Purim as Israelis

Purim is here!  Which means lots of dressing up in costumes.  In many cultures there seems to be at least one calendar day dedicated to dressing up in costumes: Holloween, Dia de los Muertos in Mexico, Carnival in Brazil, and Purim here in Israel.  The one thing these days, among others I'm sure, have in common is that we all get to pretend to be something we're not.  

I personally love to get dressed up, Matt less so.  But Matt did some of his own "dressing up" this week as his Maritime Survey Methods class went out on a boat, and Matt had to wear a wet-suit.  

In the course the students learned how to locate, map out and excavate archaeological sites, both on land and underwater.  This was great for Matt because his absolute favorite thing to do is go on boats! (read that last sentence with the heaviest sarcasm you can muster).   Doped up on Dramamine  Matt was at least able to enjoy the beautiful views of the Israeli coast from the water.  Although he doesn't (yet) scuba-dive, he got in his fair share of swimming and snorkeling, and did as much as he could in the water to run the equipment and help out the divers.  A little sunburned and a little oozy, I think he is happy to be back on dry land.

Now back to Purim.  For the last couple years in Chicago we haven't had to worry about coming up with our Purim costumes.  Thanks to the creative genius of our Rabbi's two young daughters, we have been part of a Disney themed group costume.  It started out with Aladdin where I was Jasmine and Matt was the Sultan (the girls told him he couldn't be Alladin because he was too hairy and the shirt-less costume would not be appropriate for shul) and one of the girl's was the Genie.  That was followed up by Cinderella, where the girls played Cinderella and one of the step-sisters, the Rabbi was Prince Charming, I was the Fairy Godmother, and Matt was the pumpkin that turned into the carriage.   

As Purim approached this year we were sad to think that Team Disney would not be dressing up together now that we live so far away.  That is, until we got the most amazing letter in the mail about a month ago.  The girls wrote us a hand written card with their Purim costume suggestions!  Even though we no longer live near them, they still wanted to continue our group costume tradition.  And this year's theme is... Beauty and the Beast!  We wrote the girls back (a hand written letter of course) that it seems obvious that Matt should dress up as the Beast since he already had the hairy part covered, and I, as per their suggestion, would dress up as Mrs. Potts, the dancing, singing tea pot.  With a little creativity, some ribbon, fake fur and pins, this is what we came up with:

We are waiting with great anticipation to see what our costume-mates come up with.  

Wishing you all a Purim Sameach, Shabbat Shalom and a great weekend!

Stef and Matt

First Day of Work as Israelis

One of the great ironies of my life is that I love traveling, but I hate being a tourist.  I love seeing new places and experiencing different cultures, but there is a negative side as well: I hate not knowing the local language (and expecting them to know English) and feeling like I'm interrupting the daily life of locals.  This discomfort probably stems from my own frustration dealing with tourists in the places that I have lived.  Like when I used to live near Mahane Yeduah shuk in Jerusalem: "Excuse me, I'd like to buy some of those oranges your taking a picture of..."  (ironically, I love taking pictures of the food in the shuk).  Sometimes you can't escape being a tourist, like when we traveled in Africa and South East Asia, but if there is one thing I dislike even more, is being made a tourist in a place that feels like home.  Which leads me to the tour of Jerusalem my Haifa-based ulpan took us on this week.  

The tour was more-or-less designed for people who have never or rarely visiting Israel's capital city and took us to two main sites: the Old City and the Knesset (parliament) building.  The Old City I can navigate with my eyes closed, but I was actually pretty excited to visit the Knesset, even though I had done the tour before, for the off-chance we'd get to see some Members of Knesset strolling around (we didn't).  I tried to get past my discomfort of being tourist as we walked down the walled-city of Jerusalem's narrow ancient streets getting honked at my cars that were trying to pass while we chased our speed-walking French tour guide as he bolted ahead of the group.  The ulpan had hired four tour guides for the day, each guiding in a different language: English, Russian, French and Hebrew.  I elected to be in the Hebrew group - if I had to be a tourist, at least let me practice my Hebrew in the process.  When we boarded the buses, the organizers of the trip realized that not enough French speaking students had come and there were many many Russian students.  In a last minute switch, the English guide took a Russian group, the Hebrew guide took the English group, which left the French guide for the Hebrew group, which now also included the people who initially signed up for the French group.  Our guide informed us that 90% of his work is guiding French tourists in French and that was what he was prepared to do.  What we ended up with was a very French-centric tour of the old city in a mixture of mostly Hebrew with a smattering of French.  Needless to say, it was a distinctly different tour than I had ever be on before, but I wouldn't do it again.

While the rest of the Ulpan returned to Haifa in the evening, I stayed do something unequivocally not touristy - go to work!  That's right, I am no longer unemployed.  Thursday morning I got up and went to an office for the first time since the last school year ended and it felt pretty good.  The day was jammed pack, meeting all my new coworkers (one of whom is actually an old friend) and getting briefed on all the workings of my new position.  By the end of the day my brain was on fire, but I left feeling motivated and happy to be productive.  From here on in I will be working from the Haifa office, with a just a few opportunities to be in the main Jerusalem office.  Lucky for me, the Haifa office is across the street from my Ulpan, so I will easily be able to continue studying Hebrew as I begin working.  Things are looking up!

Next week I promise to give an update on Matt's life as well - should be interesting, he's spending next week on a boat.

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt

First Cholent as Israelis

As Matt was carefully roasting his coffee beans this morning (more on that later), POOF, our gas went out.  We knew this day would come, but we had no idea when and it caught us completely off guard.  In Israel most homes and apartment buildings are not equipped with gas lines, but rather gas "balloons" or containers that sit outside and are connected to your kitchen.  Generally each apartment has its own set of 2 gas balloons.  This means that when one runs out, you switch to the second and order a replacement for the first.  This way you're never stuck without any gas at all.  Sadly for us, both our gas balloons are empty.  When we moved into the apartment there was still gas left from the previous tenants.  We had no idea how much, but we didn't really investigate the situation.  Then today, it finally happened: the gas is gone... and of course it happened on a Friday, when people generally do the most cooking and the gas company is closed.  "...תמיד ביום שישי" "Always on Friday..." our neighbors told us.  And that's how it goes in Israel.

With the lack of stove, we spent the morning reflecting on our culinary improvements since making aliyah 5 months ago.  We have come a long way since our dinners in the temporary apartment of instant couscous and/or ramen noodles (מנה חמה) and Israeli salad.    Now, we cook real food every night, I have been regularly baking challah on Friday mornings and Matt is even roasting his own coffee, although that is more of a fluke than anything.  When I went to pick up some coffee beans for Matt the other day, the coffee guy packaged the beans in the back room, so I didn't know they were green coffee beans until Matt opened the bag at home.  Instead of bringing them back to the store, we decided to look up how to roast them ourselves.  Thanks to YouTube, we watched a tutorial and felt confidant heading into the kitchen.  After the first batch, however, the flame was out.  It could take up to 7 days for new gas balloons, so hopefully the beans that got roasted will be enough to hold Matt over until then.   

Since we can't cook on the stove we figured it would be a good week to make our first cholent as Israelis.  Cholent or Hamin, for those who are unfamiliar, is a meat stew with potatoes and beans that is cooked over night.  This quintessentially Jewish food was born out of the desire to have hot food on Shabbat day when you can't actively cook so you start your stew before Shabbat and then just let it sit and cook all night.  Today, many people do this in a crock pot, which until this morning, we did not own.  Our awesome down-the-street neighbors were already letting us borrow their car to run some other errands, so we figured it would be a good time to pick up a crock-pot too.  (Side-note: having a car is awesome and it was fun driving around the city.  It was also good practice as we will hopefully be taking our drivers license conversion tests in the near future).  Our "road-trip" also took us to Haifa shuk which is always colorful and full of life, especially on Fridays.  I spend a lot of time there, but this was actually Matt's first trip to the shuk and I was happy to show him around and introduce him to my egg-guy (aka the guy who sells eggs). Here are some fun pictures from the morning including green onions being sold out a trunk of a car, the fried beans I buy at the shuk for my daily snack and the challahs I just baked.   

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt

Master Chef as Israelis

Matt and I don't ever watch reality shows.  Let's be honest, we don't really watch TV (probably because we don't own one), but we do have a couple shows that we regularly watch on the computer (through my parents' "slingbox").  After Homeland ended, we decided we needed a new show and that it should be in Hebrew so that we can work on our vocabulary and listening comprehension (wow, that sounds nerdy).  Since the hot show around these parts these days is the Israeli version of Master Chef (in Hebrew: מאסטר שף), a reality cooking competition, we decided to give it a shot.  And now we're hooked.

The basis of the show is a competition between amateur chefs vying to be Israel's next Master Chef.  This is accomplished through a series of cooking tasks (משימות) that the chosen team (נבחרת) of competitors (מתמודדים) completes in a set amount of time.  Those who don't make meals that please the judges (שופטים) get sent home.  What makes this show particularly interesting to us, however, is that it is uniquely Israeli.  It is an Israeli show not because of the premise of the show itself (which is copied exactly from the American version), but because of the participants on the show and the food they cook.  The competitors represent a microcosm of Israeli society - a kibbutznik, a secular Tel Avivian, a religious settler, a Muslim Israeli-Arab, a hippy vegan, a wounded soldier, a French immigrant and a German convert, among others.  They cook traditional Jewish and middle-eastern food with a strong sense of pride in their personal heritage.  There are a number of competitors who keep kosher and all the available ingredients are kosher (although that doesn't stop some of the chefs from cooking meat and milk together).  Every once and a while you see the kosher observant competitors kashering a pot or a knife so that they'll be able to taste the dishes they are preparing and the judges always assure the competitors that the taste-testing dishes are all kosher as to not discriminate among the tasters.  The awareness of Jewish law and tradition, Israeli history and culture and the personal narratives of the characters make this a fun show for us to watch.  

Through the "Ptitim" challenge, we learned the history of this uniquely Israeli food.  Ptitim, known in the rest of the world as Israeli couscous, was invented soon after the establishment of the state and was commissioned by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion.   In this austerity period, rice was scarce and Ben-Gurion recognized that he needed to find a suitable substitute for the Mizrahi (middle eastern) immigrants for whom rice was a staple part of their diet.   The Prime Minister turned to the Osem food company to devise a wheat-based rice alternative and thus, ptitim was born.  Now, ptitim is a staple part of the Israeli diet, especially for school children.  Tom, the German convert competitor on the show, recalled the very first time he was served ptitim after making aliyah.  Unfamiliar with the food, he asked his hosts what is was.  They responded: "It's ptitim."  So he asked: "what is ptitim?" and they replied: "it's ptitim."  When Matt heard this he exclaimed: "That's exactly what happened to me!"  Israelis have become so familiar with this food item, it's hard to describe it any way but to call it by it's name, like asking "what is rice?"  "it's rice."

Our favorite competitor is Etti (although we know she doesn't win because, even though we're still in the middle of the season, the actual season ended this week and all the newspapers reported on the winner.  Where was our spoiler alert?!).  Etti is an adorable, tiny, middle aged, mizrahi woman who got on the show after her daughter invited the judges to dinner at her home for a surprise audition.  She makes traditional mizrahi food with an "Etti twist" all of which we think looks delicious.  We also love her because she does this funny little dance when she gets excited.  Our big discovery of the week was that you can find all the recipes for the dishes prepared on the show online.  To us, that meant we were having an "Etti Shabbat" and an "Etti Shabbat" we had!  We looked up two of Etti's most delicious looking meals and went out and bought all the ingredients.  For Shabbat dinner we made her Kubbe Soup (when we saw how much food it was we decided to save the second dish for Saturday night).  Kubbe is a type of dumpling, sort of like a matzah ball filled with meat.  I don't even know how to begin to tell you how delicious it was.  (Thank you to my mother who taught me how to read a recipe).   After Shabbat we invited some friends over for the continuation of our Master Chef inspired dinner, we ate left-over soup and we all cooked the second recipe together - beef cooked in pomegranate molasses and herbs, wrapped in swiss-chard leaves and served on a bed of homemade salsa.  While not as amazing as the soup, it was, as the judges often say, מדהים, madheem, stunning!  Here are some pics to whet your appetite:

Have a great week!

Stef and Matt