Apple Country

Quick & Kosher

One of the cool benefits of living way north of the GW Bridge and the Big Apple is that we are in real apple country. On a whim, we can take the kids to a local orchard not ten minutes from my house, and become one with nature. It feels just like the olden days—only back then, the farmers would pay hired hands to pick the apples, while we actually pay the farmers to please, please let us harvest their fruit.

With our toddlers in tow, it took the better part of a leisurely hour and a half to collect our bushel’s worth. There were all kinds of folks up in those trees. You can easily spot the real apple connoisseurs: they come equipped with a knife and magnifying glass—and they taste each variety, talk about it, inspect it, thumb their noses at subpar apples, and toss them to the ground disdainfully. I think they had fancy foreign accents too, but that could be my imagination working overtime.

Then there were plenty of families like mine. Our apple criteria were not quite the same as those snooty gourmets, but it was based on our own very strict checklist. To get into our basket, the apples must: 1) be reachable by someone smaller than three feet tall (there are only so many times Mommy and Daddy can pick you up), 2) have no soft spots and 3) have no worm holes.

So we picked our Granny Smiths and Romes, our Cortlands and Macintoshes, and we were on our way. It cost us 25 bucks for the experience—but honestly, I think we wound up with 50 pounds of apples. Back home, I started unpacking our produce and panic struck. HELP! What’s a gal who never baked an apple pie in her life to do with oodles and oodles of apples? OK— I can make Puff Pastry Apple Purses, and even my 4-year-old can help. Great! The Purses were super. Only 88 apples left.

I remembered that as a kid, one of my favorite treats was caramel apples. (I discovered a rocky road version—almost too fab for words.) I was all ready to fire up the caramel, when my other half interjected that it would be such a waste—he doesn’t like caramel apples.

I should have been able to predict this impasse. Since the day we got married and discovered that I’m into fish and salads and he’s all about meat and potatoes, we rarely relished the same meals. Why should we agree on apples?

The man wanted candy-coated apples. He yearned for candy-coated apples. It had something to do with his childhood, a day at the beach or the circus or something, a fight with his brother, a gift from his sister, I don’t know. All I knew was that a candy-coated apple would resolve a long-standing ache in his heart.

I put away the caramel. After all, I’m an adult. I can give up my caramel apple if it means that much to my husband. You know, I never thought I would enjoy the process, but we had such fun. I discovered that making candy-coated apples is a great activity to do with the kids, and we munched and crunched our way to family bliss!

Passover and Earth Day: A Lot in Common!

Celebrate Passover and Earth Day at the same time? Yes, you can! You can be green while enjoying all the traditions. Remember, Passover includes cleaning out the old and starting fresh. Just by ridding your home of excess, that is, allowing yourself and your environment to ‘breathe’, you have done at least one small thing to ‘improve your world’.

When we look at Passover as a celebration of being “set free”, we can apply this toward being also “set free” from things and possessions that tend to ‘clog up’ our lives. Freedom is a great feeling, but comes with a responsibility to take care of who we are, where we live, and the world we leave behind. Today, we deal with the plagues of climate issues and the such, things that really affect us all.

So enjoy Passover, but don’t pass over the chance to go the extra step and look at who you are and where you live. It’s those little things that really add up to help create a better world. Don’t take for granted what you have been given! Giving back is the perspective of living green. And don’t forget: “The less you have, the less you have to clean up!”

Battery recycling yields kosher product

The box that your kosher noodles or favorite breakfast cereals come in may contain an ingredient that once was in a lead-acid battery, but now is a kosher product.

It may not sound appetizing, but one company’s recycling of lead-acid batteries - an environmentally helpful process that primarily yields lead,  also yields sodium sulfate - a salt commonly used in the manufacturing of starch. Doe Run Company’s Buick Resource Recycling Division also takes the extra step of getting that salt product certified kosher.

Lou Magdits, Doe Run’s director of raw materials, says none of the sodium sulfate the company produces is contained in food, but it is used in making an industrial, corn-based starch that goes into papermaking or cardboard production. Doe Run sought the kosher certification because the paper packaging may come into contact with food at a later time. Chicago Rabbinical Council certifies the salt-creation process and raw materials.

Doe Run’s sodium sulfate is also used in the manufacturing of other products such as glass, powdered laundry detergent and carpet freshening products. The company processes more than 13.5 million lead-acid batteries annually. Battery recycling yields approximately 1,200 tons of sodium sulfate a month.

Eco-kosher

It could be a delayed reaction to PETA’s exposé about inhumane treatment of animals at a kosher slaughterhouse in Iowa a couple of years ago, but there seems to be a movement towards demanding shochtim and abattoirs display ethical and humane treatment of animals.

Of course, Jewish vegetarian groups have been around for years, but there are sparks that even the kosher meat market might be inching towards animal rights concerns. Over the summer, the Washington Post and New York Times both ran long features about the blending of ethical concerns with ritual ones, and the Forward newspaper used the run-up period to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur to talk about moves in the Orthodox world to treat chickens used for the pre-Yom Kippur kapparot ceremony humanely.

Technically, kashrut has nothing to do with treating animals properly before slitting their throats: If a knowledgeable shochet kills a kosher animal in accordance with halacha, the meat is kosher. But to many people, the “whys” of keeping kosher are just as important as the “hows,” and explanations about “why keep kosher” often include kashrut’s supposed ethical superiority.

Even non-Orthodox kosher-keepers are getting in the fray. Over the summer, the Conservative movement announced plans to issue a hechsher tzedek, intended to confirm that workers and animals are treated appropriately at kosher slaughterhouses, focusing on creating kosher conditions at all stages of the process. The move is strongly opposed by Orthodox organizations.