Erratum: Pesticides and Organic Produce

After my most recent post went up, my friend Joel sent me a message pointing out that I had incorrectly implied that organic-certified fruits are guaranteed to be free of pesticides. That’s not true, of course. According to the USDA’s standards, a whole slew of non-synthetic pesticides may be used on organic produce, where “pesticide” means any substance that kills, inhibits the growth of, or repels pest animals. (Fun fact: Methyl anthranilate, better known as artificial concord grape flavor, is listed as a pesticide because it is sprayed on fruit trees to repel birds.) Substances that have been extracted from plants without major chemical changes may be used on organic produce, as may naturally occurring pesticides such as ethanol (a.k.a. ethyl alcohol, a.k.a. vodka). Oddly enough, some of the permitted “organic” sprays out there are, from a chemical standpoint, inorganic; elemental copper is used by many organic farmers to prevent fungus growth.

Eat all the parts of the things!

A little under two years ago I passed through the Union Square Greenmarket to pick up some groceries, and finding that the season was right, bought a stalk of Brussels sprouts. (I enjoy buying sprouts on the stem, both because they are often—though not always—fresher and more flavorful than loose sprouts, and because an intact Brussels sprout plant is one of the silliest-looking organisms I’ve ever seen.) After making the purchase, I took my enormous shopping bag over to another vendor, who remarked, “Those look like great sprouts. You’re going to eat the leaves too, right?”

French toast and bal tashchit

כִּֽי־תָצ֣וּר אֶל־עִיר֩ יָמִ֨ים רַבִּ֜ים לְֽהִלָּחֵ֧ם עָלֶ֣יהָ לְתָפְשָׂ֗הּ לֹֽא־תַשְׁחִ֤ית אֶת־עֵצָהּ֙ לִנְדֹּ֤חַ עָלָיו֙ גַּרְזֶ֔ן כִּ֚י מִמֶּ֣נּוּ תֹאכֵ֔ל וְאֹת֖וֹ לֹ֣א תִכְרֹ֑ת כִּ֤י הָֽאָדָם֙ עֵ֣ץ הַשָּׂדֶ֔ה לָבֹ֥א מִפָּנֶ֖יךָ בַּמָּצֽוֹר: רַ֞ק עֵ֣ץ אֲשֶׁר־תֵּדַ֗ע כִּ֣י לֹא־עֵ֤ץ מַֽאֲכָל֙ ה֔וּא אֹת֥וֹ תַשְׁחִ֖ית וְכָרָ֑תָּ וּבָנִ֣יתָ מָצ֗וֹר עַל־הָעִיר֙ אֲשֶׁר־הִוא֙ עֹשָׂ֧ה עִמְּךָ֛ מִלְחָמָ֖ה עַ֥ד רִדְתָּֽהּ:־

When you lay siege to a city for a long time in order to capture it, do not take an axe to its trees to destroy them; you may eat from them, but not destroy them. Is a tree a person to whom you should lay siege? You may destroy a tree that you know is not a fruit-bearing tree, and use it to build siege works against the city that is warring with you until it falls. (Deuteronomy 20:19-20)

This passage, forbidding the destruction of fruit trees during a siege, is the basis for a broad swath of Jewish law known as bal tashchit, roughly “do not destroy.” A quick summation of bal tashchit would go something like this: Do not needlessly waste resources, or exhaust a resource in a way that minimizes the benefit derived. For example, throwing a perfectly good raw potato in the garbage is prohibited, but so is eating it raw, since this provides neither the nutrition nor the enjoyment normally associated with potatoes. (Now I know what I’m having for lunch.) Jewish environmental groups often cite the principles of bal tashchit, if not the specific laws, as a religious foundation for ecological conservation programs.

The Fat that Dare Not Speak its Name

I wrote this a few months ago for The Jew and the Carrot. Though editorial dialectic eventually produced a rather different essay, I still enjoy the original and thought I’d share it. Thanks go out to my friend Andrea for proofreading and suggesting a few tweaks that really improved the article.

My spouse, suffering the loss of appetite that accompanies mononucleosis, has been taking in about 300 calories a day in the form of miso soup and apple juice, so when she requests chicken soup for Shabbat I know that it has to be serious chicken soup. In fact, it has to be emergency chicken soup, crowded with meat, vegetables and egg noodles two fingers wide. We’re talking about real Jewish azithromycin here. (Everything is resistant to penicillin these days.) It’s Friday afternoon, and I am stripping skin off of raw chicken leg quarters, when the little voice in my head speaks up.

“What, you’re just going to throw that away?” The voice knows I have a strong aversion to wasting food.

“This is chicken skin. I save bones for stock, but skin?”

The voice is having none of it. “Waste not, want not,” he says. “Doesn’t a commitment to sustainability mean using resources as efficiently as possible?”

“But what am I supposed to do with this stuff?” I can tell where the conversation is going, but don’t want to admit it.

“You know exactly what to do. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.” The voice is clearly growing impatient with me. “You cook with butter all the time, and butter is solid at room temperature, but it isn’t.” The voice doesn’t have to tell me what it is.

“What will my wife think? What about my friends?” I know that this is a lame appeal as soon as it comes out of my mouth.

“They’ll come around. You’ll tell them about the economy, and the new austerity.” Another pause. I can feel the big one coming. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

I cave. Driven by patriotic guilt and a secret desire to know what I’ve been missing, I cut the chicken skin into strips and place it in a skillet along with a few lumps of white fat from the legs, then put the heat on very low. For a long time nothing happens, which is great, because it gives me time to chop carrots while pretending I’ve done nothing wrong. After several minutes, though, a clear liquid begins to creep southward in the skillet. (Our stove top is not quite level.) Soon a distinct crackling sound announces itself, and I find that I’m shaking the pan and turning the bits of skin without having any real control over my actions. Before I have time to think, the crackling has all but subsided and left me with a once-praised, now-reviled inheritance from my Ashkenazi ancestors. Figuring I might as well go through with it, I pour the result through a coffee filter into a jar that once held fruit preserves, separating the golden-clear liquid from the crunchy, light-as-air skin fragments. I cross out the writing on the jar’s label, replace it with the words “Don’t ask,” and put it in the fridge immediately, figuring that the Mediterranean Diet Police might batter down the door any second.

Schmaltz (the rendered chicken fat, of which I now have maybe an ounce) and gribenes (the skin cracklings, which were delicious) aren’t the sorts of things people normally talk about in the context of healthy or responsible eating, but they should be. They’re made from something that many of us have been eating around and throwing away at least since the fat-phobic ’90s, and using them means reducing the environmental impact of meat production by stretching the product further. It is also, of course, a financially sound thing to do. As for health, how many people who cringe at the idea of schmaltz make regular use of hydrogenated margarine or shortening in their pareve baking? Schmaltz is a naturally occurring fat; it contains no trans fatty acids and a surprisingly benign balance of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. (At least one commercially available brand of kosher chicken fat is partially hydrogenated, and therefore contains at least some trans fatty acids, even if the FDA’s labeling rules allow the makers to claim that their product contains “0 grams” thereof. Check the ingredient list, not the nutrition information.) The strongest argument I can find against using schmaltz, assuming that you’re eating chicken anyway, is that it takes some getting used to. To be blunt, it tastes exactly like the sort of thing we’ve been told for decades is so bad for us that it’s practically immoral, and dwelling on recent epidemiological data seems unlikely to make that feeling go away.

So try this: if you’re the sort of person who can’t bear to eat soggy poultry skin—and I count myself among that august body of consumers—take it off before braising or stewing. A few simple steps and a relatively hands-off process will transform that wasted material, which you paid for, into some sadly overlooked building blocks for great flavor. When was the last time austerity tasted this good?