Local Food, Tastes of Israel

In the last week or two, I fell in love (again) with experience of local, seasonal eating. With the rise in temperature, the delicious and tender lettuces that otherwise fill our produce bags have bolted and are no longer in season. Instead we have cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and the largest zucchini I have ever seen. We’ve also been enjoying gorgeous carrots – yellow, orange and “cosmic purple” in color – as well as tropical leafy greens and sweet, sweet blueberries that I enjoy by the handful.

With this mix of veggies, Israeli-inspired meals nearly plan themselves:

I’m enjoying the refreshing and nostalgic sensations of Israeli salad – it is a twofold pleasure really. The mixture of cucumber and tomato is the essence of summer. The flavors burst forth and the cucumber cools the body down. But then of course there’s the flood of memories that Israeli salad can bring up – for me, I’m 16 and traveling around Israel on a teen tour and eating Israeli salad at all hours of the day – every day. The memories are as delicious as the actual flavors.

I roasted my eggplants and blended them with garlic, lemon juice, tahini and some seasoning and fresh herbs for an easy and tasty baba ganoush. Since I already had my cuisinart out, I emptied the bowl and filled it again with similar ingredients – this time replacing the roasted eggplant with chickpeas. I love having bowls filled with homemade and healthy hummus and baba ganoush in the fridge – along with raw carrots, bell peppers, cucumbers and some pita or crackers. What a tasty and convenient snack or appetizer to munch on, especially when it is this hot outside.

I’ve roasted tons of zucchini with some yellow squash, eggplant and onions and served that over couscous. I’ve made a big batch of zucchini bread. But! I still have 2 gigantic zucchinis on my kitchen counter – it might be time to share my veggies with a friend.

As for the blueberries – I can’t get enough!

I hope you’re enjoying the fresh taste of summer. Bete’avon (Bon Appetit)!

Sweet Potato Shofar

This is fantastic! Check out the shofar-shaped sweet potato that arrived in the Cohen family's CSA bag!

It's Cold! Here's What's Fresh in Our Winter CSA Bags

For those curious about what shows up in our CSA bags, here's a look at what we found last week:

Carrots - tendersweet, cosmic purple, yellowstone

Sweet Potatoes— beauregard, vardamon

Turnip roots and greens - tokyo market

Oriental Greens - tatsoi

Salad Greens - mixed lettuces, arugula, baby mustard, radicchio

Braising/Cooking Greens - georgia collards or red russian kale

Fresh arugula pesto (add grated parmesan or romano cheese, if desired)

Lactofermentation - Sauerkraut

Fresh Florida Citrus - grapefruit, orange, tangerine, calamandon, kumquat

A few more photos...

Green beans with gorgonzola and walnuts and roasted pumpkin stuffed with a quinoa pilaf and topped with pumpkin seeds. Yum!

Better Late than Never

Chanukah is but a distant memory, but I can't close 2010 without a note about just how tasty veggie latkes and chunky homemade applesauce were this year.

I love a mix of white and sweet potatoes, zucchini, carrots and onions. How do you like yours?

Just Like Bubbe's Kitchen?

One of our wonderful B'nai Israel members sent me this article today. What do you think? Are you bringing kishkes back into your kitchen?

PS There are some really nice Chanukah recipes linked to this article - be sure to check them out!

Let's Talk About Eggs

Every once in a while we have the pleasure of finding ½ dozen eggs in our CSA bags. And for those who want delicious local eggs on a more regular schedule, Sandhill Farm is now able to offer eggs from Two Cedars Farm on a weekly subscription plan.

CSA members tend to go crazy for these eggs. The color, texture and flavor are completely different from grocery store eggs. And those who have done some reading on industrialized food production know that even “organic” “cage free” eggs aren’t all that they’re cracked up :) to be. I’d also like to mention that I highly recommend Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals if you’re exploring issues of personal food choices, and specifically, the egg issue.

The fresh eggs I most recently received in my CSA bag were absolutely gorgeous - so gorgeous in fact that I insisted upon making the “Egg in a Hole” AKA “Bird’s Nest” of my childhood for dinner one night last week. I just wanted to taste them straight up with some toast and a little salt and pepper.

There was no blood in sight in my batch, but I heard that Sherry found bloodspots in a few of her eggs, and that got us talking about kashrut…

Commercial eggs do not come from fertile hens, so for most of us today, there’s no need for concern about bloodspots. However, the fresh eggs we sometimes receive from local farms do come from fertile hens. In these fertile eggs, there is a chance of bloodspots, which may signify the beginning of a new embryo, making the egg unkosher. So, for kashrut purposes, the rule is to crack one egg at a time so that you may discard an entire egg if it has a bloodspot.

Yes, it may feel wasteful, and yes, it may be quite disappointing, but I think there’s something rather special about the “old world” practice of having to check each egg and discard those with bloodspots. In an age when more and more grocery store products are marked kosher, most of us don’t have to give all that much consideration to the food we bring into our homes. And for me, there’s something nostalgic and meaningful about the notion of checking each egg the way my Great Grandma Rose did. But that’s just me – what do you think?