Ruth’s Kitchen
On Passover, an artist explores her ordinary—and extraordinary—culinary inheritance.
Read MoreTag Archives: food
The History Behind Trump’s Attack on SNAP
The SNAP Box is a bad idea. Jewish history tells us why. by Jonathan Paul Katz Photo credit: usda.gov IF YOU HAVE NOT yet heard, the Trump administration last week came out with one of its most pilloried and dehumanizing ideas: to replace half of the benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with […]
Read More“Weathering Winter”
by Shirley Adelman WEATHERING WINTER KASHA The comfort of kasha, on a cold winter day, warming me up, like Yiddish words, flying across the table many years ago. BORSCHT Taking time from what should be done, to what must be done: cooking a winter borscht, to nourish my soul, hungry for the flavors, of […]
Read MoreYou Don’t Need Chicken Soup to Feed the Soul
VEGETARIANISM GOES MAINSTREAM by Rebecca Boroson I HELD a secret celebration at my synagogue’s seder this year: Each of the seder plates at the fifteen tables bore a roasted beet, a rabbinically-approved vegetarian substitute for the traditional shankbone. And not one of the 150 guests seemed to think this was anything out of the ordinary. […]
Read MoreChannel Esther: South Africa Chronicles #2
by Esther Cohen ARNOLD’S RESTAURANT “Best food I have ever eaten,” says Shirley. Come and try our specialties: crocodile ribs ostrich steak warthog gemsbock we have salads if you like. (We did) 60 Kloof Street Gardens
Read MoreFebruary 6: Giant Food’s First Supermarket
Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman opened the first Giant supermarket in Washington, DC on this date in 1936. “At a time when most grocery shopping was done at small stores that specialized in meat, vegetables or canned goods,” writes Anthony Ramirez in the New York Times, “Giant Food helped pioneer large stores that offered a […]
Read MoreOpEdge: Mr. Potato Head and Cannibal Capitalism
by Marc Jampole ABOUT EIGHTEEN MONTHS ago, Frito-Lay introduced a TV ad in which animated versions of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head eat potato chips, knowing full well that they are indulging in cannibalism but reveling in the sin. In the original spot, Mr. Potato Head gets home from work and can’t find his wife […]
Read MoreLetting People Living in Poverty Decide for Themselves
Their Decisions Are as Good — or Bad — as Anybody’s by Allan Lichtenstein A FEW STATE LEGISLATURES have recently introduced bills intended to restrict the discretion of people with low incomes in their use of SNAP (Food Stamps) monies. Underlying these proposed punitive laws is the assumption that people who draw on the “safety […]
Read MoreFebruary 5: The Popcorn Man
Samuel M. Rubin, who turned the popping and consuming of popcorn in American movie theaters into big business in the 1950s, died at 85 in Boynton Beach, Florida on this date in 2004. Rubin was a lifelong vendor; at 12, he went to work for a vending machine company serving movie theaters, which did not […]
Read MoreJanuary 8: A Satellite Dish of Hummus
Fifty chefs in the Arab Israeli town of Abu Gosh set the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest dish of hummus when they filled a 20-foot satellite dish with 8992.5 pounds of the chickpea mash on this date in 2010. Lebanon would regain the title, however, in May of the same year, when […]
Read More