Marble Cake, originally uploaded by Whistling in the Dark.

Recipe for my mom’s marble cake in Hebrew so translation below. Made this for the borotweetup on Friday.

Marble Cake

Ingredients

7 eggs separated
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
¾ cup orange juice
1/6 cup oil
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
—
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp instant coffee
1 tbsp vanilla sugar

1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, add sugar, add yolks at medium speed
2. then add flour, baking powder, juice and oil
3. grease up a rectangular pan with oil (I use a large rectangular glass pyrex dish)
4. pour in 3/4 of the mixture
5. to the remaining 1/4 of the mixture in the bowl add the cocoa, coffee and vanilla sugar mix well
6. then add into the mixture already in the dish, use a fork to make the marble swirls.
7. Preheat the oven to 350/190. Bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick or fork can be inserted into the middle and come out clean.

Tips:

My mom listed vanilla sugar twice when writing out the recipe, once in the first mixture and then again in the chocolate mixture. I have made it with it in both, in just one and without.

If you don’t leave enough batter in the bowl the chocolate becomes denser/heavier and may sink to the bottom so you have a layer of chocolate at the bottom.

If you’re baking powder is not fresh you may end up with a flatter cake.

It’s an easy cake to make and it will taste good no matter what you do to it.

The batter is yummy too if you end up with some left in the bowl * innocent whistle *

The addition to the borotweetup cake was chocolate buttercream frosting and m+ms.

The chocolate buttercream frosting recipe I use is from cooks.com.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

As part of this getting fit stuff we are also cooking more. This week pulled a few recipes out of the South Beach Diet Cookbook.

Last night we had:
Grilled Tuna with Teriyaki Glaze and Sesame Snow Pea and Asparagus Salad

Today we had:

Baked Portobello Caps with Melted Goat’s Cheese with South Beach Tomato Sauce

Then we went to Angelo’s Ristorante for excellent Italian food which  Richard got to order with a silly Italian accent – good fun.  For appetizers we had Formaggio di Capra e Rosti di Patate Croccante and Camembert. The main event was Ravioli alla Pizzaiola and Tagliatelle con Vedura e Zafferano.

For desert we went to Stardust which has a cute and crafty gift shop downstairs and a pretty cafe upstairs. Picked up the ring at left from the gift shop. Under £4 and a bit of fun. Upstairs, it’s a shame there weren’t more people there – the couches are the kind you sink into and the coffee and lemon cake were yummy. It seems like a perfect spot for students to camp out in with laptops and to just hang out.

I then attempted to recreate the artwork on the wall of Stardust, a photograph of a sculpture just outside.  It is a 2008 sculpture called Seachange by Laura Johnston.  It is meant to recall the hull of a ship and the shipbuilding heritage of the area as it transforms into something new. [Part of the Sunderland City Centre Public Art Trail]

Unfortunately it was raining so we didn’t want to spend too much time attempting to get the shot. You can see my few attempts on flickr.

I got distracted from the original mission of recreating the photo in the cafe because I loved the trees being reflected in the steel:

Seachange sculpture in Sunderland

To get out of the rain we headed into Primark and picked up some cheap and cheerful shiny, pretty things – a sparkly bracelet for £2 and some pillar candles for £1.75 each. The little charge you get from picking something up for £2 and £10 is really the same and lasts about the same amount of time (and £100 doesn’t really last ten times as long) – it’s a good thing to remember. We then stopped off at Richard’s to pick up the cute and stinky Florence and set off for Hartlepool.

I am a terrible navigator. Hopefully this will change when I learn how to drive. After a number of phone calls to Kev to set us back in the right direction we had a nice relaxed evening with some gewurztraminer from Chile via Morrisons and a quick sweet and sour chickeny bits with rice dish a la Kev.

Mostly it’s just the two of us but it was nice to have company too.  It’s easy to forget when you get into you routine.

• Scanwiches – Blog of bizarre and cool scans of sandwiches.
• Story on the Obamas planting a vegetable garden at the White House – This is the first time since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II.
• 1943 Pamphlet on Victory Gardens – Scans.
• Top 10 Bizarre Food Festivals
• Mona Lisa made of Hamburger Grease Video – This is an Arby’s ad.
• This Is Why You’re Fat – Blog of some super-fatty foods people eat.
• Sudoku Pizza

Facebook statuses let me know that a bunch of people I know are cleaning their homes for Passover. I will be hosting my first Passover Seder this year on April 8th. I’m looking for vegetarian seder ideas. Finding stuff here, here, here and here.

Instead of a shankbone for the seder plate, there are some interesting ideas in this article.

Posted belatedly.

• 100g Spinach
• 100g Broccoli
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons of OSEM onion soup mix (You can probably substitute any other soup mix / powder or even stock cubes.)
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• Bread crumbs (or corn flake crumbs)
• Flour

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. In a slightly greased pie dish scatter a light dusting of bread (or corn flake) crumbs. Quite thin, it just needs to stick.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the other ingredients. You can use a food processor to make it easy. If you are using frozen vegetables, soak them in some hot water and drain, before adding them to the mixture.
3. Bake 45 minutes or until a fork poked through the middle comes out dry.

Sarit, this is the recipe I promised you ages ago. Five minutes of work and then you stick it in the oven.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 6-7 cups of flour
• 3 sticks of margarine (approximately 300gr)
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Rind of 1 lemon
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla Sugar
• 21/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 whole egg

Filling:

• Jelly / Jam – strawberry or apricot flavor
• Ground walnuts (or almonds)
• Sugar
• Sweet red wine
• Fine bread crumbs

Preparation:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the pastry together. I put them all in a massive bowl, mixed briefly with the dough hooks on a hand mixer and then kept going with my hands.
2. In a separate, small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the filling together. There are no exact amounts, I tried getting my mother to be specific for each of the ingredients and she said “a little.” I don’t like walnuts in general, except for ground walnuts in cakes. I couldn’t find ground walnuts here, and didn’t want to take the time to bash whole ones so I used ground almonds and it worked fine.
2. Cover your work area with a light dusting of flour and take a bit under half the dough and roll flat with a flour covered rolling pin.
3. Cut out circles. I used a cup that had an approximately 3-inch diameter at the top to make the circles. Knead the scraps of dough from around the circles back into the larger batch still in the bowl.
4. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle down on three sides to make a triangle, pinching the corners to seal it.
5. Bake on a greased cookie tray at 190 degrees between 10 and 20 minutes (varies with the oven), until they start to brown up.
6. Keep doing this until you run out of dough. While you are in the middle it will seem like the dough is multiplying because every time you separate half you still end up with more in the bowl. It does run out eventually – makes 50-60 Oznei Haman.

Posted belatedly, but useful for next year.

I brought back an external hard drive with me from my recent trip to NY. It is filled with all sorts of randomness including scans of assorted ephemera including this recipe for shakshouka written in Hebrew from my time living in Tel Aviv.

On Ibn Gvirol Street, where I lived, every other shopfront seemed to belong to hairdresser. Among these was Yossi, a sweetheart, who I would drop in on from time to time. One day while I was hanging out, he made the most amazing shakshouka. The owner of the kiosk nearby brought some fresh bread and the group of us had a great meal dipping the bread into a communal shakshouka.

If you happen to be in Israel, you can always go to Dr. Shakshouka in Yafo for a nice meal. Or if you come across a Hebrew recipe you want to try here is a link for translating Hebrew or Yiddish spice names.

Ingredients:

• Olive Oil
• Sliced Chilli Pepper
• 3 Garlic Cloves (however you like them)
• Salt
• 1 Cup Water
• Tablespoon of ground paprika
• 4 Grated tomatoes
• Eggs (2-6)
• Additional Chilli Pepper (optional)
• Red and/or Green Bell Peppers (optional)

Preparation:
1. Fry oil, chili pepper, garlic, salt, 1/2 cup of water, ground paprika for 10-15 minutes.
2. Add 1/2 a cup of water and the grated tomatoes.
3. Cook on large flame for 5 minutes.
4. Turn down the flame and break the eggs over the mixture.
5. Cover the pan and let cook for a bit.
6. If you want it super spicy you can add an additional chilli pepper. This dish also works with red and green bell pepper strips or pieces thrown in.
7. Serve in the frying pan with a thick white bread for dipping.

For thos of you who can read the recipe you will see it is not very specific. I find it hard to tie people down to specific amounts when they are dictating a recipe they have made for years. This is the case with the next recipe I will post, an Oznei Haman recipe from my mom. Posted belatedly, but I do want to have a Food Friday post written for every Friday of this year.

Buy on Amazon »

I am baking challahs for the first time for the Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashana which starts tonight. I am using a great book, The Secret of Challah by Shira Wiener and Ayelet Yifrach.

Many of of the recipes are for baking multiple challot (plural of challah) so some of them call for 2 kilos of flour! I found a nice recipe calling for 1 kilo of flour that should make 10 small rolls. It doesn’t have any sugar in it, instead calling for 2/3 cups of honey. I am waiting for the dough to rise and I hope it will come out ok – I forgot to put the honey in with the liquids at the beginning and only added it after the flour bit :-)

At the end of a chapter on the art of braiding challahs, is a list of various customs for assorted shapes for holidays. The Rosh Hashana list is also on their website (which also has some of the recipes):

* Rosh Hashana round challah: It has become the widespread custom in many communities to bake round challahs in honor of Rosh Hashanah. The round shape symbolizes the yearly cycle and the “wheel of time,” the ascents and descents that a person experiences during his life. It also symbolizes perfection and infinity, expressing our hope for a perfect year, free of troubles and tribulations, a year of unlimited blessings.

* The traditionaly round challah of Rosh Hashanah is sometimes adorned with a “crown” made of a small braided ring of dough, commemorating the prayers of Rosh Hashanah proclaiming G-d King over the universe.

* Eastern European Jews used to bake challah in the shape of a ladder to symbolize that on Rosh Hashanah G-d decides “Who will be humbled and who will be elevated,” as is stated in the prayers of Rosh Hashanah.

* In some European communities, the custom was to bake round challah reminiscent of a bird peeking out of a nest (known as “foigel challah,” bird challah, in Yiddish). The reason for the custom: Just as G-d shows mercy to birds, so should He have mercy on us.

* Lithuanian Jews had the custom to bake challah shaped like outstretched palms of the hand. The shape was meant to symbolize the hands of the kohens raised to bless the people during the Priestly Blessing (Birkat Kohanim).

* The Jews of North Africa used to bake challah in the shape of a fish or a “chamsah,” a five-fingered hand, symbolizing good luck.

I will try making a few of the shapes…pictures to follow if I am not ashamed of the results. Wishing you and yours a healthy, happy, joyous year filled with love and laughter.

Challah dough

Freshly baked challah out of the oven

I took the bus….it is a long bus ride but also the cheapest option if you don’t book the train way in advance.

She is staying in Hendon near Golder’s Green. This is a very Jewish area. There are tons of kosher restaurants and bookstores. It is very much like areas of Brooklyn and Queens in NY only with different accents except for the Israelis.

We did a few organized activities for tourists and some on our own. Here’s a breakdown:

On Thursday, we did a walking tour of Old Kensington. It was supposed to include the roof gardens / Kensington gardens and picturesque streets and homes.

The guide was pretty terrible. It might have been his first time leading this walk. We walked around a place where rich and famous people used to live.

He would point out the little plaques/signs on their former homes. He would read some famous facts about them from a book. Gee, I know how to read too.

Also, I don’t really care the Princess Diana ate at a specific restaurant or shopped for toys in a specific store. I guess I am not the target audience.

I ended up mostly ignoring him and taking pictures and sadly the roof garden was closed that day. The tour ends in Kensington Gardens (adjacent to and formerly part of Hyde Park).

Toilets were not on the itinerary, so Shayna and I wondered if the Consulate of Fiji would let us in and eventually found one in the park.

We had fun walking around there to get back to a train. I took pictures of geese and swans and the Elfin Oak (which sounds cooler in theory than it actually is).

On Friday we went to Hampstead Heath. We wanted to get to Parliament Hill for a view of London.

Apparently London doesn’t believe in putting maps at Hampstead Heath. We found one posted as we exited near the entrance marked Parliament Hill. Enter the huge nature area from somewhere else and you’re on your own. Asking people for directions has them pointing in vague directions, which is as helpful as it sounds.

It didn’t matter because it was a gorgeous day. We had a nice walk and eventually even made it to Parliament Hill (in a really roundabout route). The actual Parliament Hill view is not so special but the wander was great.

Sunday was a great day with flawless weather. First half of the day was a 3 1/2-hour cycling tour.

I highly recommend a tour with The London Bicycle Tour Company (located at Gabriel’s Wharf, +44 (0) 20 7928 6838). [They also rent bikes out if you want to go on your own.] We did the Royal West Tour. It was a great way to see famous sites (and orient yourself in London), get a bit of exercise and be outside in the sunshine.

The guide was great. He did not talk your ear off, just identified what we were seeing with an interesting fact here and there.

Our group finished the regular route a bit early and our guide took us to see a bit more so we would get our full 3 1/2 hours. After the bike tour we returned to the Thames River for a while to take some more photos including ones of Star Wars Stormtroopers out and about in conjunction with a local exhibit.

Sunday night we went on a Jack the Ripper tour with Donald Rumbelow. He is the author of The Complete Jack the Ripper, and is recognized as the expert on the subject. He is also a really good guide.

Because he is well-known there were about 70 people or so out for the tour. You can go with other companies for smaller tours. But he knows his stuff, speaks clearly and makes sure the whole group can hear and is happy to sign copies of his book at the end of the tour.

It did feel a bit weird at times, touring in the wake of a serial killer. It was interesting and will correct misconceptions if you’ve seen any movies based on the Ripper.

I don’t really think it is appropriate for young children. The few that were brought on the tour, thankfully, ended up not really paying attention to what was being said.

So London Walks was 1 for 2 for the walks I went on. Shayna had gone on a few more and had some good experiences.

I would like to return to London and do my own tour to check out Banksy graffiti.

It’s really expensive to visit London (and England in general)…thankfully we didn’t have hotel costs. We did eat out a couple of times at Kosher restaurants and visit some Kosher bakeries.

Isola Bella Cafe (63 Brent Street, Hendon, +44 (0) 20 8203 2000) had really good Thai food. It is a bit of an everything restaurant (people at a table across the aisle were having burgers and fries.)

I ordered a Thai meal special and had yummy corn soup, veggie pad thai and salad, and fried bananas with ice cream for desert. Shayna had a Thai meal special with vegetable soup (a bit salty), fish (good) and chips (fries), and a different fried fruit with ice cream.

The food was really good and the portions are huge (which makes you feel a bit better about the prices in pounds). This is easily a place where two people can share a meal. We ended up taking most of the pad thai home (along with most of the fried bananas) and having it as part of another meal. It reheated well. (Time Out Review)

Coby’s (115a Golders Green Road, +44 (0) 203 209 5054) is an Israeli cafe with cute Israeli waitstaff. I had Melawach which I hadn’t had in ages with grated tomato and a hard boiled egg. Shayna had an Israeli breakfast. Desert was a yummy chocolate crepe with coffee ice cream. this was also a thoroughly enjoyable meal. You have to time a meal to Coby’s well, it tends to get crowded. Definitely go inside, even though all the tables outside were packed when we went, we found a great table inside. [Time Out Review]

Mr. Baker {119-121 Brent Street, Hendon, +44 (0) 20 8202 6845) is a large bakery and a great source for whole wheat pitas and rugelach and other pastries. They also have tables and chairs so you can eat in. [Time Out Review]

We also visited The Cake Company (2 Sentinel Square, +44 (0) 208 202 2327) to look at Kosher wedding cakes. They have some really ornate and fun ones on their websites. It was also not to far from where Shayna was staying.

The woman was very helpful and noted that there are two options, fruitcake or sponge cake…For the fruitcake, I was picturing sponge cake with fresh fruit in it or something (like a yummy fruit tart in cake form)…Not fruitcake, the joke at Christmas-time, stale, hard and filled with dried fruit.

We told her we had never had some so she gave us each a slice. The looks on our face were pretty comical as we each tried a bite (I’m guessing mine was at least as comical as Shayna’s). Shayna had hers first and then gave me the rest of hers. I tried a bite of mine and then held the remainder of both our slices in my hand. I then handed these sheepishly to the salesgirl for placement in the bin.

Definitely don’t want fruitcake. Apparently, they are a popular choice for wedding cakes. What are people trying to say about their futures with their chosen spouse? Eeeeech!!??

Successful bits of shopping in London: a Wagamama cookbook [NOT KOSHER Noodle Place with some nice veggie items on the menu and in the cookbook] and a rain jacket. [It's amazing how difficult it is to find a rain jacket in England. Especially, with all the flooding this year, do people not realize rain is year-round here?]

Link to full set of pictures from my London adventure

Links to related media:

Kosher Food Guide from London Beth Din

Lonely Planet London

Frommer’s London 2007 (Frommer’s Complete)

The Complete Jack the Ripper

The Wagamama Cookbook

I’ll have to try an upscale one at the cute Peanut Butter and Co. (240 Sullivan Street).

Is it because my parents (and me, technically) were immigrants that I didn’t know about this All-American treat? What else have I been missing out on?

We were both hungry so we tried to go to the nearby, standby Zen Palate. Their kitchen was closed but we found a new, nearby, vegetarian falafel place Maoz Vegetarian that is open until 3 AM. We sat, ate too much, and talked. It was very fun. So sad that I had to go to work the next day.

The staff were helpful and friendly. Though there are very few places to sit. 4 stools to be exact. It seems like it is more of a lunchtime takeout kind of place. We were lucky, a couple was just finishing up as we got in. The falafel, Belgian fries and salads were good and fresh. It is a franchise business. We were told by one of the staffpeople that the founder is Israeli and opened the first one in Amsterdam. We picture a ישראלי מסטול (stoned Israeli) thinking up his big idea. Apparently, there are a bunch of them now in a load of countries. Good on him.

One of the other staffpeople is originally from Morocco and his English is amazing for having come here two years ago. He recommended a Moroccan singer called Pinhas and an online Moroccan music site to find him. Look under Par Chanteur for him or other artists. There’s some good music there.

Yes, we sat there a long time.

Riposo 46
667 Ninth Ave
212-247-8018

Reminded me of the Panel Discussion on Food at Housing Works.

Good luck with your food choices.

Resources referenced in the article:

Locavores

Local Harvest

Whole Foods

Google’s Cafe 150

Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods (Book) Authors:Gary Paul Nabhan Manufacturer:W. W. Norton & Company Released:November, 2001

This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader (Book) Authors:Joan Dye Gussow Manufacturer:Chelsea Green Publishing Company Released:October, 2002

Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew (Book) Authors:Samuel Fromartz Manufacturer:Harvest Books Released:05 March, 2007

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Book) Authors:Michael Pollan Manufacturer:Penguin Press HC, The Released:11 April, 2006

Media and the Politics of Food

When it comes to food, what you don’t know can hurt you, and it can be hard to keep up with each new healthy way to eat. Join the experts in a discussion of new trends and old facts, what to believe and why. With Nina Planck (creator and manager of farmers markets; author, Real Food), Mary Cleaver (Chef, the Green Table) Jay Weinstein, (chef; author, The Ethical Gourmet) Peter Pringle (author, Food, Inc.) and Ed Levine (author, New York Eats; New York Eats (More); co-author, Pizza: A slice of Heaven).” From the Housing Works Used Book Cafe Website

This really is not how it went but some interesting issues were raised during the evening. Each person started by explaining a bit about what they write about.

Journalist, author Peter Pringle began by explaining he tries to take a middle path – take everything with a grain of salt whether it is Monsanto or Greenpeace. His book is Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto — The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest. Some people call them genetically modified foods and some people call them Frankenfoods. Do research like a journalist. He mentions the 355 Promoter Gene gotten from Cauliflower Mosaic Virus as an example. Anti-gm foods sites list this as very scary – he calls this a myth of green people. It is used in many gm-foods. [Site claiming it's scary, PDF claiming it's not scary, Falling in the middle - it's probably not scary.]

Nina Planck has written a book called Real Food. Real Food are old foods, traditional foods like wild salmon, raw milk, eggs, butter (she mentions butter a lot – must be a favorite). These are foods prepared in the same way they were many years ago and are not tampered with in some industrial fashion. She posed a question – why are people on seemingly healthy diets (according to the media) getting sick? What is responsible for obesity, diabetes, heart disease? Her conclusion is that it is industrial foods as opposed to real foods that are responsible for these ills. Nutritional advice given is politically correct but not nutritionally correct. The Food Pyramid is fattening America.

Mary Cleaver is a caterer known for using local food. She begins the evening mentioning how in 1977 you could not buy local produce if you wanted to. It is about that time that Green Markets started – making it a lot easier.

Jay Weinstein has written The Ethical Gourmet. He talks about how everyday choices we make about food have an impact. Fish can be endangered by fertilizer run-off – choose a non-endangered fish over an endangered one. Coffee and chocolate bought can be fair trade or produced by slaves in Africa. Social and environmental ills are connected to food. Everyday choices like should you buy an organic apple from New Zealand or a regular one that is local (from NY). [He would vote for the local one because of the environmental cost of transporting the organic apple. At the same time he would choose organic milk because the animals are treated better. Ideally, you should get local, organic products.] It is about environmentally sound choices for him.

Ed Levine the moderator at this point raises the question of price as some of these choices are more expensive. Jay Weinstein’s response is that you should do what you can. Nina Planck responds too that price is but one attribute of food. There is also nutrition, flavor, provenance. Jay Weinstein brings up the problem of petroleum in transport. This made me think of ecological footprint calculators.]

Peter Pringle mentions Texmati rice at this point as an example where you should look a second time. The genes for the rice crop were taken from Indian Basmati Rice Farmers and recreated in the U.S. This has destroyed the economy of the farmers from far away. Again a question of impact.

Nina Planck adds that one should use their dollars to affect change in a capitalist marketplace. And Peter’s comment relates to Regional Foods as a subsection of Real Foods.

Back to Jay Weinstein who talks about bottled water. In a place where it is unecessary (NY and other major U.S. cities have good tap water) it is the fastest growing beverage industry. Mentions a ridiculous example of bottled water being shipped to Arkansas from Minnesota and also from Minnesota to Arkansas – all the while causing air pollution along the route and pollution runoff from shipping is polluting water, destroying waterways.

Jay Weinstein again brings up non-endangered vs. endangered fish such as eating non-endangered Arctic char vs. salmon. Cream Cheese and Arctic Char Lox anyone?

At this point I commented to Jocelyn that the evening wasn’t what I thought it would be…

Next Nina Planck asserts that journalists are not doing their jobs when it comes to these issues. And that there are issues for family farmers regarding organic certification. (Her background is that growing up her family ran a farm.) Many family farmers can’t afford certification. She talks about the importance of farmers at farmer’s markets making positive statements about their food – explaining what they do and don’t do to the customers directly.

The conversation goes back to genetically modified foods and biotechnology. Genetic modification of foods can be about environmental, health, human goals. Some crops require fewer pesticides because of GM at the same time these solutions are tied to big companies. Sometimes useful research is shelved for lack of profit in using it. Biotech is not all bad – especially if you have ever used vegetable rennet (in cheeses) or insulin.

At this point Nina Planck mentions that she is taliban on truth in advertising – here in the context of what is in food and whether it is GM or not. But it seems to me like a strange metaphor to use ever.

At this point the audience asks questions:

The first question is about Raw Milk and the link to TB addressed to Nina since she is a proponent of drinking raw milk.

She responds that is a complex answer (check her website for a more complete answer) but in short pasteurization was a response to unhealthy cows and unhygenic dairys historically. There is now testing and better conditions.

Someone asks about vegetarianism as an ethical choice.

Jay Weinstein fields this question by stating it can be an ethical choice and also you should source your meat. If you can, find out where it is coming from, how is the animal treated, how far away is it coming from. Nina Planck mentions http://www.paleodiet.com/ Jay Weinstein continues with the point that we are overfed in the U.S…We can eat less and pay the same (making ethical choices.) The percentage we spend as Americans on our food out of our total budgets is much smaller than Europeans or Chinese. Maybe we should be spending a higher percentage making ethical choices. (YEs, not really related to the question but vaguely on the ethical choice part.)

The next question is about soy and the controversy over plant estrogen, thyroid disruption, how it is banned in some places – that it has anti-nutrients that don’t allow you to take in calcium and Magnesium – how it is not a good source of protein

Nina Planck responds that the amino acids are not in the right ratio. It is not a first class protein like meat, dairy, eggs, fish. She recommends reading The Whole Soy Story and looking up information from the Weston Price Foundation.This question is a big deal to me – I will have to do the research – I definitely use soy as a protein source as a vegetarian.

The conversation then turned to the importance of patent reform. This includes issues like biotheft from the third world (like with the rice strain.) Foods can be stolen and patented and then the original communities cannot sell their own products. An example given at this point is canary beans. Greed can be a problem. Interesting how this returns to the issue of free culture too. Around the time of this panel discussion blogs were commenting on Yahoo!’s application for a patent for Flickr’s interestingness feature. (boingboing, technorati search)

The panel talks about Hunger is an issue of politics and distribution not an issue of production. Some of the solutions to food scarcity have come from genetic modification of food. At the same time it raises some dilemmas. At one point African nations with starving populations refused GM crops from the U.S. [My comment on media coverage at the time: To begin with it seemed like an unsophisticated choice and that they were refusing it because of a GM Food bogeyman they were afraid of.] Peter Pringle points out that they did not want to accept the crops because their main exports of their crops are to the EU. The EU refuses to import GM foods. They were actually afraid of contaminating their crops so that they could no longer provide exports to the EU. They were weighing future costs of accepting the food. [Some cynically accused the U.S. of offering these crops to them as a way of getting GM foods in to the EU on the backs of starving nations.]

Nina Planck goes on to talk about how important it is to demand labeling of food. For example the current labeling of trans-fat in foods. This is important as the National Academy of Sciences has declared there is no safe level of trans-fat. [Saturated fat is also bad for you so don't get too excited if a food you're looking at has no trans-fat but tons of saturated fat.] New York City has become the first U.S. city to ban trans-fat in restaurants. Restaurants won’t be able to use most frying oils with artificial trans fats by July, and will have to get rid of the artificial trans fats from all foods by July, 2008.

Jay Weinstein then explains the differences in the UPC numbers on fruit stickers. A four-digit number means it is conventional fruit. A five-digit number starting in 9 means it is organic fruit. A five-digit number starting in 8 means it is genetically modified. He points out it is a great way to check if your local stores are labeling/pricing their fruit correctly. This was cool – I never knew this.

An audience member asks for the panel to recommend sources of information:

They don’t really answer the question. They tell the crowd to do a lot of research – to check studies to see who is funding them. They explain that most newspapers do not have staff dedicated to food issues. Even the NY Times only has three people on staff – which may explain the dearth of useful information. Someone recommend food writer “Pete Wells,” a google search reveals he is a Brooklyn -based writer who has written for Food & Wine, New York, Time Out NY and Salon.com.

Jay Weinstein brings up Wallet Cards put out by the Blue Ocean Institute, The Audobon Society and Monterey Bay Aquarium that advise on sustainable seafood eating choices.

The next audience member goes on for a long time about how she is a documentary filmmaker, anthropologist, foreigner about knowing your body about quality of food as a false issue about how snacks are an American concept about Community Supported Agriculture about going to the Amazon in Brazil and talking to indigenous people about the effects of the soy industry about (soy?) corporations clearing land and infiltrating communities. She went on for a long time and made it sound like evil corporate farmers were murdering indigenous community farmer babies in their sleep….

The end note of the panel was that you don’t need to sacrifice pleasure, choices you make have an impact and do as much research as you can.

Mary Cleaver didn’t say very much throughtout the whole evening.

Peter Pringle was definitely a character who threw in random comments when he felt like it – maybe I just like him because he’s British.

Nina Planck had a lot of opinions that seemed informed – I definitely would want to read her stuff on her website. It seemed like she had a lot to say – and she tried to get a lot out. But, it was a bit grim – though she did just give birth (mom was holding the baby in the back of the crowd) maybe it wasn’t grim just tiredness.

Jay Weinstein raised some interesting points about choices we make. Specifically enjoyed the comment about mine al water, the trick with fruit UPC codes and the resource of seafood lists (though they’re not relevant in my life). It was funny he seemed to have preconceived notions of what the members of the panel would support so at some point when he was trying to raise positive points about GM foods he turned to Peter for back-up. Nina was right next to him and saying how she had actually worked as a spokesperson for GM foods and did not have an issue with them on principle. He didn’t hear her and was physically turning away to get support from one of the men. She was literally in the spot right next to him it was a bit weird.

Ed Levine was a bit worthless as a moderator. He made random comments on somewhat food-related subjects and didn’t do much moderating. At times it seemed like the Nina and Jay Show with a sprinkling of Peter Pringle.

Conclusion: Would invite Peter to a dinner party. Would invite Mary and seat her next to someone extroverted or have her cater yum! Probably would not invite the rest.

Spoiler Alert: Midway through the film the title gets changed to “Home for Thanksgiving” An audience member asked if this was based on events that had happened to the panel. Response from Christopher Guest: These things have happened in Hollywood. Not many people know that “Star Wars” started out as “Home for Purim.” Yoda was a Mohel. There’s also a snippet in the film where they make fun of Charlie Rose‘s interview style. Christopher Guest is asked if he is worried about being on the show. His response is a deadpan “I’ve been on Charlie Rose…I’ve been on Charlie Rose.” The group also commented on the talent of fellow actor Fred Willard – let him do his thing and stand back. Parker Posey commented on the difference between working wiith Christopher Guest as opposed to a clueless director who asks you to throw in some random improv into a scene. The actors in the film came in their own costume and character development choices within the framework of the film and on occasion surprised their costars who had to work with, react, improv with what was brought. Another story about the evening here.

After that went with Nick to get 99 Cent Pizza on 41st and Ninth Ave. It is across from a homeless center and a homeless gentleman asked us for some spare change to get a slice. Nick gave him enough for a slice and a half or two. He then suggested I should marry Nick – a good catch. Nick is great and I hope he finds his special someone.

The Darien Dilemma

Then I went to see a great documentary, The Darien Dilemma, at Makor as part of their Reel Jews festival. A father and his filmmaker son explore the previously untold story of 1,000 Viennese Jews stranded on the frozen Danube River in 1941 as they awaited their would-be rescuer, Ruth Klieger, an agent of the newly created Mossad.

Erez Laufer weaves together interviews with the survivors, archival film, dramatic re-enactments (including scenes of the actors’ preparation – it seems like they stand in for the audience while they get inside the characters’ heads.) and footage of his father the screenwriter.

The director Erez Laufer was at the screening. He notes that the footage of a ship in the film is actually from a ship that set sail a few months prior to the Darien that was shot by a Hungarian sailor, but photos (of youth groups and a massacre) are original and directly linked to the story. Both in the film and in person he explains that his father started looking at archives to find out more about his own history and how his mother escaped Europe with him as a small child.

His father then became intrigued by this story of Ruth Klieger and partially with her reported beauty and alleged affair with David Ben-Gurion. She remained in Israel, worked as a PR person for shipping company ZIM and died in Tel Aviv in 1979.

The film is about her, and not less so about the filmmaker’s father. Through this film many survivors who were interviewed learned a fuller story of what happened when they were brought to Palestine.

It is worth seeing – it is made in an interesting way and tells a compelling and little-known story. Note to documentary filmmakers: Include your notes, interviews, arguments with your father the screenwriter…realize how much central characters may not know about what happened to them….You can buy tickets for December screenings on Makor’s website.

After the film I met Jocelyn and Lee at Bistro 60 for dessert. We had Tarte Tatin – Apple tart with crème fraîche. This is an amazing dessert. We devoured it – moaning all the way. Learned that Hebrew for “to moan” is גניחה – Geniha. Lee was shocked we didn’t know this word. Jocelyn’s response – I’m more of a screamer.

my flickr: The Beautiful South at Cake Shop

Link 1 from AISH

Link 2 from Project Genesis