Political activism in 30 seconds

Here are three petitions you can sign, from Change.org: one protests Monsanto's stranglehold on the USDA, one protests GMO crops, and the third demands that President Obama protect our right to buy and eat GMO-free foods.

I know that the Center for Food Safety plans to sue to stop the planting of GMO alfalfa (and GMO sugar beets), but have not heard if they have actually filed their suit yet. You can click on the link to their site here for more info. They also have many more petitions to sign.

Adding your name to a petition, as I once said in an earlier post, is a pretty spineless form of activism, but it's better than nothing. If I hear of more direct ways to get involved, I'll post them.

FYI, these petitions have widgets that you can embed on your Facebook page or blog; at the bottom of each one there's a "Get Widget" link for the embed code. Feel free to pass them along.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Buzzkill

Save the bees, via this message from Slow Food:

Bees are dying off around the world - and it's getting serious. Without them, much of the food we eat would disappear, and the impact on the US economy and food prices would be severe.

Scientists are suggesting agricultural pesticides are one of the main culprits, so you can tell the Environmental Protection Agency it's time to solve the mystery of what's killing our buzz (and food chain). 

The EPA is under increasing pressure from the pesticide companies to do nothing about it, so please click on the link below to let the EPA know you're concerned about bee populations.

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5986/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5833 

Cooking for both ends of the life cycle

Last week, I had the unique privilege of making soup for two sets of friends on either end of the life cycle. One couple is celebrating the birth of their first child, and the other couple lost their mother/mother-in-law.

As I was cooking my lentils and chopping my garlic and steaming my carrots and celery, I thought about what it means to feed people at these profound, powerful moments in their lives. I didn't come up with any great pearls of wisdom about it. I'm glad to be able to feed my friends when they need it, either because they are celebrating a new life or mourning the loss of a parent. I suppose, in some small way, the food I made provides them some of the energy they need, whether they're changing a diaper or sitting shiva. And so, in some infinitesimal but nonetheless important way, feeding people at times like these allows me to participate in their moment, to nourish them with my love and support, as well as my lentil soup. And really, when I think about it, that is no small thing.

The 50 Most Powerful People in Food

Lists and the people who love to make them. What does it mean to be on this list, or not on it? Discuss.

Also, should Steve Jobs (yes, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple) be on it, just because his company is named after a fruit? Actually, he was chosen for other reasons. Check them out here.

Better food is coming to a college campus near you

Check this out.

Garden anxiety

This time last year we were eating cukes, zukes, patty pans and possibly even beans out of our garden. This year, plants are still tiny, half my seeds didn't germinate, and I only just now noticed we have fruit on our tomato plants (nothing ripe yet, of course).

I find I've been experiencing actual anxiety over our garden this year. We had a long, cold wet spring (it rained on the 4th of July, something almost unheard of here), and so far summer seems to be progressing in fits and starts, weather-wise. Everything is late, and some things haven't come up at all, despite repeated sowings (I don't think we'll have any onions this year, which bums me out).

We planted a lot: potatoes of various varieties and colors, basil (not doing well yet, but I'm hopeful), carrots and greens in pots this year (they seem to do better than when I planted them in the ground, plus slug control is easier in pots), tomatoes, cukes, zukes, patty pans, delicata squashes, asparagus beans and bush beans. Oh yes, and strawberries, which we planted as a ground cover and hope will produce a bumper crop next year. So lots of food potential, but no actual food yet.

The poor growing season is definitely impacting our grocery budget, as I'm having to buy veggies and fruits that in other years we'd be eating out of the yard by now. But it's not the financial burden that occupies my thoughts. What's interesting to me is how my mindset has completely altered. I watch the weather reports now with the eye of a grower, and when I hear about hot weather coming I'm happy, even though I hate heat (dry Oregon heat notwithstanding). I track the sunlight and note where it falls in the yard each day. My hatred for the non-native hemlock on my neighbor's property grows, as it continually shades out parts of my yard that were formerly sunny. My thoughts are constantly wandering out to my garden, as I take breaks from my symphony work.

I'm just a nice Jewish girl who grew up in Los Angeles. I never gave any thought to weather or rainfall or soil temps. I mean, there is no weather to speak of in LA; it's always 72 and hazy. I was an urban kid in most senses, although I loved being outside and felt an affinity for forests and oceans from the time I could walk.

Now, although I continue to live in a city, I've become much more attuned to the vagaries of growing. My thoughts and mindset are that of a food producer, of someone whose fortunes are, albeit in a small personal way, tied to the land and the seasonal cycles. I like the change, and I love how growing food has given me a personal stake in, and attachment to, the patch of dirt in the city in the state on the planet I call home.

Michael's done it again

Michael Pollan's assessment of the current state of the food movement, through five book reviews, in the June 10 New York Review of Books. As always, he manages to gather all the strands of this complex and often conflicted socio-political movement and present them with eloquence. Really worth reading.

Still here

I'm violating blog netiquette by noting how long it's been since I've posted, but there it is. It's been a long time since I last posted and if you are reading this without my prompting you to look at my blog, thanks for sticking with me during my dry spell. I'll get back to more semi-regular posts in the new year.

Too much to update in detail but here's a thumbnail sketch of my life since my last post:

Got a mostly full-time temp job for six weeks in October that ran through early December (hence the lack of posting-no time). Thanks to my friend E. for hiring me and giving me the opportunity to earn money rather than filing for unemployment. Wish the job could have lasted longer; it was lovely to not worry about money for awhile.

Just got back from California where I spent just over a week attending the Hazon Food Conference and afterwards visited friends and family. More on the conference in a subsequent post.

Started doing yoga again after a 20+ year hiatus. Feels good, on many levels. Sweetie is doing it with me. She finds it challenging, but is intrigued by it too.

Here's hoping you all have a better year, and a better decade, in every sense of the word.

Michelle is my hero

Michelle Obama and White House Chief Chef Sam Kass tell the story of the White House vegetable garden in this 7-minute video. I guarantee it will make you smile.

Tomato porn

I harvested our first heirloom tomato on Wednesday, a colossal and supremely ugly Brandywine. Of course, as every heirloom grower knows, the uglier the tomato, the better it tastes. I don't think the pictures do it justice, in terms of how large it actually was (I served it to friends in a salad for dinner, and two days later am still finishing it), but here you go:

Needless to say, I hope, it was fantastic. I feel for all those folks in the NE whose tomatoes have been destroyed by blight this summer. I hope you can glean some vicarious enjoyment from this one.

Jews, Food & Ethics show now online

I am happy to announce that my radio show, Jews, Food and Ethics is now available online. When you visit the Yiddish Hour page at KBOO, click on the "Audio" tab at the top. Scroll down to the second audio file and you'll find it. You can stream it from the site or download it to listen to at your convenience.

If you know anyone you think would be interested in hearing this show, please forward them the link to the Yiddish Hour site, rather than sending the audio file itself. For one thing, the file is quite large and would take awhile to send by itself, but more importantly, this show is part of the Yiddish Hour and I'd like people who may not have visited our site before to check it out.

I look forward to hearing your feedback. I've never done a show of this type before, and I must say, after conceiving, planning and recording it over a period of nine months or so, I feel like I got as close as I ever will to experiencing the miracle of birth. The best part of it is no stretch marks and no 2am feedings!

Jews, Food and Ethics radio show-an update

Thanks to all of you who tuned in to listen to my Jews, Food and Ethics show on KBOO last weekend. I appreciate the support, particularly as this was my first-ever foray into a public affairs/interview-type show. I think, all things considered, that it went fairly well. I certainly learned a lot about how to do this kind of radio, and will put it to good use next time.

If you weren't able to catch the show live, it will be available on the Yiddish Hour site. I have to edit the show a bit before I can put it online, but because Passover is next week, I probably won't be able to get it up on our site before next weekend. However, I do want to assure you that the show will be available to download, and I'll post here when it's ready.

If you're interested in more information about any of the topics I discussed on the show, you can find links to my guests, the eco-kashrut movement and the Hekhsher Tzedek Initiative at our site. Click on the Playlists tab at the top of the page and you'll find a list of the music I played, along with the aforementioned links.

If you're Jewish, chag sameach. If not, happy spring.

How NOT to make yourself crazy (and malnourished) during Pesach

For many Ashkenazic Jews, figuring out what is okay to eat during Pesach is to negotiate a minefield of anxiety and judgment. 

One of my particular pet peeves centers around the issue of kitniyot, or legumes. Halachically speaking (according to Jewish law), there is nothing wrong with eating kitniyot, which includes beans, lentils and rice. However, many Ashkenazic Jews do not eat these foods because, about 600 years ago, Ashkenazic rabbis declared them forbidden. Their rationale goes something like this: legumes swell when they are cooked, making them too similar to leavened foods like bread, therefore we must ban them just to be extra careful we don't violate the Biblical laws of Pesach kashrut, which, for those of you unfamiliar with the food prohibitions associated with Passover, are even more stringent than regular kashrut. (For a great article about how some Orthodox Jews are reclaiming their right to eat kitniyot, check this out.)

I was raised in an assimilated Reform household, and the only Passover food restrictions we observed were not to eat bread and bread products for eight days. I had no idea there were so many other restrictions associated with Pesach until I became an adult, and I adjusted my observance to a certain extent. 

For many Jews, what (or what not) to eat during Pesach is as much a matter of minhag (custom) as it is a desire to follow Biblical law, or be "a good Jew," however you define that. Hence the reality that many Jews deny themselves the protein nourishment and the delicious flavors of beans and lentils, (not to mention rice), because they are operating from a place of minhag, a mindset that says, "This is how I've always done it, this is how my mother did it, it's not for me to change that, and if I did I'd be consumed with guilt."

Minhag can be a wonderful thing, providing continuity in one's personal observance of and connection with many Jewish practices. In this instance, however, I'm going to risk offending some of my Jewish friends when I say that refusing to eat legumes, and freaking out about having legumes even be present at any seder you may attend (most folks I know do potluck seders these days; it's just too much work to expect the host to do it all), is misguided and detracts from the whole point of Pesach, which is to celebrate our liberation from slavery in the company of friends and family.

I find myself going back to something Rabbi Arthur Waskow said in an interview I did with him for my "Jews, Food and Ethics" show on KBOO last Sunday. He made the point that changes to Jewish practice over time tend to be adopted based on whether they are life-affirming. In other words, does eating kitniyot enhance your enjoyment of Pesach? Does it decrease your anxiety about whether you are "doing it right?" If so, eating kitniyot is a life-affirming practice and should become part of your observance if you want it to be. Waskow also made a good analogy to feminist Judaism here: he said that when feminist Jewish practices first began surfacing, in the 1970s, many reacted by saying, "Not with my Torah, you don't!" But over time, it was found that including women's participation in rituals that had traditionally been limited to men was found to be life-affirming (I tend to think of it as simply more fair and practical, but I'll yield to Waskow's definition), so the practices were adopted. Today, even in some Orthodox communities, women's roles have expanded, and women's full participation is now de facto in the other branches of Judaism.

I respect the minhag of following minhag. But I also know that Judaism is an interpretive tradition that has evolved over the centuries, and so I believe it is equally Jewish to question or change one's minhag when it becomes burdensome, (especially when it is not based on halachah), and diminishes, rather than enhances, the joy of celebrating the Jewish holidays.

Chag sameach.

Jews and food

Check this out.

A gitn shabbes.

This is encouraging/Same as it ever was

I've been behind on my posting and keeping up with food issues, but just came across this. Given my (and the food community's) disappointment with the choice of Tom Vilsack as Sec'y of Ag, I'll take any positive signs I can get.

On the other hand, I heard on the news tonight that the owner of Peanut Corporation of America, the company that owns the plant in Georgia responsible for the current salmonella outbreak in peanut products, sits on the Dept. of Ag's Peanut Standards committee. If you are surprised or shocked by this news, you should know this is business as usual for the Dept. of Agriculture, and with Vilsack at the head I doubt we'll be seeing any real changes there anytime soon. Not to mention the interview they did with a former worker at the plant who talked about rats and roaches being dry roasted with the peanuts... 

One step forward, two steps back...

Holy cow, batman!

We went to the Hillsdale Farmer's Market today, our only year-round market, and found this:


It's only right to give the farmers who grew this behemoth their due. The parsnip in question was grown at Ayers Creek Farm, in Gaston, a place Sweetie and I have visited (we learned about bees there at a Slow Food event last summer). Even they were impressed and seemed a little frightened by what they had yanked up out of the ground. One farmer offered to give us adoption papers, to make things official, but we declined, since we are going to slice it up and eat it.

When we got home we measured it and it's 23". Damn.

Before we left for the market, we saw a young Cooper's hawk in our tree, the first one I've seen this season. Their migration period begins in November, and last year we saw several of them, including one who tried to land directly on our birdfeeder in hopes of catching a meal. I'm surprised we haven't seen any before now, but it was worth the wait, esp. since it snowed again last night, so everything was coated in white.


Quite a nature day.

Cheesy goodness

On Saturday we invited friends over for cheese fondue and raclette. Sweetie and I received a fondue pot as a housewarming gift from my sister-and-brother-in-law about five years ago and never got around to using it.

Making the fondue was much easier than I expected, although I think the recipe we used was a bit too heavy on the alcohol; I'll use less next time. What was really fun was serving the raclette. Why raclette, you ask? What is raclette? When is Spain? Why is Hitler? Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?

My friend A. and I met at a summer music festival in the Swiss Alps lo, these many years ago, and we befriended two women who worked in the Swiss tourist office in the little town where we were staying (it's deep in the Alps, about an hour's train ride from the Matterhorn). These two women wanted to treat us to the Valais' premiere dish, raclette, so, even though it was summer and raclette is traditionally eaten in winter, off we went. 

Raclette, served in the traditional way, consists of a huge wheel of cheese on a wooden slab, which is placed next to a large fire. As the cheese melts, it is scraped off the wooden slab and onto plates, whereupon it is eaten with new boiled potatoes. It's fantastic, an old peasant dish, very hearty and definitely meant to be consumed in winter. The cheese itself has a distinctive nutty flavor I've never tasted in any other cheese, perhaps because it uses raw (unpasteurized) milk, or perhaps because of how it is aged. My friend A. and I ate far too much of it that night 20 years ago, plus we didn't know we were supposed to drink wine to cut through all that delicious fatty goodness, and drank water instead. You can imagine what happened. Next morning we both woke up with what I can only describe as a cheese hangover; I felt like my stomach was hanging around my knees somewhere, and the idea of eating anything ever again seemed ludicrous, if not impossible.

Despite this first questionable experience with raclette, we were both eager to try it again, and this time we were prepared: we limited ourselves to smaller portions and made sure we ate vegetables and drank a lovely dry white wine. Our spouses and her son, unburdened by troublesome memories of raclette, enjoyed it wholehearted(stomached?)ly.

Of course, I don't have a huge fireplace in which to place a 50 lb. wheel of cheese to allow for traditional melting practices, so I put the cheese on a shallow plate in the oven and let it melt. The disadvantage to that method is that the cheese begins to cool and congeal almost immediately, and it really needs to be hot and almost liquid. What to do? Well, for those who love kitchen gadgets and are serious about raclette, enter the Raclette Grill. This has to be seen to be fully appreciated:

This first one is a basic grill; the cheese is heated up below, and you can grill vegetables or whatever you like on top.



This one is for the serious raclette conoisseur: it has a granite top, but otherwise works on the same principles, I believe.

A good time was had by all, even if we were gadget-challenged when it came to the raclette. There's always eBay, after all.

What did you eat/cook over the weekend?

Two great food stories

Heard about this on The Splendid Table last week. It's worth listening to the show to hear the full story.

Also saw this on ABC news.

My current food news: I'm making a huge double recipe pot of homemade lentil soup on this cold first Sunday of the new year. I'll freeze half of it and Sweetie and I will eat the rest for lunch and dinner this week. It's filling the house with the most delicious lentily smell.

What are you all cooking right now? Or plan to cook in the coming week? Inquiring minds want to know.

Seasonal thoughts

The words of this song have so many meanings. For all the farmers preparing for winter, for all the gardners putting their gardens to bed for the season, and for all of us who are gathering our strength and energy for the coming year, with all its challenges and as yet unknown possibilities...

(PS. The words are great, but the song is even better. I encourage you to check it out on Judy Collins’s double CD, “Forever: An Anthology," or download it from iTunes for all of $0.99. One of this season's best holiday buys, IMO.)

Fallow Way
Words and Music by Judy Collins © 1997
Universal Music Corp. (ASCAP)/ The Wildflowers Company (ASCAP)
(Administered by Universal Music Corp.)


I'll learn to love the fallow way
When winter draws the valley down
And stills the rivers in their storm
And freezes all the little brooks
Time when our steps slow to the song
Of falling flakes and crackling flames
When silver stars are high and still
Deep in the velvet of the sky

The crystal times, the silent times
I'll learn to love their quietness
While deep beneath the glistening snow
The black earth dreams of violets
I'll learn to love the fallow times.

I'll learn to love the fallow way
When all my colors fade to white
And flying birds fold back their wings
Upon my anxious wanderings
The sun has slanted all her rays
Across a vast and harvest plains
My memories mingle in the dawn
I dream of joyful vagabonds

The crystal times, the silent times
I'll learn to love their quietness
While deep beneath the glistening snow
The black earth dreams of violets
I'll learn to love the fallow times

No drummer comes across the plain
To tell of triumph or of pain
No word of far-off battle's cry
To draw me out or draw me nigh…

I'll learn to love the fallow way
And gather in the patient fruits
And after autumn’s blaze and burn
I'll know the feel of still, deep roots
That nothing seem to do, or need
That crack the ice in frozen ponds
And slumbering in winter's folds
Have dreams of green and blue and gold
I'll learn to love the fallow way
And listen for the blossoming
Of my own heart once more in spring

As sure as time, as sure as snow
As sure as moonlight, wind and stars
The fallow time will fall away
The sun will bring an April day
And I will yield to Summer's way.

In praise of deformed veggies

A few weeks ago, the European Union, in its infinite wisdom, lifted a ban on "ugly fruit and produce." Now, I am a self-described socialist, but even I think this is an example of government going too far. I mean, why on earth would you ban weird-looking food to begin with, as long as it is otherwise perfectly okay? For one thing, there's no excuse to waste food when so many people are dealing with food insecurity, not to mention out and out starvation in less fortunate parts of the world. And for another thing, weird-looking food is cool and makes for great conversations. Think of all those Virgin Mary sightings in potato chips or (insert your favorite food of choice here).

To celebrate this long overdue turn of events, I wanted to share these pictures. The Siamese potato is from our garden, and the carrot pants we found at the Hollywood Farmer's Market. The carrot knots we grew our first year gardening, before we figured out the whole thinning thing.




I should add that I've never seen carrot knots for sale anywhere, presumably because any gardener worth his or her salt would know how to grow carrots properly. Still, they're perfectly good carrots, and once we cut them up they tasted fine. Besides, they look too bizarre not to share.