Speaking For The Trees On Tu B'shvat 🌲🌲🌳🌳

I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.

Thus insinuated the Lorax in Dr. Seuss’s 1971 fable pitting nature and the environment against corporate greed.

🌲Tu B’Shvat: The New Year For The Trees

Today is the Jewish festival of Tu B’shvat. It is considered ראש השנה לאילנות, the New Year for Trees. As a child, I understood it to be a day of planting trees, both in Israel and the United States. As a parent, it is a day when my kids and I talk about the mission of Tree People, the local non-profit organization devoted to taking responsibility for our urban environment and educating children and adults in sustainability principles. I think of it as the antidote to the Once-ler character in The Lorax.

Tu B’shvat’s significance extends beyond trees.

🌲Celebrating The Deeper Significance Of Tu B’Shvat

Tu B’shvat can be understood on both a physical and spiritual/metaphysical level. On a physical level, the festival celebrates the first flowering of the spring fruits, the beginning of the fruit-bearing season, when the trees awaken from their winter dormancy. On the spiritual/metaphysical level, the festival compels us to recognize the world that God has given us by demonstrating an appreciation for nature, ecology and the environment, both in Israel and around the planet.

The Torah elucidates a basic ethical principle, בל תשחית (bal tashchit), which warns us not to engage in wasteful acts like destroying or wasting edible fruit or the trees they come from. It applies more broadly to wasting energy and water, wantonly destroying natural resources and throwing away clothing.

Overeating and throwing away edible food, common outcomes of the Western diet, are also a transgression of this principle. Shockingly, a 2011 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization study, “Global Food Losses and Food Waste”, found that “roughly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year—approximately 1.3 billion tons—gets lost or wasted.”

That is a lot of food.

But shifting this mindset starts at home, one step at a time.

🌲What Does It Mean To Live A Consciously Kosher Lifestyle?

On Tu B’shvat, it is appropriate to consider what it means to live a consciously kosher lifestyle. As this blog often suggests, it is more than just eating healthy food.

It encompasses:

• Maximizing the quality and nutritional impact of what we put into our bodies

• Minimizing food waste

• Reducing what we throw away overall

• Consuming less and making more

• Eating only what we need

• Treating our bodies with respect

• Being mindful of and respecting the resources that we take from the planet

• Nourishing our souls

• Considering that just because the label says it’s kosher, doesn’t mean that it is healthy

🌲Tu B’shvat Food Customs

In keeping with the concept of the first fruits, we partake of the fruits of the “7 Species” for which the Land of Israel is praised: olives, dates, grapes, figs and pomegranates (Deuteronomy 8:8). Additionally, there is a custom to eat almonds and carobs on this day. This custom even extends to eating a fruit that you have not yet eaten this season.

🌲How Can We Be Better Stewards Of Our Planet?

On Tu B’shvat, take the time to consider how we can be better stewards of our planet, our neighborhood, our natural resources – and our own bodies – within the framework of Jewish values.

Let’s do the work now so that we may never need to have the conversation with our kids that the Once-ler had with the little boy at the end of The Lorax:

“You’re in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends, may come back.”

Eating Intelligently Is An Art

Noted 17th century French author François de Rochefoucald wrote that:

“To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.”

It’s a brilliant and inspiring quote.

We all need to eat. But to eat with knowledge about what goes into your body requires purpose, planning and intention.

Elevate Eating To An Art

Here are 4 variables to consider in elevating your eating from a necessity to an art:

Frequency

(how often you eat): Do you eat three meals a day with a snack or two in between? Do you eat just two meals and skip breakfast? Do you fast intermittently?

Mealtime

(what times you eat): Do you take the time to stop working and eat lunch at work? Do you finish your food before it gets too late at night?

Quantity

(what quantity you eat): Do you eat until you are stuffed? Or do you moderate your intake until you are merely satisfied?

Variety

(how much variety you eat): Do you eat the same subset of foods most of the time? Or do you actively seek out variety in the form of a diverse array of foods, colors, flavors and nutritional values?

Actionable Ways To Eat With Intention

Eating intelligently takes practice and intention. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Meal planning once a week (usually on a Saturday night or Sunday morning)

• Learning how many meals a day work best for your body and your mind, despite the meal schedule to which you may have become habituated

• Reading ingredients lists on all packaged foods

• Preparing lunches the night before or first thing in the morning, based on the weekly meal plan

• Taking moderate portions of food that you and your family are likely to eat

• Deliberately choosing seasonal fruits and vegetables to diversify what’s on your plate throughout the year

• Consciously choosing alternate varieties of common fruits and vegetables, including different colors, to diversify your nutritional profile

• Actively packing snacks for school or work so that you and your kids avoid grabbing salty/sugary/fatty snacks in the moment

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle Your Food Waste Packaging

Modern living provides many conveniences. Unfortunately, those conveniences also come with a suffocating amount of packaging and waste material. The most ubiquitous are glass, paper and plastic.

These include:

• Paper-based cartons from packaged foods

• Cellophane and paper wrapping from perishables at supermarkets like Trader Joe’s

• Cardboard shipping boxes from Amazon and other online retailers

• Plastic food and cosmetics containers of all shapes and sizes

• Glass jars

Much of this ends up in landfills or recycle bins. But a lot of it can be reused – in particular, glass jars.

Glass Jars: So Many Functional And Creative Uses

Have you ever noticed the wide array of glass jars that seems to proliferate around foodies? They tend to have jars all over their homes. Glass is an incredibly durable, safe and functional material that has an almost endless supply of uses.

Glass jars enjoy a very hearty second life in our household. They can be reused for a wide variety of purposes:

• Wide-mouth glass salsa jars can be used for homemade sauces like applesauce and barbecue sauce, homemade pesto or dried fruits like raisins, plums and goji berries.

• Narrower 24-oz glass mayonnaise jars (like those from Primal Kitchen or Chosen Foods) can be filled with homemade nut milks, grape juice or morning smoothies.

• Glass spice containers can be refilled with bulk spices at stores like Whole Foods and Cooportunity. With the easy availability of bulk spices in major American cities, there is no reason to throw away those cute little jars only to buy a new one right afterward.

• Larger glass jars (32-oz, 64-oz and larger) can be filled with bulk grains like oatmeal and flour. These can be labeled and stored in your pantry.

• Tall, skinny olive jars can be turned into vases and filled with water and freshly-cut flowers.

• Jam jars can be used to grow plants with large pits such as avocados and asparagus, or even Chinese Lucky Bamboo plants. You can even fill them with potting soil and add seeds and water.

• Jam jars can also be used as drinking glasses. When your drinking glasses all break, as will inevitably happen when you’ve got a family, you’ve got a whole new supply waiting for you! We’ve even gotten into the habit of using 8-oz mason jars as drinking glasses when we’ve worn out or lost the tops.

• Those 12- or 13-oz glass bottles of kombucha or almond milk that you purchase at the Farmer’s Market on a whim or that you buy at a health food store can be refilled with your own home-brewed kombucha. Don’t recycle them so quickly!

This only scratches the surface for reusing glass jars! Additional non-kitchen or non-food uses include using jars to organize the odds-and-ends in your desk drawer, your kids’ bedroom or your bathroom.

Cardboard: Projects For Your Kids

Rather than throwing them away, or even recycling them, I hand over the cardboard boxes to my kids. They’ve made toy robots out of them, used them for storing toys and hacked them apart into a myriad of construction projects. In our home, boxes enjoy a long second life.

Plastic: Few Second-LIfe Uses

Plastic is ubiquitous in the modern supermarket. It is most commonly associated with soda bottles and bottled water. However, many packaged foods (such as yogurt and plant-based milks) also come in plastic packaging.

Unlike cardboard and glass, plastic has very limited secondhand uses.

Unfortunately, empty plastic food containers should not be reused for a variety of reasons:

• Plastic containers cannot be heated or cooled too much because they may leach chemicals into the food.

• They absorb aromas, colors and dyes.

• They may also grow mold from excess moisture.

• Most plastic food packaging containers are not dishwasher-safe.

Finally, plastic containers are not usually clear, so you can’t see what’s inside. This limits the utility of using them as storage for food. One good use, though, is for refilling salt: You could buy a plastic container of Himalayan pink salt, then refill it with salt from a supermarket bulk bin.

A good non-food use is for storing kids’ pencils and crayons, as well as other little toys.

Your Turn: How Have You Reused Glass Jars?

When it comes to glass, there’s no need for anything to go to waste. What other uses for glass jars have you discovered?

The Benefits Of Making Your Own Healthy Infused Drinking Water

The other day my kids took over the kitchen to make infused water. 💦 💧 They chopped up organic lemons and cucumbers. We don’t drink juices, sodas or other sweetened beverages, so for them it was an opportunity to try something tasty and refreshing that was not plain water.

Infuse Your Own Water

What are the benefits of infusing your own water?

You get to:

• Choose your own fruits, veggies and herbs to infuse

• Naturally consume more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants while you drink water.

• Keep yourself hydrated by encouraging you to drink more water overall

Why is this SO MUCH HEALTHIER than simply purchasing a store-bought flavored water?

Stay Away From Commercial Flavored Water Brands

It is best to avoid most commercial infused-water brands such as Bai (“water infused with flavor”), LaCroix and Bubly.

They:

• Contain “natural flavors” (which are not so healthy and the subject of several lawsuits) and other additives

• Are made from some form of purified water (as opposed to spring water)

• Come in plastic or aluminum containers (which are wasteful) and, in the case of the cans, usually contain BPA

What Are The Benefits Of Infusing Your Own Water?

• When you infuse your own water, there are no natural flavors, preservatives, added sugar or BPA (in the cans).

• You can chose your own flavor and nutritional profile to make it fit your needs.

• And you can also choose your own water: if you prefer spring water, reverse-osmosis water or even Brita-filtered tap water, at least you know what you are getting.

What’s The Best Way To Infuse?

• Choose your own fruits, veggies and herbs to infuse.

• Chop up the fruits and vegetables.

• Grab a 32-oz (or larger) mason jar and fill with water.

• Drop the fruits, veggies and herbs into the water.

• Cover and leave in the fridge overnight, for up to 12 hours.

We purchased a spout to fit the mason jar so the water doesn’t spill when we pour it.

Enjoy Your Healthy, Homemade Infused Water

There’s no reason to buy an infuser. The only benefit is that it keeps the flavor elements from mixing with the drinking water.

And there’s no reason to buy flavored water in the store.

Save the money. You can make this yourself. It’s much healthier.

Quick Wild Salmon Salad Dinner

This week, I am featuring healthy, home-cooked meals that can be prepared quickly and efficiently, from easy-to-source ingredients.

One of the most challenging aspects about parenting is feeding your family meals that are delicious and nutritiously nourishing, while also being quick. That means no refined white flour pasta, preservative-laden sauces or packaged side dishes. That would be the easy way out.

Eating clean often takes time, planning and lots of made-from-scratch ingredients. But it need not be a burden if your kitchen and pantry are prepared and stocked, ahead of time, for the most common vegetables and other essentials.

I am reminded of a quote by Louis Pasteur:

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

This works in cooking as well as in business or personal matters.

My kids have come to expect restaurant-style cooking every night. But sometime the wife needs a break. Here’s a meal that she prepared in about 10 minutes. It was a hit, too!

• Canned wild salmon with mayonnaise, paprika and chopped yellow onion

• Romaine lettuce and chopped red onion with olive oil and vinegar

• Sliced candy stripe beets (we almost always have some steamed beets on hand)

• Watermelon radish slices (this one is a favorite of our 7-year-old)

We purchased the wild salmon, organic olive oil and organic apple cider vinegar from Costco (all Kirkland). Everything else was purchased at the Larchmont Village farmer’s market in Los Angeles, from vendors including Underwood Farms and Sunrise Farms.

What are some quick and healthy meals that you’ve prepared for your family lately? Where did you buy the raw materials?

The Antioxidant Magic Of Blood Oranges

blood oranges with Cara cara oranges

Have you ever thought about where your fruits come from and why they look the way they do?⁠
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Growing up in L.A., we mostly ate navel oranges. I can’t remember what other types we had, but they all looked the same: they were orange inside and out!⁠
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But my kids are more sophisticated with their fruits. They go through phases with their citrus. A few months ago, they were eating Satsuma mandarins by the boatload. Then Cara cara navel oranges. This month they are addicted to blood oranges. We have a whole drawer full of them in our fridge!⁠
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Today, we got curious. And this is what we discovered:⁠
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Blood oranges get their distinctly “bloody” maroon color from the high amount of anthocyanin polyphenols, which are antioxidants, common in many fruits like blueberries, raspberries and Concord grapes but very unusual in citrus. They are native to Italy and the Southern Mediterranean, where they have been cultivated since the 18th century.⁠
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What does a blood orange taste like? It tastes a bit like raspberry with a hint of tartness in addition to the orange flavor.⁠
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In addition to being divine when eaten by itself, it also goes well with sliced fennel, olive oil and a little apple cider vinegar.⁠
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What’s your favorite variety of orange? Leave a comment!⁠

Dried Persimmon Chips: Snacks for the Kids

What The Heck Is A Persimmon?

When you live in Los Angeles, you become spoiled by the enormous selection of fruits. There is hardly any fruit that is not grown in California in some capacity. Some, like the pomegranate, achieve wide exposure due to corporate marketing campaigns. Others remain artisan or exotic, quietly tucked away from the mainstream.

A persimmon is neither artisan nor exotic. But its unfamiliarity within the general population makes it enigmatic. To the uninitiated, it either resembles a plump tomato but with the wrong color; or it has the crunch of an apple but the taste of cinnamon and honey.

One you’ve tried one, though, you will be smitten. Just ask the Japanese. They made it their national fruit!

Two Common Varieties: Fuyu vs. Hachiya

To add further confusion, there are two common varieties of persimmon, Fuyu and Hachiya. Unlike, say, apples, these persimmon varieties are vastly different from one other:

Fuyu Persimmon

Resembles a cross between a tomato and a tiny pumpkin. When it is ripe, the texture is firm and crisp, like an apple. This variety is non-astringent.

Hachiya Persimmon

Resembles a heart. It is not edible until it is very, very soft and jelly-like. The high tannin content in the unripe Hachiya gives it a harshly leathery, astringent taste. The sensation is similar to an unripe green banana or a very dry wine.

Even people who work in the grocery business may be unfamiliar with the Hachiya.

To illustrate:

I recently grabbed a handful of very soft and ripe Hachiya persimmons at Whole Foods. The woman at the checkout stopped me and remarked, “Oh no! Those are rotten. Let me get you some firm ones!” I responded, “No, you really don’t want to do that! They’re supposed to be soft.”

Nutritional Powerhouses: Persimmons Are High In Vitamin C, Iron, And Other Nutrients

Nutritionally, persimmons are high in vitamin C and contain iron, calcium, potassium and manganese. They are also a reliable source of antioxidants such as vitamin-A, β-carotene, lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin and cryptoxanthin, which may play a role in certain aging processes.

Aside from Whole Foods and some specialty markets, the best place to find persimmons is at farmer’s markets around the LA area. The growing season runs from mid-October to late December, although I am still seeing (and buying) them into January this year.

How To Eat Them: Dried Persimmons

In addition to eating them fresh, dried persimmons also have several great uses:

• As a dried snack for the kids to pack in their school lunches

• In a salad, tossed into little pieces like dried cranberries

• As an addition to a homemade trail mix

We like to use the pumpkin-colored Fuyu persimmons for this, as their drier, firmer texture makes them an ideal candidate for dehydration (or low-temperature oven drying). Hachiya persimmons are too astringent until they are very ripe, so these are best used in other recipes like a jam, pudding or smoothie.

How To Make Dried Persimmons

1. Wash well (as you will be using the skin too; organic is best for this).

2. Slice thin using either a mandolin (manually) or a CuisineArt (we use a PowerBlend Duet). You can choose the thickness that you want for your slices. On the manual mandolin, we set ours to 1.3mm.

3. Lay out the slices on a wire mesh rack in a single layer.

4. Dehydrate at 145°F for 1 hour, then lower to 115°F for 6-8 hours (or until dry). If using an oven, set at the lowest temperature setting and leave the door ajar if you can. Depending on the oven, you will need to check the texture until the fruit feels dry to the touch.

5. Store in an airtight container like a Mason jar for up to 6 months.

The Fractal Geometry of the Romanesco Cauliflower

Nature never ceases to impress me:

The Romanesco is one of the most beautiful vegetables I’ve ever encountered. As a member of the Brassica family, it is technically a broccoli but visually closer to a cauliflower.

The Romanesco’s beauty is enhanced by its mathematically precise form: a fractal pattern and a Fibonacci sequence formed by the spirals of the buds. It is believed to have originated in Italy in the 16th century as a result of selective breeding. But how did it attain that incredibly mathematical shape? That is unknown.

This remarkable-looking vegetable contains lots of zinc, carotenoids, iron, vitamin C and folate. It is crunchier than a cauliflower, with a more nutty, earthy flavor.

We like it steamed and seasoned with olive oil and apple cider vinegar. It can also be stir-fried with a bit of low-sodium tamari sauce.

If you haven’t tried one yet, the new year is a perfect time to sample one!

Eating Healthy On A Budget

“You don’t need a silver fork to eat good food.”

— Paul Prudhomme

It’s a brand new year. A lot of people will make resolutions in January to eat better and live a healthier, more conscious life. Then they will fall off the wagon by February. The problem is that eating more consciously is a habit that takes practice, just like establishing any new habit. And it can also be brutally expensive.

When my wife and I scrapped our old way of eating about five years ago, our monthly food expenditures shot up at first. That’s because we were shopping for produce at the most high-end markets like Erewhon in West L.A.; buying super-pricey, grass-fed and humanely-raised kosher meat; and stocking our pantry with bulk items that we never had before. We were trying to “do the right thing”. But our approach was neither sustainable nor sane.

When you decide to eat healthy, it is tempting to get over-ambitious and overbuy. But with the right knowledge, eating healthy need not be a scary expense.

In this article, I outline several strategies to make the transition easier so the resolutions stick.

You Don’t Need To Buy Everything Organic

Know The Clean Fifteen And The Dirty Dozen

Get to know the Clean Fifteen and the Dirty Dozen lists put out by the Environmental Working Group. Not all fruits and veggies need to be purchased organic. For instance, avocados, bananas, onions, eggplants, asparagus, frozen peas and sweet potatoes generally have much lower pesticide levels than other crops.

Buy Organic From Box-Box Retailers

Organic canned goods can be purchased from house brands at Walmart, Target and Smart &  Final for less money than at Ralph’s, Whole Foods or Erewhon. Sometimes, even the organic versions of the 365 Everyday Value brand at Whole Foods will feature prices nearly in line with conventional products. But always check that the cans are non-BPA.

Shop Farmer’s Markets

Eating healthy, organic and unprocessed food doesn’t have to be out of reach for your budget. And farmers' markets aren’t always more expensive than supermarkets. If you shop around your local farmers' markets and hit up different vendors, you will often find prices below supermarket rates. You may also get more bang for your buck. For instance, I purchase heads of kale from Underwood Farms and Sunrise Farms that are much larger than what you would find in the supermarket, for the same price or less. The biggest upside is that it is freshly picke

Take Advantage Of Sales & Coupons

Mainstream snack brands like Saltines and Ritz crackers are very cheap. But they  are also ultra-processed and highly refined foods with little to no real nutritional value.

On the other hand, many very pricey artisan brands go on sale on a regular basis at Whole Foods and Sprouts. These include Mary’s Gone Crackers, Simple Mills crackers and Banza chickpea pasta. I’ve seen these brands discounted as much as 35% for 2-3 weeks at a time. Use these opportunities to stock up on them.

If you are an Amazon Prime member (who isn’t these days?!), download the Whole Foods app. You will get access to coupons so you will know what is going on sale ahead of time. You will also receive an additional 10% off sale items when you have the app scanned at the register.

Get A Costco Membership

Costco is an essential destination for people who want quality organic and healthy food. When it dawns on you, as it eventually did for us, that you cannot make everything from scratch, Costco is also an excellent source of packaged kosher snacks for the kids:

• Dried mango (organic and unsulfured)

• Chestnuts (Gefen brand, organic)

• Organic hummus school lunch-sized containers

• Tnuva sheep feta

• Simple Origins organic penne pasta (lentils, brown rice and buckwheat)

There are many, many other excellent and healthy kosher items at Costco at very reasonable prices.

Save Money On Essentials: Buy From Bulk Bins

You can find bulk bins in most health food markets. In Los Angeles, these include Sprouts, Whole Foods and Cooportunity. When you take advantage of the bulk bins, you can purchase as much or as little as you need and you still get the bulk pricing.

Grains

We have been gradually buying more of our grains from these bins: oatmeal, millet, quinoa and amaranth. When you have access to so many varieties of grains, you also have the opportunity to experiment with grains that you’ve never eaten before, without the commitment that comes with a large bag and hefty price tag.

Herbs and Spices

You can also buy most of your spices in bulk and refill the old glass containers. Spices do not last forever in your pantry and there is no reason to waste them. Look for spices that are whole, organic, non-irradiated and certified kosher. Just remember to label the spice with the purchase date, as the packaging will not reflect when you added new spice to your old container. You will save a lot of money in bulk vs. small spice jars.

Some comparisons (prices are from Frontier Co-Op brand at Cooportunity supermarket):

Organic garlic powder

• 2.4 oz jar is $2.71/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $1.06/oz (a savings of 61%)

Organic paprika

• 1.7 oz jar is $3.49/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $1.07/oz (a savings of 69%)

Organic Ceylon cinnamon

• 1.8 oz jar is $2.70/oz

• 1.0 oz bulk is $0.73/oz (a savings of 73%)

For more information specifically about spices, you can read this post.

Not everything is cheaper in bulk, though. For instance, almonds ($14.99/lb), walnuts ($14.99/lb) and cashews ($13.49/lb are very expensive.

Grow (Some Of) Your Own Food

A very viable option is to grow some of your own food. All you need is a sunny space indoors or a narrow strip of land in your backyard. We’ve grown basil, oyster mushrooms and sprouts in our apartment. It’s also another interactive way to involve the kiddos in the food process.

• You can buy an entire basil plant at Trader Joe’s for about what it costs to purchase a few cut leaves packed in plastic wrap.

• Whole Foods sometimes sells oyster mushroom kits. Or you can order one from the resources listed on this site.

• Seed-growing kits like Hamama and True Leaf Market are great for growing your own microgreens.

Buy Food, Just Enough, Mostly Plants

There is a common misconception that healthy food is expensive and beyond the reach of the average consumer. On the contrary, some of the healthiest food is also the most affordable.

The biggest key to shopping healthy-on-a-budget is to plan before you go. It’s very tantalizing to overbuy – whether at a farmers’ market or at Costco – only to relegate some of that produce to the trash can. It’s also very easy to shop for convenience. But that costs steeply.

Talk to your spouse once a week to plan out meals and the ingredients required to make them. Don’t forget to plan for healthy packaged snacks for the kids.

Compile a list the night before. I use the Reminders app on my iPhone. I have a list for each market that I shop at, including each farmers’ market. That way, I can plan out the best places to purchase each fruit or vegetable. This also curbs the urge to splurge at the last minute because you forgot to eat breakfast and are hungry.

To paraphrase Michael Pollan: buy (real) food, just enough, mostly plants.

The Colorful History Of The Chanukah Latke

Are Jewish Traditions Immutable?

We often think of our Jewish holiday traditions as immutable. For instance, on Pesach, we eat brisket and matzo ball soup. On Rosh Hashanah, we eat pomegranates, apples and honey. And on Chanukah, we eat potato latkes and sufganiyot. These are the experiential and culinary representations of our festivals. We assume that they are part and parcel of the holiday, existing alongside the actual halachot (the religious rules that govern how we observe the festivals). As Tevye sings in Fiddler on the Roof, “Tradition!” 

The reality, however, is that our culinary traditions have evolved over time and continue to do so. And few have evolved more than the Chanukah latke. Of course, the purpose of frying latkes is to commemorate the miracle of that last vial of oil that miraculously lasted for eight days. But how we got to our modern potato latke tradition is fascinating.

The Story of Judith: The Prehistory Of The Latke

The concept of the latke originated with the Apocryphal story of the prophetess Judith. Likely hundreds of years before the Hasmonean era, Judith fed cheese pancakes to an invading Syrian-Greek general, Holofernes, then got him drunk and cut his head off. This story infers a tenuous connection to Chanukah at best, with Jewish sources in the Middle Ages suggesting that Judith was related to Judah Maccabee.

Ricotta Cheese Pancakes: The OG Latke

The 14th-century Rabbi Kalonymous ben Kalonymous, who became well-known in Italy, associated cheese pancakes as a Chanukah food in one of his poems, possibly connecting it to the story of Judith.

Inspired by this connection, the latke really took off as a ricotta cheese pancake called cassola. Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Expulsion in Sicily brought cassola to Rome in 1492. These cheese pancakes were be fried in olive oil, in commemoration of the miracle of the oil used to light the menorah in the Temple.

Buckwheat: A Northern European Tradition

This ricotta cheese custom also reached Northern Europe. However, due to dairy’s scarcity and expense and olive oil’s lack of availability, the locals often substituted buckwheat or rye to make their latkes. Buckwheat latkes (known in Poland as “gretchenes") were made of buckwheat flour mixed with water, yeast and onions. They were fried with copious amounts of goose schmaltz. Why goose schmaltz? Geese were plentiful in Northern Europe in the wintertime and their slaughter provided copious amounts of cooking fat. Additionally, due to the Torah prohibition of mixing milk and meat, ricotta cheese could not be used with the schmaltz.

Potatoes: The Modern Latke

Crop failures in 1839 and 1840 in Poland and Ukraine led to the potato overtaking buckwheat and cheese as the latke ingredient of choice for Chanukah pancakes. It wasn’t until the early 20th century, though, that the modern potato latke really became established with its own firm tradition. Potatoes are cheap, easy to grow and quite tasty.

However, from a health standpoint, potato latkes are problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, they are deep-fried in vegetable oil. Vegetable oil is high in Omega-6 fatty acids and thus inflammatory, while frying also makes the foods higher in calories. Secondly, white potatoes are predominantly made from simple starch with minimal nutritional value. Finally, latke recipes often use bleached white flour to help bind the other ingredients together. These factors, coupled with the toppings that often accompany latkes, such as sour cream and jam, results in a very high glycemic index food that does few favors for your health.

Sweet Potatoes: The Latke Of The 21st Century

A better solution is to use sweet potatoes and to bake the latkes rather than fry them.

Why sweet potatoes? Unlike regular tubers, sweet potatoes are high in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium and fiber. They are also a very reliable source of complex carbohydrates, ranking these vegetables low on the glycemic index.

Why baked? Baking preserves nutrients and spares your body from the advanced glycation end products of deep frying starches. Deep frying in partially hydrogenated oil causes inflammation. And heating oils at high temperatures causes them to oxidize, potentially causing many serious medical problems.

What Are The Nutritional Benefits Of Using Sweet Potatoes?

Each variety of sweet potato provides different nutritional benefits:

• Orange sweet potatoes contain copious amounts of beta-carotene, which our bodies metabolize into vitamin A.

• The Stokes Purple variety is very high in antioxidants, specifically anthocyanin.

• The white Hannah variety contains iron and also has the closest texture to a traditional white potato.

• The Japanese variety contains calcium and thiamine and is denser and starchier than the orange variety.

A Fun Sweet Potato Latke Recipe

Last Chanukah, we cooked up a fabulous-tasting latke recipe that I learned from Canadian food blogger Meghan Telpner, whose culinary course I took in 2016. The recipe uses sweet potatoes, zucchini, carrots and onions, with almond flour and eggs to hold it together. It is gluten-free and dairy-free and can easily be made paleo (depending on the flour) or vegan (by substituting chia for the eggs).

We had fun with this recipe and used three different varieties of sweet potatoes (Hannah, Japanese and Stokes Purple) and two different varieties of zucchini (Green and Gold Bar). All the vivid colors made it an engaging recipe for the kids.

While these latkes are obviously not fried in oil, we maintained the connection to the miracle of the oil by basting them with olive oil before baking. This had the added benefit of locking in moisture so we had a crispy outside and soft inside.

Another option is buckwheat latkes. Buckwheat is an entirely different experience from potatoes – earthy and satisfying but not sweet. That is a project for us to try again next year.

Parting Thoughts On The Latke

The latke has a very long and colorful history. Far from being bound to an unchanging culinary tradition, Chanukah foods are constantly evolving alongside the nutritional needs of the community and the availability of the raw materials.

Rather than viewing sweet potatoes as a radical departure from the traditional latke, this is just another delicious iteration in the ever-evolving history of the latke.

What new or unique ingredients have you used in your latkes this year or in years past? Please share in the comments below!

Happy Chanukah!