What Should I Expect From My CSA

This week's guest post comes to us from 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 are
signing 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.

Ways to reuse (recycle) your lulav and etrog

Shake and Reuse: Lulav & Etrog

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!

Growing Organic Research

By Tracy Lerman

Tracy is the Policy Program Assistant for The Organic Farming Research Foundation. She will be leading a session during the Hazon CSA Leadership Track of the Food Conference on how to incorporate food advocacy and policy into your CSA.


Now that “green” is a marketing buzzword and organic food has broken free from its confines in hippie health food stores, available in major supermarket chains everywhere, we environmentalists can finally feel like we’ve arrived. The organic food movement is self-sufficient now. No longer must we worry over the fledgling movement like a nervous mother over her newborn baby. We can sit back and watch organic play in the big-kids playground with fat-free, instant, and all the other major marketing labels in the grocery retail industry.


Or can we? While consumer demand for organic food is rising (even during the current recession), the domestic supply cannot keep up. The nation’s ten thousand organic farmers – big operations and small family farms alike – cannot produce enough organic food for all of these newly conscious consumers, and food processors as well as retail stores rely increasingly on imports shipped in from as far away as China.


One reason for the disparity between organic demand and domestic supply is the lack of new information about organic agriculture. The U.S. spends billions of dollars on research and development of new pesticides, genetically-engineered seeds and chemical fertilizers, but very little on research to address production issues in organic farming systems. Conventional agriculture has the research backing of corporate chemical giants like Dow, Monsanto, Bayer and Genentech. Private sector organic research funding does not register on the same scale. In terms of public funding, the federal government spends less than two percent of its agriculture research budget on organic. This amount is growing compared to previous years, but when measured against the European Union’s organic research spending, we do not really hold a candle to them.


We are still light years away from growing enough organic food in the U.S. to meet current consumer demand. And that will not change until we start investing in the country’s organic farmers, starting with research that seeks to improve organic farming systems.


The good news is that consumers can make a difference, but not just by voting with your fork. Tell your members of Congress and the Obama administration to support increased funding for organic agriculture research. To find out more, visit www.ofrf.org.

From Rabbi Jacob Fine in Seattle --

Wasting Food While People Go Hungry

 

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, Shofetim.  The parshahreads:

 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. 

 

To learn more about how you can help relieve hunger in Seattle and around the country please check out these resources.

 

www.firstharvest.org

www.feedingamerica.org

www.mazon.org

 

Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Jacob

jacob@hilleluw.org

 

Making Vegetable Stock

Stock is a kitchen staple and will make your dishes taste much better than using plain water. Here's a how-to from Madeline Guzman.

Do I have to throw away my vegetable scraps?
Madeline Guzman
Newsletter Editor Tuv Ha’Aretz in Rockville, MD

Here’s a green idea! Instead of throwing away the vegetable scraps you don’t want, save them by turning them into stock.

This is what to do. Collect and save well-scrubbed vegetable peelings, roots, stalks, leaves (NOT rhubarb), and ends that you would otherwise discard (nothing spoiled or moldy!) Be sure to use onions, carrots, and celery as part of this mix. Other good vegetables to use are leeks, scallions, garlic, fennel, chard, lettuce, potatoes, parsnips, green beans, squash, bell peppers, eggplant, mushrooms, and asparagus. Additionally, you can add corn cobs, winter squash skins, beet greens, and herbs like parsley and cilantro. Avoid using cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, rutabagas, or artichokes – all of which tend to have an overpowering taste. Be aware that onion skins will turn the stock brown and beet roots will turn it red. Chop the veggie scraps into similar sized pieces and store in your freezer while collecting them.

When ready to use, add 4 cups of veggie scraps to 2 quarts of water and simmer on the stove for an hour to make vegetable stock. After simmering, remove veggie scraps from the liquid, and press the veggie scraps to extract and save as much liquid as possible. Warning: the taste might be odd (my family and I agreed that the stock I made tasted truly weird!) because it is only the unseasoned liquid made from a conglomeration of vegetables. Not to worry. Allow the liquid to cool; then freeze it. Use this vegetable stock as a base for your next homemade soup. My Chinese Cabbage Soup (recipe below used with my weird-tasting veggie stock came out excellent!


Chinese Cabbage Soup
Serves 12         
 
Hearty and a bit picante!
 
2 Tbsp olive oil                                                       4 large potatoes, peeled & diced
1 large onion, chopped                                            1 Tbsp dried oregano
4 green onions, chopped                                         2 tsp dried basil
1 clove garlic (or 1 garlic scape), minced                  1 tsp black pepper
4 stalks celery with leaves (chopped)                       1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
3 large carrots, cubes (with a few minced greens)     2 bay leaves
1 ½ quarts vegetable broth                                      1 tsp salt
4 8-oz cans tomato sauce
1 (15-oz) can black beans
1 small (or ½ large) Chinese cabbage, shredded
 
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot, and sauté white onions, green onions, and garlic until tender.  Mix in the celery and carrots. Stir in broth, tomato sauce, black beans, Chinese cabbage, and potatoes.  Season with oregano, basil, black pepper, cayenne pepper, bay leaves, and salt.  Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally until veggies are tender.  Remove bay leaves (if you can find them) before serving.   
 
2008- Adapted from a recipe by Wakulachef submitted to allrecipes.com                                             

Tabbouleh salad

This comes from Hazon's Leah Koenig in NY, a wonderful cook and even more wonderful writer!


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.

An intro to your Jewish CSA – Hazon’s Tuv Ha’Aretz

Welcome to the Hazon CSA network! Our Hazon CSAs follow the traditional Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project structure with regards to weekly vegetable delivery and a strong commitment to supporting local agriculture. And like some other CSAs, Tuv Ha'Aretz works to build community and educate its members about food, nourishment, and small-scale organic agriculture. What makes Tuv Ha'Aretz different is that in 2009 it is a network of 32 Jewishly-rooted CSAs in North America and Israel.

Through Tuv Ha'Aretz members can expand their understanding of what it means for food to be kosher – food that is not only “fit” for to eat according to Jewish tradition, but “fit” for the Earth, for the health and sustainability of our own bodies and our broader communities.

Tuv Ha'Aretz suggests a double meaning: Tuv Ha'Aretz is both good for the land and the best of the land: good for the land because it encourages and supports small organic farmers who grow their crops using sustainable methods on agricultural land near the city that would otherwise be threatened with development, and best of the land because the produce -- often picked the morning of delivery! -- is fresh, sustainable, sweet, pesticide and chemical free, healthy, beautiful and delicious.

Recent Hazon CSA programs have included:

• Fifty people learning about bikkurim, first fruits, while on the farm for Shavuot in Portland, OR


• Hundreds of people across the country attended Tu Bishvat Seders in California’s Bay Area; Boulder, CO; Rockville, MD; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO; St. Paul, MN; Washington, DC; New York, NY; and Long Island, NY (which was maple syrup themed!)


• A Gleaning Day Sukkot farm trip that sites in the New York area have done for years


• A beet haiku competition in Scottsdale, AZ though the day school that hosts the CSA


• Brunches, movie screenings, strawberry picking farm-trips, and potlucks that sites around the country have been organizing.

And the list of events goes on and on!

Shehecheyanu – we celebrate this special occasion -- for your new CSA season with Hazon and TuvHa’Aretz, for all of the first fruits and veggies you will eat as a part of your share and for the new communities you will be a part of this season.

You are invited to take a moment, as you begin your CSA journey, to offer words of thanks, either the traditional ones below or the ones you feel moved to say.

Shehechiyanu



Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who has caused us to live, and has sustained us, and has enabled us to come to this time.

Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha-olam, she-hecheyanu, ve-kiyemanu ve-higiyanu la-zeman ha-zeh.

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.