Israel

So, I'm sure everyone knows someone who's gone on Birthright, the free trip for Jewish people to Israel. (I just came back from it.) They all take the same photos of a dusty, rocky, hilly landscape; everyone has a picture of the Western Wall; you usually see people either smeared in mud or bobbing unnaturally high in the Dead Sea. And that's all well and good, because you should have pictures of those things. They're unique, unlike anything you'll ever see anywhere else in the world.

Unfortunately, I'm a shit photographer. Mostly I just forget I have a camera (probably because up until I commandeered Danny's old one specifically for this trip, I never had one of my own, and to tell the truth it still feels like this one technically isn't mine and it's only on loan - a camera is a luxury I will buy when I have a real salary). The rest of the time, I'm not even thinking about artificially preserving what I see beyond my memory. Thinking about it messes it up, because then it's all about the composition, and the lighting, and the color, and the forms, and is there balance between vertical elements and horizontal elements, and why can't I turn off the damn auto-focus because I WANT the foreground to be blurry dammit, and how can I make this look interesting - like something someone would remember. And then, when I go home, I don't even really remember what I was looking at in the first place.

The bottom line is I suck at snapping pictures.

So I didn't take that many which makes me sad.

I especially didn't take very many of the things I personally enjoy - like the food - although I do have one of my and several of my tripmates' lunches. However, despite the lack of visual evidence, I can still verbally rave about the food.

First of all, can I just say that the simple fact that there IS agriculture on land that's alternately desert and swamp is just unbelievable? I'm not talking a plot here or there, I'm talking bananas, dates, litchis, cucumbers, prickly pears, tomatoes, grapes (for eating out of hand and really good wine), mangoes, olives, plums, all kinds of citrus, pears, and I'm sure plenty of other things I'm not aware of, all from someplace half the size of New Jersey... that is, as I said, half desert and half swamp.

If you put in a minute bit of effort, it seems like it's impossible to eat badly here because all the fruits and veggies are so fresh and tasty, there's hardly any reason to eat anything else, which brings me to the rest stop options. I have a lot of experience with Israeli rest stops because the only way to get a large group of people all over the country is by bus. Our bus didn't have a bathroom which was both good and bad. Good: the bus didn't smell like a bathroom. Bad: we had to stop for bathroom breaks.

Israeli rest stops:

- The actual toilets can make the ones in NJ rest stops look like the Four Seasons. Carry your own toilet paper, ladies and gentlemen.

- The food is - roughly speaking, of course - 9 million billion gazillion times better than US rest stops. You do have McDonald's and pizza, but why would you even bother when there's falafel in pita with everything and tons of complimentary salads to round it out??? I mean, really. one place we stopped had a random guy selling baklava and other syrupy delicious confections off a table. They were awesome. There's also Aroma, a coffee shop that sells borekas (crispy flaky dough with a vaariety of fillings) with egg, tomato, eggplant, and pickles inside along with sandwiches and really, really good coffee. It's no wonder Starbucks failed miserably in Israel.

Honestly, if every Pizza Hut or Wendy's or whatever was replaced with a falafel joint, think of (a) how much more awesome everything would be, (b) how much tastier everything would be, and (c) how much more vegetables the entire US population would eat.

I also had a chance to try some of the best shwarma I've ever had in Jerusalem, thanks to one of the Israelis who stayed with our group throughout the trip. Shwarma is slabs of meat (the best is lamb) skwered through the middle and layered on a spike. Then the whole thing is slowly rotated so everything is exposed to a vertically placed heat source. They shave off the outer cooked layers, leaving the raw meat exposed. Another concept I was hugely appreciative of - the half pita if you're only sort of hungry. Brilliant. You could order a half pita, a whole pita, or a laffa (large Iraqi variation on the pita). And there were all sorts of complimentary salads on the side you could help yourself to, roasted eggplant chunks (sooooooo good), carrot salad, various pickles, sauteed onions, roasted peppers, etc.

Another gastronomical high point is the dairy. I got a little pot of full fat yogurt, and I was full after two spoonfuls. It was like eating sour cream, super flavorful and rich. It tasted so good. True, I ate simply. Lots of fresh things very simply prepared. I didn't have a chance to go looking for developed cuisine beyond stop-and-eat joints, but I think taking it down to basics really shows off superior ingredients (or points to inferior ones). The bottom line? Everything was spectacular, from fresh squeezed orange juice after a sunrise hike up and down Masada, to the salads, falafel, and shwarma I ate everywhere. Israel is one country in which I highly recommend eating as much as possible.

Milk and Honey

Just got back from Israel, land of milk and honey.  More like land of awesome produce and hummus.

  

Oh man, jetlag.

The Sidecar.

A classic cocktail if ever there was one.  Typically, I associate it with winter because one of the main ingredients is brandy, which for whatever reason - right or wrong - for me brandy = something to drink to warm you up in the winter.  

However, I have never been one to limit my alcohol consumption based on something as silly as the seasons, so here's the recipe:

1 to 1 to 1 of brandy, an orange liqueur (such as Cointreau, Gran Gala, etc.), and lemon juice.  Shake it up till cold, or if you're like me and don't own a cocktail shaker, just stir with a lot of ice until chilly.  Easy enough.  

It reminds me of a citrusy Manhattan, sans woodiness from the whiskey and medicinal quality from the vermouth and bitters.  And I thought, "Hey, sidecar + fizz = a totally summer-acceptable libation!"  

So, try it.  Make a small one to try, and then add some seltzer water.  It's refreshing, very lemony (if you don't do tangy, cut back on the lemon juice, obv., but don't cut back too much), boozy, and now I have to think up a good name.  Best enjoyed near a pool while wearing huge sunglasses and an even larger hat.  

I'll get back to you on the name when something strikes me...  :)

CSA, again.

So, our CSA is in full swing, which is nice.  We're getting a nice amount of veggies and fruit, and while I've been too busy to really think about how much we're buying vs how much we buy when we don't have a CSA, it's been interesting.  I can say with complete certainty we eat a buttload more fresh fruit than it actually provides for us, but I'm not sure if that's just us and our insane appetites or how it usually ends up for most people.  I don't know how people with families would do it.

A lot of times, it turns into a "Oh, dammit, those stupid peas/summer squash we forgot about is/are going to rot if I don't do something with them RIGHT NOW!  What should I do???"  There've been some stirfries, rice dishes, and random salads that have been quite lovely.  We tried a corn souffle thingy from the NY Times that used a zucchini along with 4 small ears of corn and some roasted and peeled poblano chiles (any pepper would work; I think they actually call for a fresh red pepper) we had in the freezer from last year.  You mix ~ half the corn kernels with 3 eggs, and some milk, I think, in the blender.  Slice and sautee the zuke with an onion (and the pepper if you're using fresh) until transluscent, wait till it cools, dump with whole kernels, roasted pepper shred, and egg-corn-milk mixture into a greased pyrex with some cumin, and bake till set.  Then there was the time Danny didn't realize he had to shell the peas, and that stirfry had an interactive edamame-like dimension to it.  But again, it was tasty.

Overall, the whole CSA thing is nice, and if nothing else, we're certainly eating more organic food for whatever that's worth.  But to tell the truth, I've been feeling very put-upon and in a rut, with no desire to be creative or anything.  It's an odd way to feel in the summer.  I'm not used to it.  I miss my half-day Fridays from when I worked at Pepsi, and Sal's amazing BBQ every other Thursday.  I don't like working twice as hard for less than half the salary, and feeling guilty when I don't.  

I sincerely hope academia overhauls itself or else it's going to die, because I can't say its collapse wouldn't be deserved.

Saved the celeriac

From the previous post, you may have read that I attempted a rosti with celeriac

(Rosti: peel 1.5 pounds of potatoes, 6 cloves of garlic, herb of choice (rosemary, parsley, whatever), shoestring the potatoes, throw into olive oil in hot pan with peeled whole garlic and herbs, add salt and pepper, sautee until potato starts to get tender, roast for 25 minutes in the oven, smush down with aluminum foil and oven mits into a flat cake, roast another 25 minutes. Obviously, I did it with celeriac, which took far less time.)

However, the celeriac rosti did not stick together due to a lack of starch I believe, and nor did it end up with a pleasingly crisp/soft texture. No, friends, it more closely resembled extremely fragrant flavorful shreds of shoe leather. I know a lost cause when I see one, and it didn't take much to reach the conclsuion that this was one of those dishes that would forever languish in the back of the fridge until succumbing to mold. So I figured, hey, this needs to soften up, and it tasted great with sour cream, so why not gently simmer it in milk?

I did. And it worked. And I added a pinch of herbes de Provence mixture thingy. Very tasty and insanely flavorful. So, then I had a stroke of genius. What better way to achieve the impossible (make Danny full) than to add 6 eggs, a can of chickpeas, and turn it into a protein loaded Spanish-style tortilla? Due to the presence of all that somewhat caramelized celeriac, parsley, garlic and random herbs, it needed nothing else. I beat the eggs in a bowl until they were combined, dumped in the now-soft celeriac, the can of chickpeas, and stirred it up. Then I poured it into a pan and let it cook. We ate it with yogurt on top, and drank a very young gruner veltliner. We each had a glass.

It was totally awesome. And we were both stuffed, despite having leftovers! I think we tallied it up, and Danny ate the equivalent of 3 eggs, half a can of chickpeas, and half the celeriac. Hells yeah. I'm going to add up the cost of this meal, in a very rough approximation:

- 1/2 dozen eggs - $1
- 1 can chickpeas - $1
- 1 celeriac - $1.50, maybe. generously. It was maybe $0.59 per pound, and it was ~ 1.5 lbs.
- The whole large container of yogurt was probably around $2? We each had a few spoonfuls. You do the math because I don't feel like it.
- Bottle of wine - $10, unless it was $9. I forget.

Not bad, not bad at all. Sans alcohol, the whole thing cost slightly more than $3. McDonald's can seriously KISS MY ASS.

CSA

Danny and I got a subscription to a CSA for a present (and a very nice present it was, as opposed to simply being more shite we have to find a place for), and it just started last week.  I was uber excited as I made my way down to the pick-up.  The produce looked great; tender new salad greens in a bag, a bunch of small radishes, asparagus (the most resilient strong-looking asparagus I've seen in forever), some green onions, garlic chives, 3 leftover apples from the winter, 3 leftover potatoes, strawberries (2 large containers), and rhubarb.  

So, I gotta be honest... I was expecting more.  The amount of veggies is roughly enough to fill our cavities because we eat like professionals, and man, we love our veggies.  We did try (and failed) to make rosti with celeriac.  By failed, I mean we generated a kind of garlicky celeriac hash which doesn't taste bad at all, but it's a little dry and doesn't stay together in a neat little cake of moist and crispy matchsticks.  It is, however, totally off the chain with a dollop of sour cream on top.  

But the CSA stuff... the radishes and lettuce made their way into a massive salad that we've had for diner, lunch, and lunch again tomorrow.  I took the rhubarb and followed this recipe for curried duck legs with rhubarb, but I subbed in chicken because it's cheaper.  I tell you, it was kind of a lot of steps and all, with the food processor and the extra sauteeing, but it's quite tasty.  It's like a thicker, sweeter, tangier version of my curried chicken.  Definitely richer than mine, too.  I like it a lot, but I think I prefer mine because (a) it's a bit lighter, (b) I really like potatoes, (c) less dirty dishes at the end, and (d) fewer steps.  

We plan on a quick broil of the asparagus, after rubbing them in a olive oil and garlic, and we're just eating the strawberries because they are really, really small, flavorful, and amazing.  The green onions made their way into a block of cream cheese (very awesome under lox on bread), and I'm not sure what the garlic chives are going to be a part of yet, but stay tuned.  

This sounds like a lot of food, but for us, it isn't.  We don't buy lunch or anything, and we seriously eat like gluttons.  Very happy, vegetable-centric gluttons.  

today's breakfast smoothie

Today I peeled and sliced a whole mango, half an avocado, and some vanilla soy milk and blended. I am going to edit my suggestion to using only a quarter of an avocado if the avocado in question is not small. The smoothie was tasty, despite having too little mango flavor, IMO - which should be remedied by using only a quarter avocado in the future - and I stayed full until now!

Usually I have to eat lunch at 11-11:30. By me, mangoes are miraculously $0.50 each. Hells to the yeah.