My boys playing in the sand at the end of our visit to at Givat Hatachmoshet (Ammunition Hill), Jerusalem, a bloody 1967 battle site turned museum
Thank you to Westbankmama for suggesting we visit this place.
For more red Ruby Tuesday posts, visit Mary the Teach at Work of the Poet.
I like brown rice. When I am home, I eat it every other day or so. I grew up eating white rice; I didn’t even know brown rice existed. My relationship with brown rice started when my mother, z”l, of blessed memory, got sick. I was introduced to brown rice for health reasons, but it became part of my routine because I like the stuff. And it likes me, meaning it’s easy on my digestive system (I can’t say the same for homemade challah, one of my favorite foods, that stuffs me up).
So after being in Israel for almost a week, I still hadn’t eaten any brown rice. There are so many culinary delights to sample in Israel, that I wasn’t thinking much about the lack of brown rice. But it’s lunch time, we are in a little square in the old city section of Tsefat, and what do I see:
The Hebrew on the right is pretty much a translation of the English on the left. For example, there’s this long word there which says ‘sanvichim’ (I’m going to let someone who doesn’t know Hebrew guess what that means). Basically, the way to say “brown rice” is “rice full”. Because that’s really what brown rice is, full rice: they haven’t yet stripped it of its nutrients.
Not that I learned how to say brown rice in Hebrew while I was in Israel. The woman behind the counter spoke a heavily British-accented Hebrew, so I knew it would be more than OK to make our requests in English. Here’s the simple dish that my husband and I enjoyed:
Now, you might be thinking, wait, she’s got those three kids with her. Do you mean to tell me she convinced her three kids to eat that stuff?
Have no fear, ladies and gents, for in the same square, adjoining the Tree of Life restaurant, was this little food stand (click so you can read the signs):
And my kids enjoyed a familiar food they ate a lot in Israel: pizza. The variety of pizza they sampled on our journey was of varying quality, with this pizza being one of the better ones. The same stand also had fresh squeezed orange juice, and my son helped the young man with the long hair (long hair seems to be in vogue among twentyish young men in Israel; I wonder if it’s a reaction to the army) squeeze out some delicious juice with an old-fashioned juicer.
My next opportunity to enjoy brown rice in Israel came towards the end of our trip, when we visited Jerusalem. My children had the audacity to want to eat at a kosher Burger King, and I happily stumbled upon the Village Green when they were done with their burgers and fries. The Village Green had been recommended to me by a Highland Park friend who visits Israel often (more often than I do, anyway). When you’ve been eating out for close to two weeks, it is fun to be able to choose your food in this sort of display:
We ate at the Village Green twice because we liked it so much. My husband preferred this food to some of the saucier, fancier food we ate elsewhere. Here’s what I ate on my second visit:
Can you guess what kind of cookie is pictured in this photo? If you look carefully at the placemat, you’ll see the address of the restaurant: 33 Rechov Yaffo (Rechov means “street”).
Do you like brown rice? Or would you choose something different from one of these menus?
Baila alerted me to the fact that the Tel Dan Nature Reserve, where we enjoyed a wonderful, easy hike with archaeological digs and a cool wading pool, was torched on Saturday night.
Arson: why are some people so destructive? Who benefits from such a misdeed?
Read the Jerusalem Post article.
Also, looking for tips from photographers on how to photograph brightly-lit waterfalls or running water without having them look washed out. Thanks.
When I photographed this guy in early July at Ein Gedi, I didn’t know what he was. Cute, that’s for sure. Turns out he’s (or she?) a hyrax, an animal that frequents these parts.
Does this look at all like a bunny rabbit? Because in Modern Hebrew, a shafan is a rabbit. But in ancient Hebrew, the word shafan probably applies to a hyrax. See Psalms 104:18 —
The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the conies.
הָרִים הַגְּבֹהִים, לַיְּעֵלִים; סְלָעִים, מַחְסֶה לַשְׁפַנִּים
Conies are the translation of shefanim and supposedly refer to these furry fellows.
For more on nature at the Dead Sea, see:
If you like animal photos, see Dina on Parshat Balak.
And to read more inspiring posts by other inspiring bloggers, visit Jack’s Haveil Havalim #173.
It’s time for me to start re-connecting with this side of the Atlantic Ocean. So, in order to do so, I present you with yet one more photo of Israel, this time a blue arrow on a small highway somewhere in between Modiin and Hashmonaim.
Have you ever driven down Rte 27 in Metuchen? Or have ever given anyone directions to drive to Highland Park from the Garden State? You need to take a weird left after Main Street in Metuchen into what appears to be–ongoing traffic? You can’t really tell if you are doing the right thing, can you? When you take that left, not like you really are turning into a different road. It’s all Route 27! One long road that starts–where does it start? But you can drive on that road all the way to Princeton. Google Maps tells me that little scary left is from Middlesex Avenue unto Lake Avenue. Well, my husband has proposed that one of these nice little blue arrows might do the trick. So your guest doesn’t keep going and up on Rt. 287 or some other miscellaneous road.
In other local news, Mason Resnick is trying to lure Trader Joe’s to Highland Park. And Jill Caporlingua was part of Random Acts of Fun last night, as she taught art on Raritan Avenue.
Regarding issues that effect all of us, mommies or not, Mother In Israel posted about nursing moms in malls and Frumhouse continued with her nursing experiences. Don’t you want to live a society that does the right thing?
Taken from a bus in Jerusalem, last week. Click for larger image.
Visit Anna Carson’s photo blog to join all the fun with Project Black.
We visited Tsefat (alternative spellings: Safed, Safad, Tsfat, Tzfat, Tzefat) about two weeks ago. It is my favorite city in Israel: spiritual, up in the clouds (it’s on a hill), artistic, architecturally interesting, walkable, colorful. Lecha Dodi, the lovely prayer welcoming the Sabbath queen that we sing every Friday night, was composed by Rabbi Shlomo Halevy Alkabetz in the 16th century in Tsefat.
Here’s a welcoming sign to the old section on the busy main street at the top of the city’s hill.
Ari Synagogue (Ashkenazi)
Abuhav Synagogue on the right: lots of blue here. Blue is a recurring theme in Tsefat.
My husband and middle son went for a dip in the mikvah of the Ari.
Stay tuned for a post about the simple, delicious, kosher, healthy food that we ate in a little square in Tsefat. Unfortunately, Eldest son, same son who does not like garlic, didn’t care for Tsefat because he found it smelly.
Fruit stand in Modiin, Israel, hometown of Baila
I haven’t done a post on health topics for a while, so here are some recent internet picks:
Allergies And Ubiquitous Presence Of Some Foods
Before the advent of freezers and airfreight most people ate local foods in season. Now most fruit and vegetables are available all year round, so that our systems are exposed to the same foods continually without respite.
There has been a dramatic increase in people experiencing soya allergy, since soya has become a common ingredient in many processed foods. In Europe and North America rice allergy is relatively uncommon, whereas in Asia where it is consumed more frequently it is much more common.
Note: In Israel one still eats local foods in season. It is difficult, for example, to obtain strawberries in the summer.
As I am married to a red wine lover, I’ll conclude with a photo from our trip to the Galil winery:
The wine is stored in these oak barrels (oak is either from France or the US) for a few years before being bottled and sold. We bought some Galil Pinot Noir and enjoyed it with our friends in Hashmonaim.
Tanks for fermentation and storage of wine are the answers to my quiz on this post.
This was my son’s favorite activity in Israel, sliding down this gigantic red slide at a waterpark in the Galil called Luna Gal. As a mom, I got palpitations every time he went down. Oy.
For more red Ruby Tuesday posts, visit Mary the Teach at Work of the Poet.
I believe this is a Tristram’s grackle (onychognathus tristramii), a bird that lives in Ein Gedi, an oasis near the Dead Sea. This bird had no problem letting me photograph him on the picnic table in the visiting area. I have such a harder time getting photos of the birds in my own backyard here in New Jersey!
According to the Wikipedia article,
They are omnivorous, feeding on fruit and invertebrates, and can also be observed grooming Nubian Ibex and domestic livestock for parasites.
Note via email from a Highland Park birder: “It looks very similar to our common grackles except for the bill shape and the bit of color on the wing.”
See my photo of an ibex (yael in Hebrew). Fuzzy, cute hyrax photo coming soon.