For only $100,000, a company can join the Smart Choices® program and “recommend” products that contain as much as 44% sugar to your children.

This new label is a sign of everything that is wrong with food industry driven labeling programs. According to Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the criteria for the new “smarter food” label is so low that: “You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria.”

Jacobson, who was on the original panel of experts that worked to create the nutritional standards for the Smart Choices® program, resigned last September in disgust because the results were so far in favor of the industry. Thankfully, the FDA and USDA have taken notice. The agencies sent a joint letter saying they would “be concerned if any FOP (front of package) labeling systems…had the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods…”

The letter is a good start, but The FDA and USDA need to do more. The Smart Choices program will encourage bad food choices if it's allowed to proceed. And the FDA and USDA have the ability to stop it. Please sign this petition now and tell the FDA and the USDA that Froot Loops® is NOT a Smart Choice for our children.

Kitchen Wisdom

2009-09-22T09:32:00.000-07:00

This piece comes from Rabbi Dara Frimmer, of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles. It was in part inspired by her work on the Hazon Food Conference executive committee and the work she’s been doing to create a healthier and more sustainable world for all.

Growing up, our kitchen was the room of gathering. It did not have the most comfortable chairs. No fine artwork decorated the walls. And yet, something about the kitchen drew people in and kept them together. As it turns out, some of my best learning took place in the kitchen.

The kitchen was a place to test out authority, to challenge tradition, to practice assertiveness:

Why do we keep 2 sets of dishes, but we eat Chinese food on paper plates? How come Laura, my babysitter, can have a glass of milk with dinner, but I can’t? If we eat crab cakes in Cape Cod, what’s the point of keeping a Kosher home? “We’re doing it for your Bubbe and Zaide in Brooklyn,” said my mother. “So they feel comfortable when they come to visit.” “We’re doing it because I said so,” replied my father. “When you’re older, you can make your own decisions.”

And so I did. I entered Stanford University with a strong critique of my Jewish identity: It felt hypocritical, fractured, non-responsive to questions of relevance, justice and inclusivity. For years, I studied other religions, in awe of their ability to reinterpret and reframe ancient traditions. And then someone taught me about eco-kashrut, a language that united food, justice and holiness. Eco-Kashrut suggests that the health and wages of farmers, day-laborers, and restaurant employees should be factored into the kosher-certification process. Environmental impact matters. Treatment of animals matter. Amidst these debates of tradition and innovation, I felt as though I was back in my childhood kitchen: Questioning. Curious. Engaged.

The kitchen taught me about my parents:

It was clear that my mother and father had very different ways of handling food. My mother followed recipes. Line by Line. All ingredients were placed on the counter ahead of time. Measuring spoons and cups close at hand. Timer ready. Kitchen sink clear. She was deliberate. Cautious. Ritualistic. She was loyal to her favorite recipes: for kugel, for fish, for matzo ball soup. She made notes in the margins of cookbooks: “Serves 8 not 10!” and “Perfect for Passover!” Seated around the kitchen table, she would ask, “How was your day?”– an addition she included every night as if it was the final line of the recipe.

My father, my his memory be a blessing, was her foil. He would commandeer the kitchen on special occasions. He’d tear recipes out of the New York Times. Sometimes a few lines would be missing. The flame would be heating up the pan of oil, as he rustled through the cabinets looking for ingredients. Spices were measured by pouring them into his hand and then emptying them into the pot. Food was tasted and sampled and adjusted along the way. Sauces spattered across the stovetop and tiles. Culinary magic and mystery came at the cost of a few mistakes. Sometimes we ended up at a restaurant for dinner. Failure was simply a part of the process.

My kitchen teaches me about myself:

Today, I line my kitchen counter with glass jelly jars, filled with beans and barley and quinoa and peas. They stand in a row, in perfect order. Recipes are clipped by magnet onto the fridge. Sometimes I follow them. Sometimes not. I measure in cups and spoons, and in-between pinched fingers and open palms. I try to remember that the experience of cooking – all of the smells, the textures, the shapes, the colors – the experience is as important as the final product. I try to take a moment before the first bite to bless the food that sits before me, the friends who have joined me, and the life that has carried me up until this moment.

Back in the days of the Temple, our ancestors would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem 3 times a year. 3000 years later, many of us find ourselves in a similar pattern. We visit our Temple a few times a year, seeking connection, a spark of holiness, a glimpse of the Divine. After the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the next generation of leaders called rabbis reinvented Judaism to survive without the central site of worship. Each home became a Temple. Each table became an altar. Each person became a priest. Our daily prayers served in place of sacrifices. Our braided challah on Friday nights became the sacred Sabbath offering.

We do not have to wait for our yearly pilgrimages to experience a spark of holiness. Invite over some family or friends and share some food…and some company…and some creativity…and some stories. Sit around the kitchen table and share some wisdom. Some of my best learning took place in the kitchen – what about you?

I Hate Jewish Food

2009-09-20T18:50:00.000-07:00

The other night my husband and I were laughing with friends about how supermarkets in the south lump all of the Jewish holidays together, toting out the matzah, potato pancake mix, and honey cakes - whether it's Passover or Rosh Hashanah. I even saw Hamantaschen on display at the Briarcliff Whole Foods (you'd think the foodie mecca across from Kosher Gourmet would know better!).

Similarly, while Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah, Purim and Pesach have their own signature items, the Ashkenazi holiday table still does not vary all that dramatically from season to season. As a veg-aquarian, the almighty brisket does not make it to my table, and I know, it's a shonda, but I just do not care for kugel - noodle, potato, sweet savory. It just doesn't do it for me. And while I love a good roasted root vegetable, the cloying sweetness of most tzimmes recipes is totally unappetizing to me.

It was not until a few years ago when I started experimenting with my own cooking that I began to realize that tradition is no excuse for bland and unhealthy cooking. Rabbi Norry, in a vegetarian Passover cooking class a few years ago, made the wonderful point that the best way to celebrate and honor creation is to celebrate and glorify the bounty of each season's produce. What could be more Jewish than that? The squashes, apples, and greens of this season have so much color, vibrancy and flavor to add to our holidays and celebrations. Let's challenge each other to reimagine "Jewish" cooking this season.

Join us on October 7th for our annual Sukkot Potluck from 5:30-6:45 and share your best vegetarian/dairy creations. I know from experience that there are some incredible cooks out there, so let's set the bar high!

Here are two of the "stars" of our Rosh Hashanah table this year featuring North Georgia Apples and Delicata Squash.

Shanah Tovah!

Delicata Squash and Celery Root Puree
I overheard some people at pickup wondering what to do with the oblong speckled delicata squashes especially if you don't like sweet veggies. The celery root balances out the sweetness to make a smooth and savory puree that my children like to dip roasted cauliflower in.

2 small delicata squashes
1 large celery root (celeriac)
1/4 cup cream or milk
1-2 tablespoons of butter
one head garlic
2 tablespoons chopped chives (divided)
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400. Cut squashes in half and remove seeds. brush halves with olive oil and spinke with salt and pepper. Roast for 30-45 minutes, or until squashes are soft. Cut top off of garlic head and brush with oil and a little salt and roast garlic head. Meanwhile, bring a medium saucepan of water to boil. Peel celery root and then cut into large cubes. Salt boiling water and cook celery root pieces for 20 minutes (until fork tender). Drain celery root and puree with roasted squash (skin removed). In saucepan melt butter and one tbsp chopped chives, and 2-3 cloves roasted garlic. Add milk or cream and heat at medium (do not boil). Add milk mixture to squash and puree again in food processor or use immersion blender. Season with Salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with 1 tbsp. chopped chives if desired.

Flounder with Apple Saute

3 tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. butter (optional)
4 apples sliced
1/4 cup sliced shallots
1/4 apple juice
1 tsp. white balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. veggie broth
1 small-medium onion, sliced.
2 cloves garlic and 1 inch peeled ginger (minced)
1/2 tsp. curry powder (optional)

Heat 1 tbsp. olive oil and 1 tsp butter in pan. Add shallots and onions to pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Brown shallots and onions on medium heat for 15 minutes. Add minced garlic and ginger and curry powder, and saute for one minute. Add apples and stir. Deglaze pan with apple juice (or cider). Reduce by 1/2 and add vinegar and veggie broth. Simmer on low until fish is ready.

Bread fish with flour, eggwash and breadcrumbs. Pan fry in oil and another tsp. or so of butter for 3-5 minutes on each side, or until fish flakes. (Fish may be kept warm in 200 degree oven.)

Serve fish over puree, and top with apple mixture.

Elephants in our refrigerator?

2009-09-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

As we all prepare to reflect, renew and restore ourselves for the new year, here are some interesting articles to ponder. and a yummy sounding recipe from celebrity chef Michael Ciarello that is an interesting take on apples and honey (you could even substitute the frisee in the recipe for the arugula we are getting in our boxes : )

Shanah Tovah everyone! May this year bring us all health, happiness and sweet and sustainable lives : )

Box items this week: Tomatoes, Pac Choi, Peppers, Apples, Eggplant, Arugula, Delicata Squash, Muscadines Shelled Peas

ELEPHANTS IN OUR REFRIGERATOR
by Susan Bodnar Adapted from the Jew and the Carrot

Recently, Michael Pollan linked the reduction of medical costs to the even more controversial reformation of the food industry, what he calls the elephant in the national debate about the health care crisis. While Washington dukes out the legislative challenges to securing a healthier national environment, the country’s children have already returned to another school year and the Jewish New Year is upon us. Can we really wait for all this legislation to be enacted? Not me. I’m joining others who believe that change begins at the kitchen table. This year we are going to do a family food tashlich and symbolically cast away the elephants in our own refrigerators, the habitual bad food practices of everyday life.

1) Casting away disembodied eating

We’ll be taking more family expeditions to Farmer’s Markets or the local produce section of the grocery store. We’ll be talking to the kids about how food is grown and introducing them to more farmers who make cheese, grow food and milk cows or goats. Our most recent hero is the cheese guy from Olde Oak Farm in Orono Maine. Teaching children about food’s origins will help them respect eating it. It will also signal to our kids how much we care about them. Active concern about what goes into your kids’ bodies and foods sacred relationship to the earth, teaches them that their body really is a temple. A healthy regard for the physical self reflected by parental behavior helps children establish good personal boundaries. Good personal boundaries are the foundation of healthy eating and respect for limitations.

2) Casting away processed foods

When we journey to the river’s edge this Rosh Hashanah, we’ll take a pinch of processed food. This is to establish that sound eating is a spiritual goal as well as a health one. When healthy eating is only about rules it robs nutrition of its aesthetic merits. Eating healthy expresses a love for self, other, nature, pleasure, and, by extension, that which we know as God. While banning processed foods, we’ll be emphasizing sugar as a spare pleasure by home-baking with whole grains, unprocessed sugars, and sweetener substitutes like agave nectar.

3) Casting away disconnection

Not only are we going to eat together we are going to prepare meals together. Shabbat dinner is a great opportunity for this but not the only one. Even school lunches can become a fun family activity. Cooking with kids teaches responsibility, self-reliance and collaborative thinking. Dining together promotes relatedness and non-verbal emotional synergy. Eating healthy food together is almost countercultural, a shared family brand that can help your children stand up to the pressure of consumerist messaging.

There is no reason to wait for Washington to do something about our country’s health and food crisis. As Michael Pollan says, changed consumer patterns brought on by transformed eating patterns will send a message to congress, not to mention the food industry. Just by being part of a CSA you already helping to be a part of change!

New Kosher Food Certification May Be Most Detailed In the Industry
By Nathaniel Popper
Reprinted with permission of The Forward

This article is about one of Hazon’s partners, Magen Tzedek. It is an update on the new kosher certification that they are working to establish. A representative from Magen Tzedek will be joining us at the Food Conference again this year.

The Conservative movement has released detailed guidelines for what experts say could be one of the most comprehensive food certifications in existence.

The guidelines for the new Magen Tzedek food certification are intended to ensure that ethical standards are adhered to in kosher food production, and they delve into nearly every phase of the production process. A group of Conservative rabbis began developing the certification more than two years ago after a Forward article drew attention to the poor working conditions at what was then the world’s largest kosher slaughterhouse, Agriprocessors, in Postville, Iowa.

The Hekhsher Tzedek commission, which created the guidelines with the backing of the national bodies of Conservative Judaism, has previously released rough sketches of what the certification would encompass. But the rules released this week go on for 175 pages and delve into great detail on the standards companies will need to meet if they want to earn a Magen Tzedek certification. (Hekhsher Tzedek means certification of justice in Hebrew, while Magen Tzedek means seal of justice.) Those standards broadly break down into five areas: treatment of employees, animal welfare, consumer issues, corporate integrity and environmental impact.

Among the specific rules laid out in the draft is one stipulating that a company would have to pay its lowest paid employee at least 115% of the federal minimum wage (currently $7.25 an hour) and provide the same employee with health and other benefits that amount to at least 35% of his or her wages. These standards, and many others, would apply to workers who produce any ingredient that is at least 5% of the weight of the final product.

There are a number of certification programs that look at one or another of the specific categories that the Magen Tzedek is interested in — but industry experts say that there are almost no other food-certification systems that are as comprehensive and thorough as what the Conservative rabbis are proposing.

“The breadth is impressive,” said Scott Exo, director of the Food Alliance, which bills itself as the “most comprehensive third-party certification for the production, processing, and distribution of sustainable food.”

The guidelines are being offered for public comment, and the commission is hoping to have an application and a beta test of the program done by the end of this year — with the program starting next year. The Hekhsher Tzedek commission is in talks with an independent auditing company that would conduct the actual certifying audits.

To read the full length article, please visit: www.forward.com/articles/113750/

Piadini with Apples, Honey, and Blue Cheese
From Food Network at www.foodnetwork.com

2 apples
2 to 3 heads frisee lettuce
Olive oil
1 lemon, juiced, plus extra for sprinkling apples
5 tablespoons honey
Grey salt
Pepper
1 bag pre-made pizza dough (from deli counter)
4 ounces blue cheese

Directions
2 hours before the party: Core and slice the apples. If you’re not using immediately, squeeze lemon juice on them to prevent discoloration.

When your guests have arrived: Wash and roughly tear the frisee into a salad bowl. Add the apples. Drizzle with olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, 1 tablespoon of the honey, salt and pepper. Set aside

Divide the pizza dough into 4 sections. On a floured board, stretch and roll the dough into thin disks with a rolling pin. The dough may also be stretched by hand, but rolling will give you a thinner crust. Coat the flattened dough with olive oil and place onto a very hot, preheated outdoor grill. (this can be done indoors on a cast iron stovetop grill pan. Set the burners to medium, medium-high and make sure to preheat the pan.) When you see bubbles rise to the surface, flip the dough. It should be slightly browned on the bottom.

Put 1 tablespoon of the honey and 1-ounce of blue cheese, to taste, on the top of the crust. Close down your grill and wait for the cheese to melt. When it is nice and gooey, take it off the grill and top with the cool salad and apples. Repeat with remaining dough and ingredients. Fold it over, eat and enjoy.

Life with Goats at the Adamah Farm

2009-09-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

This piece comes from Aitan Mizrahi, the diary manager at the ADAMAH farm, which is part of the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. The dairy farm raises goats and makes kosher, sustainable cheese and yogurt.

Life with the goats has been busy and fun. ADAMAH Da iry is a collective project of the Adamah Jewish Environmental Fellowship. ADAMAH is a three-month leadership training program for Jewish young adults in their 20s that integrates organic farming, sustainable living, Jewish learning, community building and contemplative spiritual practice. As the dairy manager, I have the honor of holding many of the pieces surrounding the dairy operation here at the Isabella Friedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. My first introduction to this lifestyle was as an ADAMAH Fellow in 2004. Since then I have learned herd maintenance and cheese-making.

Around Pesach, in the springtime, our milking does (female goats) gave birth to a grand total of seventeen kids. Since then we have been watching the development of the kids and starting our kosher, organic, artisanal dairy production. While the mothers have been providing enough milk to produce, on average 30-40 pounds of cheese and 10 gallons of yogurt a week, the new kids are still bouncing around the barnyard. All of our products are being sold either through our CSA, which drops off at the Tuv Ha’Aretz Hazon CSA in White Plains, or at local farm stands and markets. Our small batches of cheeses allow for attention to detail. Our Falls Village Feta is a creamy and tangy cheese that is subtly salted, making space for the fresh clean flavors of Falls Village flora to unfold on your palette. Our Holy Chevre is a rich, gently tart, fresh spreadable cheese that is great to share with friends.

As a young Jewish farmer (and goat herder!), I am able to use this opportunity to blend the traditions of our ancestors with contemporary food and sustainability issues. The time I spend roaming with the goats through the woods of Connecticut remind me of the days of old when the Israelites roamed the land of Israel with their herds. With the current demand for local, fresh, healthy food, ADAMAH Dairy is filling a need for hand-crafted, kosher cheeses and yogurt. Come visit us, walk with the goats and taste our tasty treats. We look forward to sharing our tasty dairy products or a tour of the farm with you anytime you are in the area.

Mystery Green...Chipilin

2009-08-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

Today's mystery green is Chipilin. Our farmer likes to make tea from it before going to bed.

Chipilín, or chepil, is a legume native to Southern Mexico and Central America. Its delicate leaves have traditionally been eaten as greens or used as an herb to flavor rice, soup, Oaxacan tamales, and Salvadoran pupusas.

Chipilín is not cultivated on an agricultural scale; it's something you might find at farmers' markets, in home gardens, and growing in the wild. Both the leaves and the flowers are edible, though the leaves don't develop much of a taste until cooked. We recently tried chipilín in a Oaxacan rice recipe. It was pleasantly pungent and herbaceous – not overwhelming but enough to add some depth to the dish.

Coping with the Bounty of the Season

2009-08-26T06:56:00.000-07:00

By, Cathy Erway

This article is from Cathy’s blog “Not Eating Out in New York.” All the produce we receive in our CSA boxes can sometimes be overwhelming. Cathy’s article provides great ways to utilize all that produce, other than just typically trying took cook everything all in one week. You can visit Cathy’s blog at http://noteatingoutinny.com/

Since so many of us have joined the frays of small farm supporting by becoming new members of CSAs, I’ve noticed a particular syndrome going around this summer. The symptoms? Staying in to eat lettuce heads that have piled up in the crisper over some weeks, extreme guilt about going out to eat when there’s tons of food at home; passing up plans to make the weekly pick-up day and time, or feeling the need to schedule vacations around your CSA calendar. And then the danger symptom, indicating the illness has reached its next, undesirable stage: deciding to forfeit a few items from your share on a particular week, leaving them behind at the pick-up location.

Basically, it’s being bogged down by the little commitments one makes when joining a CSA. I can relate. It took me three days past the official pick-up night last week when I finally took my half of a full share out of my share-splitter’s fridge. People, especially in urban areas, continue to have unpredictably busy schedules, even though their will to support local food has grown.

But, before you start tossing once-fresh vegetables to the compost, or dread another bag of spinach in the fridge, here are a few tips that have helped me, at least, figure out what to do with all this great food.

Don’t cook.
Put away the pots and pans. If your CSA produce looks anything like mine, it’s probably at its best potential raw. We’re not talking about pesticide-drenched, close to moldy, stuff from the supermarket. So beyond a little dirt and bugs, there’s nothing high heat needs to kill, besides some extra vitamins. Zucchini and summer squash? Chopped and sprinkled with sea salt, lemon and olive oil and they’re a refreshingly crisp, new breed.

Rinse before putting away.
If you spend a few extra minutes washing and patting down your produce with towels, you can grab and go from the fridge much easier through the week. Plus, the time taken will reinforce what you have that week in your mind, hopefully clearing up all, “What’s in here and how old is it?” confusion.

Appoint a back-up pick-up buddy.
It’s like the person who has your extra set of housekeys, for when you get locked out. Except instead of hanging onto a measly key, this neighbor gets to hang onto a big batch of food when you can’t pick up your CSA share. And the words, “Keep whatever you like!” should be a pretty good guarantee for his or her service.

Save the hardiest vegetables for later.
Beets last a really long time. Kohlrabi is not going to turn in a week, either. If you find that you simply have too much stuff to eat in a week (as I do often), go for the most delicate leafy greens first. Save the big heads of cabbage, potatoes, green beans and carrots for another week, and don’t worry about them.

Entertain more.
In times of stress, we can all lean on our friends. I don’t think I needed to sound half as desperate when I asked one, in a moment of high CSA stress, “I have too much food, can I make you dinner?!” Who doesn’t like local, fresh food, being served to them free? Plus, following guideline #1, there really is very little preparation that should be involved for this grub.

Can it, jam it, pickle it (and compost the scraps).
A few mason jars go a long way; you can make pickles, jam or sauces like chutney and pesto to snack on throughout the year by squashing a lot of fresh produce into its tightly-packed constraints. But if this weekend hobby is not quite your style, you can still salvage extra produce by simply bagging it and tossing it in the freezer. Broccoli and green beans work great for this.

Make a stress-relieving tea with dried herbs.
Overwhelmed by all the fresh herbs you’ve been getting? Grow your own already, and don’t really need ‘em? Hang a bunch upside-down for a week, like you would with a rose bouquet, and crumble the flakes into a mason jar. Yep, I have cilantro “tea,” all ready to steep. So? (Hint: mix in those dried rose petals, too, if you’ve got them.)

Be a good member.
It’s easy to dash in and out of CSA pick-up in the middle of your busy day or night, but the folks volunteering there, or organizing the local chapter, can really help you out if you have a stress situation. Communicate if you’re going to be out of town and can’t pick up your stuff, they might appreciate the advance notice to gauge how much will be leftover at the end of that day. Or give it away to someone else in the group who might actually need it for a big bash they’re throwing. Volunteering, teamworking and spreading the good karma might win you favors in return, like being able to store your untaken stash another day somewhere convenient.

Got Squash?

2009-08-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

By Adam Edell, coordinator and member of the Berkeley, California Tuv Ha’Aretz

Be open-eyed to the great wonders of nature, familiar though they be. But men are more wont to be astonished at the sun’s eclipse than at its unfailing rise.

– Hayyim Luzzatto

While sorting through a friend’s online picture album this week, I came across a set of 5 photographs where she had captured two shooting stars nearly crossing paths from opposite directions. With a big “wow” I reached for my little Hazon blessings cheat sheet in my desk that tells me what to say when I see that kind of thing: “…oseh ma’aseh beresheit…who makes the works of creation.”

This little scene had me thinking about our CSA box, which has the ability to inspire gasps of awe with a new arrival (concord grapes at their peak of ripeness!) or remarks of displeasure as one pushes past the old standby (zucchini…again). As a gardener I try to remind myself, with all my aphid-infested corn, water-stressed eggplant and bitter cukes, to be quite grateful for my indefatigable squash plants, who have churned out a steady crop unscathed by pestilence all summer long. As sure as I can count on a new crookneck poking out from underneath those broad leaves the minute I turn around, oh constant squash has sustained me through the diminished returns of other crops I’ve grown less successfully.

And that’s just it: particularly well-suited to this climate, summer squash is a workhorse in the field. In contrast to the primadonna tomato of thoroughbred-like temperament, which must withstand the threat of blights and scalds and cracks, the vigorous squash is capable of tremendous output in spite of some dainty powdery mildew or poorly-draining soil.

I’ll try greeting my squash the way I feel each time I plant…maybe you’re like me: no matter how many times I put seeds in the ground, I am somewhat surprised when they actually germinate, as if a product of magic. Then, I’m somewhat suspect when the plant appears to be growing healthy. I’m joyous when fruit appears and astonished still when it tastes good. So I’ve begun to appreciate my steady squash, greeting it with a little “Hi squash, how are ya?” and a more frequent “thank you!” to one of those underappreciated works of creation, the summer squash.

Wasting Food While People Go Hungry

2009-08-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

A great article from the Tuv Ha Aretz site in Seattle:

For 1 in 8 Americans, hunger is reality. According to Feeding America (the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief organization), in 2007, 36.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 23.8 million adults and 12.4 million children. (And these numbers are before the economic downturn!) At the same time that so many Americans are going hungry, we are wasting a shocking amount of perfectly fine food. The USDA estimates 96 billion pounds of food are wasted each year in the United States. Feeding America estimates that if we could recover merely 5% of the food wasted each year, we could help feed 14 million people.

Harvest Against Hunger, a Seattle based hunger relief organization, estimates that Washington State alone wastes 10’s of millions of pounds of food each year. Our tradition has a remarkably powerful set of teachings around the injunction not to waste food and other useful resources.

The seed of this tradition traces back to two verses in this week’s torah portion, Shoftim. The parshah reads:

When you besiege a town for many days, waging-war against it, to seize it: you are not to bring-ruin on its trees, by swinging-away (with) an axe against them, for from them you eat, them you are not to cut-down – for are the trees of the field human beings, (able) to come against you in a siege? Only those trees of which you know that they are not trees for eating, them you may bring-to-ruin and cut-down, that you may build siege-works against the town that is making war against you, until its downfall. (Deuteronomy 20:19-20)

This command that the Israelites refrain from destroying the fruit trees of their enemies during war-time becomes the foundation for a comprehensive, and quite radical, set of teachings around the prevention of waste. For example, Maimonides (1135-1204) teaches that “Not only own who cuts down food trees, but also one who smashes household goods, tears clothes, demolishes buildings, stops up a spring, or destroys food on purpose violates the command: ‘You must not destroy.’

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) goes even further in teaching that: The prohibition of purposeless destruction of food trees around a besieged city is only to be taken as an example of general wastefulness. Under the concept of ‘you shall not destroy,’ the purposeless destruction of anything at all is to be forbidden, so that our text becomes the most comprehensive warning to human beings not to misuse the position that God has given them as masters of the world and its matter to capricious, passionate, or merely thoughtless wasteful destruction of anything on earth. Only for wise use has God laid the world at our feet when God said to humankind, “…fill the earth and master it…(Gen. 1:28)

As Jews, we know that the obligation to care for the poor and vulnerable in our communities is absolutely central to our lives. Tragically, now more than ever, we don’t need to look very far to find people in our midst who are literally going hungry. As Jews, as humans, we have the responsibility to do something.

DID YOU KNOW?

Every week any unclaimed or leftover produce is delivered to the Clifton Presbyterian Shelter in Candler Park through The "Plant a Row" program of the Atlanta Community Food Bank To learn more about how you can help relieve hunger please check out these:
resources

www.acfb.org

www.feedingamerica.org

www.mazon.org

Here are this week's box items and a tasty recipe so that you can plan ahead and make use of ALL your yummy produce. Also, if you are interested in a fall share beginning after labor day through just before Thanksgiving, please be in touch with shearith.organic@gmail.com Happy veggie day!

In the box: Sweet Corn, Watermelon, Okra, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Garlic, Basil, Eggplant (possibly), Squash

Caprese Pizza

one round of homeade or storebought pizza dough (I am a fan of TJ's whole wheat)
two tablespoons storebought or homeade pesto (great use for all of that frest basil and garlic!)
1/2 a large or one small tomato (incredibly good with the heirlooms)
olive oil for drizzling a few slices fresh mozzarella
balsamic vinegar (reduction)
fresh basil leaves (whole)

Roll out pizza dough. Brush with two (or more if needed) tablespoons pesto. Arrange sliced heirloom tomatoes. Drizzle (sparingly) with olive oil and season with sea salt and pepper (if desired). sprinkle with parmesean. Place in 400-450 degree oven on baking sheet or pizza stone for 10-15 minutes (when crust is brown and cheese is melty. Remove from oven. While pizza is baking, reduce 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar in small saucepan Arrange fresh basil leaves on top and drizzle with balsamic reduction.

FRESH...Screening tonight at pickup

2009-08-12T07:13:00.001-07:00

Tonight, Wednesday, August 12th, is the night we're screening FRESH an incredible new film celebrating the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, a 2008 MacArthur’s “Genius Award” fellow; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, the Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, who is creating a new market model for our family farmers. FRESH’s focus on these inspiring individuals and their initiatives around the US provides the audience with actionable solutions.

FRESH will be shown from 5:45-7:00 pm at Shearith Israel. Members and non-members are welcome. Pass the word along and join us for a great evening!

Moving Away From Wasteful Thinking

2009-08-12T06:03:00.000-07:00

By, Rachel Kahn-Troster

One of my favorite light-hearted pieces from the Talmud is from the tractate Brachot, 50b, in which three rabbis are eating a meal together and one starts a food fight. There is then a classic rabbinic disagreement about throwing food: whether one is forbidden from throwing food at all or just certain types of food, whether one can only throw food that won’t become spoiled when thrown, and what type of food can be thrown at weddings (which depends in part on the weather).

Beneath the surface of this argument is a real concern about wasting food—that which is a gift from God shouldn’t be treated with disrespect. The Jewish value of bal tashchit has been understood to be a prohibition against misuse of the world’s resources. We might think about this on a larger scale, such as the destruction of a forest, but it is also true on a small scale, in the ways that we might take the food we eat for granted, buying too much, throwing out that which we could save for later, and letting food go bad.

Food waste is a real problem in the United States. Between food left in the fields, by-products of manufacturing, restaurant and grocery store waste, and uneaten food headed for our garbage can, the average American wastes one pound of food a day. The blogger Jonathan Bloom has documented what American food waste looks like in a series of amazing photos on his website, WastedFood.com. And Mark Bittman (aka the Minimalist) had a good article a few months ago on how to avoid food waste by using the freezer.

Personally, the summer tends to be season when I waste food the most: all the gorgeous local produce tends to dazzle me at the farmers’ market, causing me to cast aside all my carefully planned menus and load up on just a few more peaches and plums. I’m trying to be responsible about using it all, especially my CSA produce (though I’ve had to get creative with all the zucchini and squash). The food we eat comes about through a blessing from God, the result of the hard labor of human beings and the miracle the right weather in the right seasons. We have a Jewish obligation not to just throw it away.

Check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation for tips and instructions on canning, freezing, drying and pickling excess produce. And, though you might not always think of it, properly composting food scraps is an efficient way to make something productive from something that might ordinarily be wasted.

Rabbi Shalom Lewis challenges constitutionality of Georgia kosher laws

2009-08-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- A Conservative rabbi in Georgia is challenging the constitutionality of his state’s kosher law, saying it favors Orthodox religious standards and constitutes state entanglement in religion.

The case follows the overturning of similar kosher laws in two other states and the city of Baltimore. It also comes at a time of growing public interest in kashrut, following last year’s immigration raid at the Agriprocessors meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, and the ongoing trials of the plant’s owners and managers.

On Aug. 7, Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Congregation Etz Chaim in Marietta filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court claiming that Georgia’s Kosher Food Labeling Act, passed in 1980, prevents him from fulfilling his duties as a rabbi.

In a complaint filed on Lewis’ behalf, the American Civil Liberties Union charges that Georgia’s kosher law, which defines “kosher food” as “food prepared under and of products sanctioned by the orthodox Hebrew religious rules and requirements,” ignores different kosher standards of other streams of Judaism.

The Georgia law imposes criminal sanctions for violations of the law, including presenting food as kosher if it has not been so determined by Orthodox authorities.

Thus, the lawsuit contends, the law as written violates the free exercise, establishment, equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. and Georgia constitutions.

The case is the fourth of its kind nationwide. Kosher laws that used similar Orthodox definitions of “kosher food” were overturned in New Jersey in 1992, Baltimore in 1995 and New York in 2003.

Daniel Mach, director of litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said the arguments in the Georgia case will refer to those rulings.

Lewis, who in his capacity as a rabbi provides kosher supervision to a restaurant and bakery, and acts as rav hamachshir, or senior kosher supervisor, of kosher events held in his synagogue, said he brought the suit because the kosher law in Georgia criminalizes his actions.

“Technically I’ve been a criminal since 1980, which I’m not thrilled about,” he said.

Lewis noted that no Conservative rabbi, including himself, has been prosecuted under the law, but said “it could happen,” and as a taxpayer he did not want to help fund a law that discriminates in this way.

Rabbi Reuven Stein, director of supervision at the Atlanta Kashruth Commission, said he was “disappointed” to learn of the lawsuit. He said the law was enacted in 1980 to protect kosher consumers from fraud, and unlike the kosher laws struck down in New York and New Jersey, Georgia’s law provides no enforcement mechanism.

“It’s toothless anyway,” Stein said, which is why he was “surprised” anyone would complain about it.

Furthermore, he said, nothing in the law prevents a Conservative rabbi from giving hekhsherim, or kosher certification, in contrast to what Lewis charges in his suit.

“Conservative rabbis do give hekhsherim in the state of Georgia, and we’ve never had an issue with it,” Stein said.

Stein said he receives “at least a call a month” from consumers regarding kosher fraud or mislabeling. If the law were overturned, he said, it’s unlikely a “more politically correct one” would replace it, and consumers would have no protection.

Lewis claimed the owner of a local vegetarian restaurant under Conservative supervision received a complaining call from the Atlanta Kashruth Commission, a charge Stein denied.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive director of the Rabbinical Association, the professional body of Conservative rabbis, said Lewis’ lawsuit is “part and parcel” of the Conservative rabbinate’s ongoing engagement in kashrut.

Many Conservative rabbis give kosher supervision and certification nationwide, she said, and the movement holds periodic courses to teach Conservative rabbis how to perform this function. The next one is scheduled for May.

“His proactive stance is consistent with the activist stance towards kashrut in our movement,” she said, noting in particular the Conservative movement’s year-old commission on Hekhsher Tzedek, or certificate of social justice, a forthcoming initiative to rate kosher-certified food products according to standards of health, safety and working conditions.

“We very much have an eye on the larger society, how we live as Jews in America,” she said. “Hekhsher Tzedek is a clear example of that, and this case is another very fine one.”

Conservative Judaism holds that the laws of kashrut are binding, and in general follows the same kosher laws as Orthodoxy. The movement differs only in the practical application of certain laws, notably the Orthodox restrictions on non-Jews making cheese and wine and lighting cooking fires, which Conservative authorities do not follow. Conservative authorities also permit certain fishes, such as sturgeon and swordfish, forbidden by the Orthodox.

In July 1992, New Jersey’s Supreme Court overturned state kosher regulations that defined kosher in terms of “orthodox Hebrew religious requirements,” ruling that it violated the constitutional prohibition on the establishment of religion.

New Jersey now operates under a “full disclosure scheme,” whereby manufacturers or purveyors of kosher food must fill out forms indicating what they sell and under whose authority. The forms are filed with the state and posted for public view, so consumers can decide for themselves whether to patronize the establishment.

The disclosure form is careful not to make religious judgments. Purveyors must state, for example, whether they sell pork or shellfish, or mix milk and meat, but they can still call themselves kosher, as long as they don’t conceal these facts.

“You can put down absolutely anything in the world you want,” said Rabbi Yakov Dombroff, who has headed New Jersey’s Bureau of Kosher Enforcement since 1986. “Literally, pork could be kosher. The state has no interest in what you call kosher, as long as you’re in compliance with the disclosure.”

In 1995, the Baltimore City Code’s kosher ordinance was overturned as being in violation of the Establishment Clause after a hot dog vendor was fined for putting non-kosher hot dogs too close to kosher ones on his rotisserie.

Nearly a decade later, in 2004, New York State changed its kosher laws, which also defined kosher as “according to orthodox Hebrew religious requirements,” following a lawsuit brought by butchers in Commack. In their original 1996 case, the butchers claimed state kosher supervisions were engaged in a regular pattern of fining them because their store was supervised by a Conservative rabbi.

The New York State Kosher Law Protection Act of 2004, modeled on New Jersey’s “full disclosure” system, requires producers, distributors and retailers of food sold as kosher in the state to submit information about their products, including the identity of the person or organization that certifies them, to the Department of Agriculture and Markets. The information is published in an online directory.

Sue Fishkoff writes about Jewish identity for JTA and is the author of the 2003 book "The Rebbe's Army."

Fresh...the Movie. Screening at 8/12 Pickup

2009-08-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

Join us during next week's pickup for a special screening of an incredible new film FRESH. FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, a 2008 MacArthur’s “Genius Award” fellow; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, the Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, who is creating a new market model for our family farmers. FRESH’s focus on these inspiring individuals and their initiatives around the US provides the audience with actionable solutions. FRESH is a call to action. The film will be shown Wednesday, August 12th from 5:45-7:00 Members and non-members are welcome. Pass the word along and join us for a great evening!

What's In the Box (August 5th )

2009-08-05T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hi there! Here's what's in this week's box:

Tomatoes (lots of them)

Beans (lots of them)

melon (spanish type let them ripen for 2 days or so)

squash

okra

potatoes

garlic

peppers

Parasha Ha Shavua: Ekev

2009-08-05T06:44:00.000-07:00

“I’m a grass farmer” and Parashat Ekev
By Gary A. Rendsburg

This week’s parasha (portion of the Torah reading) includes several well-known passages, which indicate ancient Israel’s remarkable awareness of its natural surroundings in the land of Canaan and beyond. Among these passages is Deuteronomy 8:8, with the famous list of the seven species (wheat, barley, vines [i.e., grapes], figs, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey [extracted from dates]), and which is preceded by the verse describing Canaan as “a “good land, a land of wadis of water, springs and deeps, coming forth in the valley and in the mountain” (v. 7).

We also read the following description of the land in Deuteronomy 11:10-11, with a contrast to the physical environment of Egypt: “For the land into which you are coming to inherit it, it is not like the land of Egypt from which you came forth; where you must sow your seed and water with your foot like a vegetable garden. And the land that you are entering to inherit it, it is a land of mountains and valleys; from the rain of heaven you shall drink water. A land that YHWH your God cares for; always the eyes of YHWH are on it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.” Now, from any objective standard, one would assume that Egypt, with the constant flow of the Nile River, providing for plentiful water throughout the land, would be a more desirable place for agricultural productivity. But the biblical author turns this notion on its head, because he/she realizes that the irrigation system required to bring the waters of the Nile to the sown fields takes considerable labor – unlike the land of Canaan, where the rainfall is supplied directly by God, without the involvement of human toil.

Finally, a few verses later, we read: “And I will give the rain (to) your land in its season, former-rain and latter-rain; and you shall collect your grain, and your new-wine, and your fine-oil. And I will give you grass in your field for your cattle; and you shall eat and you shall be satiated” (Deuteronomy 11:14-15). At first glance, it would appear that the latter verse omits a step (or two or three) in the food chain: God states that he will give grass in the field for the cattle, and as a result thereof we humans will eat. But how do we get from the cattle eating the grass to our eating our own food?

The answer is clear to anyone who has ever farmed in a traditional manner, that is, polyculture farming, which naturally is how all farming occurred in antiquity. It all starts with the grass, as everyone who has read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) readily will understand. I refer especially to Pollan’s description of Joel Salatin, the chief operator of Polyface Farms in Virginia: “But if you ask Joel Salatin what he does for a living (Is he foremost a cattle rancher? A chicken farmer?), he’ll tell you in no uncertain terms, ‘I’m a grass farmer.’”

Salatin comprehends the point about grass well, but he clearly is not the first to recognize the importance of grass in the food chain. The ancient author of Deuteronomy, three thousand years ago, already saw the connection between the grass in the field and the food on our tables – if he/she omitted several steps along the way, it is because presumably everyone in ancient Israel, where so many people engaged in farming (of the local, organic, pastured, grass-fed kind), would have understood the connection between the two parts of the biblical verse.

Gary A. Rendsburg holds the Blanche and Irving Laurie Chair of Jewish History and serves as Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Tzatziki Sauce

2009-07-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

Tzatziki Sauce

Greek style yogurt (16 oz.)
3 cloves garlic
1-2 cucumbers (skin on)
salt & pepper to taste
splash of olive oil

This sauce is just outstanding on everything! Take a container of Greek style yogurt -- no-fat, low-fat, it doesn't matter but it has to be thick. Grate 1-2 cukes on a box grater and then squeeze out all the water. Mince 3 cloves of garlic VERY fine. Stir cucumber and garlic into yogurt, add a splash of olive oil and a grind of black pepper. Dunk in vegetable of your choice, slather on toasted pita,

The Tomato Moment

2009-07-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

By Nina

This, my CSA friends, is the tomato moment. All the staking and watering and sucker pinching has come to this. Say the names with me: Big Boy. Better Boy. Rutgers. Early Girl. Ramapo. Roma. Sungold. Celebrity. Lemon Boy. Brandywine.

I am the daughter of a woman whose idea of bliss is a sliced tomato sandwich on toast with mayonnaise. Yet I confess, I did not eat uncooked tomatoes until I was an adult. Now I am making up for the foolishness of my youth and finding as many reasons as possible to enjoy fresh vine ripe tomatoes.

This summer's best tomato moments have included a Sunday salad of yellow, red, cherry and green tomatoes, lightly dressed in olive oil and sprinkled with torn fresh basil leaves was a wonder. In Richmond, VA I had a cold soup of pureed tomatoes and watermelon, dressed a swirl of basil oil and sprinkled with feta cheese that was summer in a bowl. I'm trying like mad to recreate the recipe. I may just have to write to the restaurant and beg.

The NY Times had a great piece about Jersey tomatoes last year. In part it was a reaction to the glorification of so-called heirloom tomatoes. One grower in the story had this to say about heirlooms:

“Everyone was going gaga over them. My farmers were trying to grow them, and we’d walk out in the field and just see horticultural garbage,” said Mr. Rabin, a longtime agricultural extension agent with Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. who works with about 800 growers around the state. “Every time it rained, they would crack open or turn into water bags. They burned in the sun or developed fungus you could taste,” he said. “It was painful to watch, and the yields were a nightmare.”

My feeling about heirloom tomatoes is mixed. My friend Fran and I sashayed over to the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market at the Cathedral of St. Phillip the other weekend and were enchanted by the funny shaped and multi-colored heirloom varieties. But whoa, they were selling for $6.00 a pound! Fran bought one gigundo tomato which became the centerpiece of her dinner. She said it was luscious, but I'm not sure she has recovered from the idea of a $6 tomato. I bought a half dozen green zebras, about $5 worth and thought they were great. But I don't think they're heirlooms, just a green tomato variety you don't see in the store.

Uncooked tomato sauce is how I celebrate the tomato moment. What you want are 3-5 big vine ripened, plump tomatoes of any variety you like. The more colors the better. Rough chop into 1/2" pieces with a serrated knife and dump into a big bowl. Leave on the skins, leave in the seeds. Add 2-3 large cloves of raw minced garlic. DO NOT USE THE STUFF FROM THE JAR! Use real cloves of garlic. Add at least a 1/2 cup of really good olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and many hearty twists of ground pepper. Add in some torn fresh basil leaves if you have them. No fresh basil? No matter. Now cook up a pound of pasta -- any shape you like (whole wheat is actually a good choice for this) and drain. While still hot, dump the pasta into the big bowl with the uncooked tomatoes and garlic. Toss gently and serve immediately.

Eat slowly with plenty of parmesan cheese and a big glass of wine. It does not get any better than this.

Tisha B'Av Pick Up

2009-07-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

By Rabbi Mark Hurvitz

I’ve been fasting a good deal this past month. I’ve fasted to call attention to the situation in Darfur and also Gaza. This week, my CSA pick-up at the 14th street Y in Downtown Manhattan, occurs on the 9th of Av before sundown and the end of the fast, calling our attention to the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (and other calamities). This year, the end of the fast coincides with my CSA pick-up. Can we use this time of commemorating the laying waste, to what was at one time glorious, to help us focus our regard more intently on the richness we have about us? Our classic sources (Talmud Bavli Berachot 17a) teach that fasting is compared to sacrifice: an offering up of our own blood and fat; the prophet Isaiah rhetorically asked us thousands of years ago (58:6-7): Is not this the fast that I have chosen? Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover them, and that you hide not yourself from your own flesh? Here we are, even in this severe economic downturn “The Great Recession” still in the richest country in the world. Very few of us have direct contact with people who suffer malnutrition or hunger. Perhaps those who don’t face health risks by not eating can hold off on our own food and experience a bit of hunger. Tisha B'Av might be a time when many of us who usually experience plenitude will deny ourselves sustainable in recollection of the suffering and destruction the Jewish people have experienced. Many people in our community are also fasting to call attention to humanitarian crises around the world. We can even turn what we might have spent on our own food to contribute to those various agencies that work to prevent hunger such as Mazon (http://www.mazon.org). This is by no means the end of our work for justice, but one step towards calling attention to the ways in which our world, in ancient times and now, needs all our efforts in the process of tikkun, of repair. Rabbi Mark Hurvitz is a shareholder at the 14th Street Y in Downtown Manhattan Read more of the writings of Rabbi Mark Hurvitz on his blog (www.davka.org) or on Hazon’s blog The Jew and the Carrot (www.jcarrot.org).

The Kitchen as a Place of Perpetual Blessing

2009-07-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

From Nada Chandler shareholder and member of the Steering Committee of Houston’s Tuv Ha’Aretz

Nada Chandler, shareholder from Houston, Texas reminds us that there are already long standing ways for women to bless the food they are preparing that are not within the traditional liturgy. I have just recently learned from Nada that many women may recite prayers called Tekhines. Tekhines are Jewish private devotions and prayers in Yiddish written by both women and men, but recited primarily by women. Nada has also told me that Tekhines have been a part of the Jewish tradition for at least 400 documented years and in today's world, women who recite Tekhines in their kitchen probably do not have to consult anything but their memory.
- Brooke Saias, Hazon’s Food Justice Coordinator

Rooted in our tradition over the centuries, women have recited the most basic “cooking” blessing, as they made their Challah:

May it be Your will, our God, the God of our Fathers, that You bless our dough, as You blessed the dough of our Mothers, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah. And may we be blessed as in the verse: “You shall give the first yield of your dough to the kohen to make a blessing rest upon your home.” “May the pleasantness of the Lord our God be upon us; establish for us the work of our hands; establish the work of our hands.”

Women did not have to consult a siddur or an established liturgy as they cooked, they either, as I learned from my mother z”l (of blessed memory), spontaneously, or in words she learned from her mother invited God to participate in the process. Every time my mother, z”l, put something in the oven she would say, “Zol es zayn bashert oys tsu kumen gut” it should be destined that it'll come out [tasting] good . It contains one strong element of Jewish prayer – the petition.

In a kosher home, every act of food preparation is another occasion to be aware of the sanctity of the whole process, as well as the knowledge that what happens in the kitchen is a part of our partnership with God. Observing kashrut, like saying the blessings before and after eating, is a constant kitchen reminder of the role of God in all that we do. In today’s dual kitchens, perhaps it is possible to operate on automatic pilot, and never have to stop to think if the knife for the tomatoes is parve, but even in those modern wonders, one still has to sort through the rice, wash each leaf, crack each egg, (and who does not thank God when all of the eggs are perfectly clear?*), and check each onion. Each of these acts is a reminder that preparing food is as holy a process as eating it is. Our tradition may not have a single prayer for food preparation, but so long as breads need to rise and soup needs to be properly seasoned, God will share in the process.

*In our free range world, there is the possibility of there being a blood spot on the egg which would render it treif (non-kosher).

Flexitarianism

2009-07-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

The Chicken or the Ache?
By Eric Shumiller

In my hard-core college vegan days, when I toted around a copy of John Robbins' Diet for a New America like it was from Mt. Sinai, I often wondered how I would approach the subject of meat eating with any future children I might have. The idealized plan that I came up with (while still a bachelor, of course), was that we would have a strictly vegetarian household until my future children reached the age of Bar/Bat Mitzvah. At that point, I would give them a copy of Robbins' well-written argument against consumption of animal products, take them on a tour of the closest factory farm and/or meat processing facility, and then let them make their own informed adult decision about whether they wanted to consume meat from that point forward. If they choose to eat meat at that point, more power to them.

Of course, nearly twenty years later as the (flexitarian? vegetarian?) parent of two toddlers, things are not so cut and dried. Nowadays, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma has replaced John Robbins on my shelf, and we are indeed an omnivorous household. Things seemed to be going smoothly - we support our Tuv Ha'aretz CSA, shop at Whole Foods (or at least the organic aisle at Stop & Shop), and try to follow Reb Pollan's core dictum: "Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants." We try to limit any meat we consume in the home to that produced in a sustainable, ethical manner. Emergency road trip Burger King stops aside, we've done a decent job of modeling the ideals of eco-kashrut to our kids. Until last week, when our four and half year old asked that dreaded question over a free-range rotisserie chicken at Shabbat dinner: "Where do chickens come from?" Up until then, he probably had a vague notion that the chicken on his plate and the chicken in his story book were somehow connected, but that the chicken meat he was eating was somehow freely donated by the animal, like a lamb gives us its wool. But now, as notions of life and death worked their way further and further into his developing consciousness, our son (who is no dummy) was suspecting foul play (sorry, I couldn't resist!).

The challenges in answering his question were many-fold. How do we justify our eating of meat, when we could be satisfying our protein intake (and yummy factor) with strictly vegetarian food? How do we ameliorate (or validate?) the death and suffering of even a well-raised, humanely slaughtered animal, which is now sitting on our plates?

If you want to see my answer, you'll have to surf on over to Hazon's wonderful blog, The Jew & The Carrot (www.jcarrot.org). More importantly, I want to hear your answers! Whether you're a parent or not, a vegetarian or a carnivore, how have you/would you answer this most basic of questions?

Eric Schumiller is a CSA shareholder at the Reconstructionist Synagogue of the North Shore.

Knife Skills Class with Chef Norry

2009-07-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

Have you ever looked at your CSA box not only wondering what to cook with your veggies, but how to get them ready for cooking?! Perhaps the ominous task has once too often resulted in poor lonely forgotten produce at the bottom of your fridge (OK, I admit it, it's happened to me...)

If so, you are in luck! Our very own Rabbi/Chef Norry has generously offered to teach a knife skills class tomorrow evening at 6:15 during CSA pickup. If you are interested, come to pickup with your own Chef's knife and cutting board (and if you have those Debbie Meyer green bags those might come in handy as well).

We hope this will be the first of several cooking class opportunities at pick up - if you are interested in teaching one - please be in touch as well!

Have a super Tuesday all,
Naomi

What's In the Box (July 22)

2009-07-21T05:54:00.000-07:00

Veggies this Week

Melon

Tomatoes

Garlic

Potatoes

Basil

Lettuce

Next week the sweet corn will be back and who knows what else will surprise us...

Charlotte the Farmer

Calling all Foodies: Think, Act, Dig In at the Hazon Food Conference

2009-07-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

A special invitation from Food Conference Chair, Emily Jane Freed. Emily is the Assistant Production Manager at Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo.

The summer months on the California Central Coast bring visions of farms and gardens overflowing with sun ripened red tomatoes, fresh aromatic basil, sweet stone fruits dripping with juice, and heaps of blackberries and raspberries. As we savor the warm evenings of late summer and share the sweet tasty treats coming out of the ground with family and friends, it is never too soon to start planning this year’s winter vacation to sunny and warm California.

The 2009 Hazon Food Conference will be held Dec 24 - 27 on the sandy shores of Monterey, CA at Asilomar Conference & Retreat Center. Asilomar is steps away from the beach, nestled amongst the redwood trees, and amazing natural wildlife. The Fourth Annual Food Conference brings together all generations where contemporary food conversations meet Jewish traditions.

As an active member of your local Hazon CSA and within the greater New Jewish Food Movement, I want to personally invite each of you and your families to attend the Food Conference. We have many new and exciting featured speakers this year including Woody Tasch, President of Slow Money, who is responsible for catalyzing the flow of investment capital to small food businesses and sustainable agriculture and Chef and acclaimed cookbook writer Joan Nathan. Additionally, there will be cooking demonstrations, discussions on kosher/sustainable meat practices, lectures on food policy, yoga, meditation, live music, tide pooling on the beach, activities for children, teens and family, and much more. Hazon CSA members will connect and network with other members from around the country, learn more about their local and national food systems, meet local farmers, and enjoy meals filled with produce from the Bay Area’s finest farms and CSA’s. Additionally, pre-conference activities include a farm trip, a visit to Monterey Bay Aquarium, and a Hazon CSA Leadership Track for those of you thinking about becoming more involved.

As a Jewish female farmer in Santa Cruz, CA, I spend my days outside growing and cultivating the safest and best tasting organic produce that I possibly can. I invite you to join in the conversation with those that strive to create a national movement centered around Judaism and food. Besides, who can resist a sunny vacation on a sandy beach in California at the end of December?

To learn more about the Hazon Food Conference visit www.hazon.org/foodconference. Register now -- prices rise on July 31!

The Cooking Bracha: A Blessing for Making Food

2009-07-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Jewish tradition loves to bless food (or rather to bless God for food). We bless bread, we bless wine – we bless snacks as well as meals. We have different blessings for fruit grown on trees vs. fruit grown in the ground and, remarkably, when we’re done eating and feeling satisfied, we bless again! But for some reason, despite all these food blessings, there is no Jewish blessing for cooking.

The act of standing in a kitchen – coaxing raw ingredients from your CSA share, into a nourishing meal through heat, patience and wisdom, seems pretty holy. The mere fact that the ingredients are there to cook is, in itself, no small miracle! So a couple of years ago, in conjunction with Hazon’s Beit Midrash on (what else?!) Jews, food, and contemporary life, we wrote a cooking bracha (blessing). It’s a blessing to be said just before: before turning the stove on under a pot of water, before dipping one’s hands into the flour, before the flurry of activity that, God willing, will create a delicious meal worthy of its own blessing.

If you like this blessing, take the time to use it before turning your share into an incredibly meaningful meal.

Cooking Bracha
By Leah Koenig & Anna Stevenson

“Blessed are You
Creator of the world
Who brings forth fruit from the Earth.
Blessed are You,
Who gives us knowledge of cooking, and time to cook
And who has blessed us with the need for nourishment
so that we can fully understand Your gifts.
May it be Your will
That the food that I cook
Bring nourishment, fulfillment, and happiness
to those who eat it
And bring honor to the land and all the people that make this meal possible.”

This article was inspired by NeoHasid.org founder, Rabbi David Seidenberg.

Roasted Green Beans

2009-07-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

Green beans are in abundance. Here's a great way to prepare them, from CSA member Faith Levy. She suggests, "an aluminum foil liner prevents burning on dark baking sheets. When using baking sheets with a light finish, foil is not necessary, but makes for easy clean up."

Ingredients

1 lb green beans, flat beans or pole beans

1 tablespoon olive oil

S & P

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position. Heat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Line rimmed baking sheet w/ aluminum foil. Spread beans on baking sheet. Drizzle w/ oil; using hands, toss to coat evenly. Sprinkle w/ 1/2 teaspoon salt , toss to coat, and distribute in even layer. Roast 10 minutes.

3. Remove baking sheet from oven. Using tongs, redistribute beans. Continue roasting until beans are dark golden brown in spots and have started to shrivel, ten minutes longer.

4. Adjust seasoning w/ S & P, transfer to serving bowl and enjoy.

(Adapted from Cook's Illustrated)

Parasha Ha Shavua: Pinchas

2009-07-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Source of Breath for All Flesh
by Rabbi Jacob Elisha Fine, Director Jconnect Seattle

In 1854, Chief Sealth, or Seattle as he is now known, delivered a speech in Western Washington to his Duwamish tribal assembly. The Duwamish tribe represents the indigenous people of metropolitan Seattle, where they have been living since the end of the last glacial period (c. 8,000 B.C.E., 10,000 years ago). We thankfully have a record of this remarkable speech from the notes of Dr. Henry Smith who was present.

Chief Seattle’s message to his people is addressed to the federal government on receiving news that it sought to purchase the Duwamish land. The speech is a powerful reflection on this desire “to buy” earth, which in Chief Seattle’s eyes cannot be bought and sold, and serves as a scathing condemnation of the white man’s relationship with the natural world.

In contrasting his people’s relationship with the natural world to the earth relationship of the people who seek to buy it, Chief Seattle talks, among other things, about a connection to breath.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath—the beast, the tree, the human, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And the wind must also give our children the spirit of life. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow’s flowers.

Chief Seattle and Moses are probably not often likened to one another. But at least in one respect, and probably many others, they are of the same mind. These two leaders, separated by cultures and millennia, seem to share an awareness of a unifying Source of breath which animates all of Creation.

In this week’s parshah, Pinchas, Moses calls out to God by a distinctive name—as אֱלֹהֵי הָרוּחֹת לְכָל בָּשָׂר, the “Source of the breath of all flesh.” Having just been reminded that he will not enter the Promised Land and that the end of his life was near, Moses turns to God in heartfelt request for the Divine appointment of a successor to lead the Israelite people. And at this moment Moses calls out to God by this unusual epithet.

Moses, our tradition’s greatest religious figure and prophet, like Chief Seattle, experienced the tremendous diversity of the created world as ultimately unified. He too knew that “all things share the same breath,” and that the breath that animated him would ultimately be the same breath that animated his children and grandchildren. In invoking God as the Source of all Breath as his own passing looms and as he begins to transfer his leadership to Joshua, Moses reveals an awareness of his breath as being a link in a long chain from the beginning to the end of Creation.

The food that we eat is alive. Like us, it breathes in and out. When we eat, the life force of that substance does not become extinguished but becomes part of us, part of our breath. As we eat our vegetables this week—pulsating with life, let us pay attention to the air that both it and we share. In so doing, we will be fulfilling Chief Seattle’s charge to remember that the “air shares its spirit with all the life it supports.”

Food, Inc. - July 14th at Landmark Midtown

2009-07-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

Join Generation Green of the Georgia Conservancy and ACCESS, the young adult division of the American Jewish Committee Food, Inc, at 7:10 pm. Following the film, we will head over to Apres Diem for drinks and a post-film discussion.

Cost - $10 – Ticket for film should be purchased at Box Office Window

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e-coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Food, Inc. features interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Tomato Killer

2009-07-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

The Enemy -- Tomato Horn Worm

This is the evil tomato Horn Worm. He camouflages himself on your tomato plant and gnaws his way through the stalks, just when plump green tomatoes have begun feed the fantasy of having so many tomatoes you might even have to give some away. One morning you are lovingly watering your tomatoes, inspecting the blossoms, admiring the fruit, and sniffing the fragrant basil plants thriving in the same pot. Next day you come outside and the whole plant has keeled over...hacked to smithereens by something you'd swear has teeth.

But no, the culprit is not a squirrel, or a chipmunk or a deer. It's a green worm with horns that hides under the leaves of your plant, lays eggs and gets into the soil, so you've got to get rid of them, literally handpick them (UGH) out of the plant. The larvae blend in with the plant canopy, and therefore go unnoticed until most of the damage is done. Wasps are the horn worm's natural predator, but honestly, who would want to even attempt to catch and release a wasp.

The caterpillar reaches the final maturity in 3-4 weeks, and is 3 1/2 to 4 inches when fully mature. Fully-grown larvae then drop off of the plants and burrow into the soil to pupate. During the summer months, moths will emerge from pupae in about 2 weeks. Moths emerge from the soil, mate, and then begin to deposit the eggs of the next generation on tomato plants. By early fall, the pupae will remain in the soil all winter and emerge as a moth the following spring.

The horn worm likes nightshade plants and will also attack eggplant, pepper and potatoes. This is one hungry and vicious garden predator. Last Friday I bought two tomato plants to replace the ones my horn worm killed, and they were destroyed overnight before I even got them out of their peat pots! Tomato lovers beware.

Classic Tabbouleh

2009-07-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Yid.Dish: Classic Tabbouleh by Leah Koenig · June 29th, 2009
(Originally published on My Jewish Learning and cross-posted on Hazon’s blog The Jew & The Carrot, www.jcarrot.org)

I grew up eating my mother’s American tabbouleh–starchy, lemon-doused bulgur salad. This was the 1980s, when many American Jews were incorporating “Israeli-style” foods into their culinary repertoire. But while my mom’s tabbouleh was delicious, I later discovered that it hardly resembled the authentic version, which features a higher ratio of painstakingly chopped fresh parsley and tomatoes to grains of bulgur.

Tabbouleh, which comes from the Arabic word tabil (”to spice”), is not actually an Israeli or Jewish dish, per se. It originated in the Levant, the historic Middle Eastern region that encapsulated a large swath of land east of the Mediterranean Sea, including modern-day Israel along with Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and southern Turkey, among other countries. Like hummus and falafel, tabbouleh is tied to the broader region as opposed to one particular nationality or culture. Still, it has become an integral part of modern Israeli cuisine, most often served for summer lunches or as part of a salad course.

While bulgur is not traditionally tabbouleh’s star ingredient, it is, perhaps, the dish’s most defining component. An immediate relative of cracked wheat, bulgur is made from wheat berries that have been ground, partially cooked, and dried, making it a quick-cooking and relatively inexpensive base or addition to countless recipes (like these). According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Archaeological finds in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean suggest that people have been processing wheat into bulgur for millennia”–and the obsession continues today. The same article revealed that in the present day, Turks, who historically helped spread the grain’s popularity across the region, consume “about a half-pound of bulgur a week per capita.” Bulgur adds texture and substance to the otherwise all-vegetable tabbouleh, cutting the acidic lemon juice and tomatoes with its hearty, nutty flavor. In Israel, the dish is often served with pita bread, which aids in wiping up any excess juice, but there are other options, too.

According to cookbook author, Poopa Dweck, who authored, Aroma’s of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews, in old Aleppo, tabbouleh was served with romaine lettuce leaves. Tabbouleh can apparently also make people dance–but you’ll just have to try it and see.

Tabbouleh
Serves 8
3/4-1 cup fine bulgur soaked in hot water for 10-15 minutes, drained
5-6 Tablespoons good quality olive oil (do not skimp on quality–you will taste the difference) juice of 3-4 medium lemons
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 pint grape tomatoes, chopped 5 scallions, chopped 1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped one large handful fresh mint, chopped, plus extra for garnish

Combine the bulgur, olive oil, lemon, cumin, and salt in a bowl and let stand for 20-30 minutes while chopping vegetables. Add remaining ingredients and mix. Serve sprinkled with more fresh mint.

Fruit in Its Season

2009-06-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

by Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

Yesterday was the first day (finally!) of my local farmers’ market here in NJ, and I’ll admit I went a bit fruit happy, coming home loaded with local blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. It took some detective work to figure out what things were not local–the farmer may be Pennsylvania Dutch but those sure aren’t local peaches, not yet. I’m much stricter about eating fruit locally and seasonally than I am vegetables. I can go months without fresh berries or stone fruit, hoping that it counts towards my balanced diet if I eat many servings of fruit in the summer and far fewer in the winter. Sure, there are days towards late February when I am sick of citrus fruit, grapes, and bananas, and look longingly towards the plums flown in from California. But in my heart, I know they will disappoint me.

(As an aside, the Toronto Star had an article last week about the ubiquitous California strawberry, tracing it from laboratory to the store. The comments on the article are an interesting cross section of conflicting consumer values )

Today, choosing to eat seasonally is a values choice. In my brain, I hear two conversations from the days before I had my daughter. One parent explained to me that parenting is compromise, and that meant buying those strawberries in December if your kid just had to have them. Another told me how for her growing up, eating cherries was special, because you only got them for part of the year, and how she wanted her son to know that feeling of specialness when he eat cherries. I understand the first parent (we’ve all been there) but I want to be the second. Just because we can have something all the time doesn’t mean we should. We risk having the sacred and special become mundane.

Seasonal eating keeps us rooted in changes of every year, and that is what makes it such a Jewish value for me. Jewish time is agricultural, with the Pilgrimage festivals linked to the harvests of the year. The reason we have Jewish leap years is to prevent the holidays from coming unglued to the season: Passover can’t be in the middle of the winter and Sukkot can’t be in the summer. The rituals we associate with the festivals are also connected to the seasons: the spring greens on the seder plate, the first fruits of Shavuot, and the harvest decorations of Sukkot. There is some disconnection in the timeliness of it all for those of us who don’t live in Israel: every year, my father reminds us that the reason we eat potato at seder for our “spring greens” for karpas is that it was still winter in April in Poland. Our rootedness in the land is for a land far away, as we see when we pray for rain based on Israel’s climate calendar. And yet Jews all over have also adapted to the land they find themselves in, incorporating the seasonal produce of their new homes into their holiday meals.
Living according to the passage of the seasons also reminds us that we can’t have what we want all the time. I’m sure many kids would love it if every day were another night of Hanukah. But if we lit the candles all year, they would lose their meaning. They wouldn’t be special any more.

One of my teachers taught me that living on Jewish time means living on a separate clock and calendar than the rest of the world. To me, part of that means eating by the real calendar, not the artificial abundance created by technology and our ability to use fossil fuels to transport food. Food is a gift from God, and the more we take it’s permanence for granted, the more mundane we risk it becoming.

One of the traditional uses for the shehechiyanu blessing is the the first time you eat a fruit in a given season (or since Rosh Hashanah). Wouldn’t it be sad if we never had the chance to say it because our food was no longer linked to the seasons? As we head towards a beautiful summer of harvests, I hope we all have a chance to experience foods that are special.

Cool as a Cucumber

2009-06-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Nothing's better than cold soup in hot weather. Try these and others, from "Great Cold Soups"

Watermelon Soup

6 pounds seedless watermelon, diced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup lightly sweet white wine (such as Riesling)
1 teaspoon chopped ginger
8 teaspoons crumbled feta
1/4 cup sparkling wine (or sparkling water)

Combine 1 cup of the watermelon with mint and sugar in a bowl. Set aside. Blend remaining watermelon, lemon juice, wine, and ginger in a blender until smooth. Let sit 1/2 hour. Strain soup; divide among 8 bowls. Enjoy.

Spanish Gazpacho

4 ripe tomatoes
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 ounces cider vinegar or sherry vinegar
2 cups tomato juice
1 cup diced stale or lightly toasted baguette bread
2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
1 red onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 bunch fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon minced jalapeno pepper, seeded (can substitute hot sauce)
Kosher salt
Sliced or diced avocado, for garnish

Bring salted water to a boil in a medium pot. Cut an "x" shape on the tops and bottoms of the tomatoes. Boil the tomatoes until the skin begins to peel back, about 20 to 30 seconds. Plunge the tomatoes into a bowl of iced water to chill. Peel and seed the tomatoes, then chop them. In a medium bowl, combine the olive oil, vinegar, and tomato juice. Mix well, and then add the diced bread to soak. In another bowl, combine the chopped tomato, cucumber, red pepper, onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro and jalapeno. Reserve 1/2 cup of this chopped mixture for garnish, if desired. Season, to taste, with salt. Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Serve chilled and garnish as desired.

Zucchini & Watercress Soup

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 1/4 pounds zucchini, trimmed and chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper
3 cups vegetable stock
1 sprig thyme
1 cup packed watercress leaves (or cilantro)
1 tablespoon minced parsley leaves
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup creme fraiche or sour cream
Watercress sprigs, tough stems removed, garnish
Chopped chives, garnish

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 15 seconds. Add the zucchini, salt, and pepper, and cook until tender. Add the stock and thyme and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes. Add the watercress and let wilt, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and discard the thyme sprig. With a hand-held immersion blender or in batches in a food processor, purée the soup. Return to the heat and stir in the cream. Heat gently and cook for 5 minutes. Adjust the seasoning, to taste. Let cool and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 4 to 6 hours. To serve, pour into soup bowls or decorative cups. Swirl creme fraiche into each serving and garnish with watercress sprigs and chives.

Go Green Expo

2009-06-25T07:23:00.000-07:00

The Go Green Expo, coming to the Cobb Galleria Centre June 26 – 28 (June 26^th is a Business to Business Day) is sponsored in part by WSB-TV, Go Green Expo will showcase the latest and greatest in all things green from fuel efficient cars and natural personal care products to greener gadgets that help us live more sustainably.

In addition to over 200 different exhibits, Go Green Expo will also host a variety of panels with leaders in the green industry, eco-celebrities, local politicians, and community activists.

Learn from speakers including: Oscar-nominated actress, model, eco-mom and author Mariel Hemingway, Atlanta Falcons fullback Ovie Mughelli, Atlanta eco-living expert Laura Turner Seydel, the Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta, Mandy Schmitt, the President of the US Green Building Council - Atlanta chapter, Ben Taube & many more!

People of the Bike

2009-06-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

Learn More About the 2009 New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride

This summer join Hazon on the 2009 New York Jewish Environmental Bike Ride! The Ride is two day retreat followed by a two-day bike ride, September 4-7, 2009.

The Retreat is a multi-generational and inclusive event. Learn, celebrate and relax at the beautiful Shabbat retreat, while enjoying kosher, local and organic food. If you think your CSA veggies are wonderful now, imagine the fresh from the farm produce in early September. The weekend is filled with educational and recreational programming for children, teens and adults. The Retreat is held at Camp Kinder Ring on majestic Sylvan Lake. Shabbat services are organized for every movement.

The NY Ride offers cycling routes for all cycling levels, from 30 to 100 miles. Fun for the whole family! You will experience a beautiful, scenic route in the Hudson Valley of New York, with fully supported bike mechanics, rest stops, and luggage transportation.

Registration is $399. This includes all your meals, lodging, luggage transfer, snacks, bike and medical support and a weekend filled with environmental programming. All participants have a fundraising minimum.

The money raised from the bike ride will go to support a wide range of outstanding and innovative programs in the U.S. and in Israel, such as Hazon’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs in North America, and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a premier environmental teaching and research program in the Middle East that brings together Jewish and Arab students.

This ride will provide you with a physical challenge, an empowering experience and a welcoming and warm Jewish community. Join The People of the Bike! Register now at www.newyorkride.org.

Top 10 CSA Kitchen "Must Haves"

2009-06-25T07:17:00.001-07:00

The wonderful Tuv Ha’Aretz Community-Supported Agriculture group at the JCC Houston came up with this Top-10 list of must have kitchen items in order to maximize the produce from your CSA share. Turns out, the list is pretty handy for any Jewish food enthusiast - feel free to share with friends and family.

Top 10 CSA (& Jewish Food) Must Haves
1. Evert-Fresh Green Bags - The best bags for storing fruits and vegetables. Possibly ever?
2. Slow Cooker - Slow cook your veggies into a delicious Shabbat dinner (or lunch!)
3. Salad Spinner - A handy salad spinner makes your weekly influx of lettuce and leafy greens a snap to clean - or at least a lot easier.
4. Freezer Bags - Freeze those fresh, local corn kernels to enjoy all winter long.
5. Food Processor - Pesto, butternut squash puree, homemade soup…mmmmm
6. A Food Steamer - Steam your raw veggies into a delicious dinner in no time.
7. An (Immersion) Hand Blender - The best thing to happen to soups since the spoon.
8. An Ice Cube Tray - For freezing that pesto (or tomato sauce, butternut squash puree…) into easy-to-store-and-reheat cubes.
9. Space to put everything (yes, this can even be done in the city!)
10. A Large Stock Pot - For soups, sauces, boiling pasta…you can never have enough big pots around.

Jewish Food Jewish Life: Practicality vs. Deliciousness

2009-06-23T04:23:00.000-07:00

By Eve Quarrendon Jochnowitz
Member Tuv Ha’Aretz Hazon CSA at the 14th Street Y in New York City

In this week’s (6/20/09) sedre, shelakh-lekha we read the famous story of the spies sent by Moses to reconnoiter the land of Israel. The accounts brought back are not contradictory but they highlight two very different but equally accurate views of the situation: first, that it is unlikely that a rag-tag group of desert-bedraggled wanderers could overthrow an entrenched military power, and second, the produce there is just so good, you have to try it! The Israelites faced with the two reports contemplate a seemingly impossible undertaking that might yield up some really good food. In a way, this story is the mirror image of the episode in last week’s parshe, in which the flavorful vegetables of Egypt are remembered in the context of the seemingly endless and impossible sojourn in the desert.

But challenging undertakings are by no means as impossible or impractical as they seem before you try. It is hard to believe now, but people my age will recall that for decades organic agriculture was dismissed as impractical, inefficient, and an actual threat to the world food supply because of lower yield. The opposite has proved to be the case as the careful land-management by organic farmers like our CSA partners has in fact resulted in more food (and vastly more delicious food) produced on sustainably cultivated land.
The giant, fat, juicy, fragrant, and irresistible grapes carried back by the spies tell their story more eloquently than any words: Strive for deliciousness and accomplish the impossible.

CSA Slaw

2009-06-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

This tangy coleslaw comes right out of the Shearith weekly CSA box:

1 small head of green or red cabbage . . . or 1/2 of both!
3 large red radishes
3/4 cup baby carrots (any kind of carrots are fine)
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 Tb. dijon mustard
A splash of white vinegar

Slice the cabbage as fine as possible, cutting out the center core
Cut the radish and carrots into smaller chunks and pulse in food processor until chunky
Combine cabbage with radish and carrots
Mix salt, pepper, mayo, mustard and vinegar in a bowl
Add to cabbage mixture and fold in until everything is well mixed
Chill and serve.
Other nice add-ins: parsley, green pepper, scallions, onions, etc.
Feeds 4-6

This Week's Box. This Week's News.

2009-06-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

What's in this week's box?

onions

cabbage (red and green)

summer squash

kohlrabi

cilantro

lettuce

bok choy

Fresh...the Movie
We are hoping to bring the acclaimed film FRESH to Shearith Israel for viewing on a Wednesday night in July.

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy. Take a look at the trailer.

Newsflash - The Queen Will Have An Organic Garden Too

2009-06-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

According to Obama Foodorama, Queen Elizabeth is putting in a veggie garden too!

In what can only be regarded as an excellent and perhaps amazing turn of events, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has planted a vegetable garden at Buckingham Palace--and it may well have been inspired by First Lady Michelle Obama, who visited The Queen with president Obama during the G20 Summit. The new 30ft x 12ft palace vegetable garden, called "The Yard Bed," is the first food garden on royal grounds since there was a Victory Garden planted in World War II, even though there are about forty acres of gardens at the London compound. (Above: The Queen, Prince Phillip, and gardener Claire Midgley survey the new garden)

Read the rest here.

Another Radish Recipe

2009-06-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

Radish Dip
from Louise Spiro

8 ounces cream cheese

1/4 cup margarine

1/4 teaspoon celery salt

dash paprika

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 cup finely chopped radishes

1/4 cup finely chopped green onion

Combine all the ingredients
Chill and serve with crackers or vegetables

2009-06-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Rethinking radishes

By Barbara Damrosch
Published Thursday, April 7, 2009 in The Washington Post

Crisp, crunchy, tangy, zippy, zesty, snappy, peppy, pungent, piquant and sparkly. These are some of the adjectives that the United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, in a 1977 pamphlet, proposed to radish growers for marketing their product. Radishes "give zing to salads," the association wrote.

Well grown and well displayed, radishes sell themselves. I think of exquisite, bunched French Breakfast radishes heaped high in an outdoor market stall, their leaves a healthy green, their small, red, white-tipped cylindrical roots firm and inviting. No need to label them "piquant." But cooks aren't always familiar with the full range of radish types, beyond the little red balls served at Thanksgiving. Some are hard to come by unless you grow your own.

As a gardener-cook in search of a radish education, you might begin with the Baker Creek catalogue, which lists 24 diverse varieties from many lands. You'll learn that there are quick-growing spring radishes, which can be planted right now, and larger winter ones best sown from late summer on, with cool temperatures ahead. (Hot days produce hot radishes with pithy centers, especially if left in the ground too long.) For spring you might try Helios, a bright yellow, olive-shaped radish from Slovakia. Saxa 2, a small, round red one, matures in a mere 21 days. Small weekly plantings would give you a steady supply.

Winter radishes to buy now, plant later include Chinese Green Luobo, much like a daikon with green flesh. Consider the crisp and pungent Long Black Spanish and the deep purple, 10-inch French heirloom Violet de Gournay. Or Philadelphia White Box, "perfect for growing in cold frames over winter," according to Baker Creek. My first choice would be Chinese Red Meat, one of the ancient Beauty Heart types, also called watermelon radish. The round roots, up to four inches across, seem drab at first look, but slice one open and you'll find brilliant magenta color in a radiating starburst pattern.

Whichever radishes you select, give them plenty of moisture. Though a loamy soil is ideal, even clay-soil gardeners can succeed, because radishes tend to shoulder their way upward as they grow.

Plant a radish and you'll get a far more versatile ingredient than you might think. Try sauteeing them, grating them for sauces or adding them to soups, stews and vegetable purees. Cooked radishes lose their bite but not their earthy brassica flavor. Use the tops as you would turnip greens. If they go to seed, put the peppery young pods in salads. For sheer drama, slice disks of Beauty Hearts into a stir-fry, cooking only briefly to retain some crunch. Or serve them raw -- as a dip vehicle perhaps -- if, for you, a radish must have tang, pep and zip.

A New Newsletter

2009-06-10T13:41:00.001-07:00

It's a fresh new start for our Shearith Israel CSA newsletter. We hope this new blog format will make it easier to bring you news and recipes and stories from the tables, kitchens and gardens of our members.

Squishy strawberries notwithstanding, the quality of our produce from Riverview Farms has been excellent. We are hearing some gripes about the amount of time it takes to process the weekly harvest. When you're used to greens that are washed and poly-bagged, or onions that come without "tails" it can be a bit of a shock to rinse, sort, and trim your vegetables.

We highly recommend resuable Debbie Meyer green bags, as a storage solution for your washed and prepped produce. They work by absorbing and removing the ethylene gas that fruits, vegetables and flowers release while ripening after harvesting or picking. The Green Bags dramatically extend the life of fruits, vegetables and flowers. You can buy them online, at Target or Bed Bath & Beyond.

A Most Unusual Salsa

2009-06-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

Cherries are in the stores. And our CSA boxes have been full of onions. Here's an unusual salsa that combines the two:

Cherry and Spring Onion Salsa
Adapted from Samin Nosrat, from the New York Times

Time: 15 minutes

1 small red spring onion bulb and greens

3 tablespoons lemon juice, or more to taste

1 1/2 cups pitted cherries, or about 8 ounces

1 teaspoon finely chopped chives

1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley

1 small jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped

5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt.

1. Finely dice spring onion bulb and greens. Place 3 tablespoons diced bulb and 1 tablespoon greens in a small bowl and pour lemon juice over them. Set aside for 10 minutes to macerate.

2. Halve the cherries and slice into slivers. Place cherries, herbs, jalapeño, olive oil and salt in a medium-size bowl and stir to combine.

3. Add onion and greens, taste and add more salt and lemon juice if needed.

4. Let the salsa sit for at least 5 minutes to meld flavors.

Yield: 4 to 8 servings.

Note: Salsa can be spooned over flaky fish, like halibut, or grilled pork or duck.

Tuv Ha Shavua at Shearith

News from the Meat Eating World

Top Chef goes Veggie, Regional and Seasonal

Reflections On the End of the Season

Nine Faiths, One Vegan Lunch at Windsor Castle

Addendum

Riverview and Recipes

A Contrarian View on Apple Picking

Against Apple PickingWhy pick-your-own orchards are a wasteful scam.

Visit our famer -- Sunday October 25th

Naturally Wrong

Bounty and Deprivation – Reflections after the Harvest of Sukkot

Great Zucchini Recipe

This week's Box

Reusing and Recycling Your Lulav and Etrog

Effects of the Storms on local Farmers

How to Plant Garlic

Nutritional Labeling - Beware of So Called Smart Choices®

Kitchen Wisdom

I Hate Jewish Food

Elephants in our refrigerator?

Life with Goats at the Adamah Farm

Mystery Green...Chipilin

Today's mystery green is Chipilin. Our farmer likes to make tea from it before going to bed.

Coping with the Bounty of the Season

By, Cathy Erway

Got Squash?

Wasting Food While People Go Hungry

FRESH...Screening tonight at pickup

Moving Away From Wasteful Thinking

Rabbi Shalom Lewis challenges constitutionality of Georgia kosher laws

Fresh...the Movie. Screening at 8/12 Pickup

What's In the Box (August 5th )

Parasha Ha Shavua: Ekev

Tzatziki Sauce

The Tomato Moment

Tisha B'Av Pick Up

The Kitchen as a Place of Perpetual Blessing

Flexitarianism

Knife Skills Class with Chef Norry

What's In the Box (July 22)

Calling all Foodies: Think, Act, Dig In at the Hazon Food Conference

The Cooking Bracha: A Blessing for Making Food

Roasted Green Beans

Parasha Ha Shavua: Pinchas

Food, Inc. - July 14th at Landmark Midtown

Tomato Killer

Classic Tabbouleh

Fruit in Its Season

Cool as a Cucumber

Watermelon Soup

Spanish Gazpacho

Zucchini & Watercress Soup

Go Green Expo

People of the Bike

Top 10 CSA Kitchen "Must Haves"

Jewish Food Jewish Life: Practicality vs. Deliciousness

CSA Slaw

This Week's Box. This Week's News.

Newsflash - The Queen Will Have An Organic Garden Too

Another Radish Recipe

Rethinking radishes

A New Newsletter

A Most Unusual Salsa

Cherry and Spring Onion SalsaAdapted from Samin Nosrat, from the New York Times

Against Apple Picking
Why pick-your-own orchards are a wasteful scam.

Cherry and Spring Onion Salsa
Adapted from Samin Nosrat, from the New York Times