The last time I went to Melo Hatene to stock up on tahina, I ran into my friend and fellow kibbutz member, David Leishman. David was there for tahina, too: He occasionally makes tahina ice cream for Melo Hatene’s restaurant in exchange for raw tahina and other yummy things from the shop.
Intrigued by the idea of tahina ice cream, I asked David for his recipe. (David has been making wonderful homemade ice cream since before he came to Kibbutz Gezer, over 30 years ago.) What I got from David was not really a recipe, but vague amounts for a restaurant quantity.
Exhibit on the History and Evolution of Wheat at growseed.org
The Heritage Wheat Conservancy is restoring the almost lost heritage wheats of the Old World and colonial New England. After years of collecting rare wheats with traditional farmers in remote European and Middle Eastern villages, Eli Rogosa hosted a field day for researchers, flour companies and organic farmers last Thursday in Massachusetts. 96 varieties of delicious rare world wheat on the verge of extinction are thriving at theUniversity of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Organic Research Farm. World heritage wheats, once the staple food of the western world, are on the verge of extinction. Modern wheats are bred for uniformity, and dwarfed so they don’t fall over under the intensive agrochemicals of industrial farms and for convenient harvest height. However, modern wheats are lower in nutrition and flavor, and are not well suited to organic soils due to their stubby roots and short stalks.
According to Eli Rogosa, Founder of the Conservancy, “The best way to preserve the delicious ancient wheats are to market them to today’s discerning artisan bakers and gourmet chefs who seek the highest quality, nutrient-rich foods.”
My family are not big jam eaters. We’ve got assorted jars of various home-made kumquat and quince jams that friends have given us over the past year or so in the back of the fridge. Still, when the fruit on our little old apple tree is showing the first blush of red – before it turns mealy and gets attacked by bugs – I can’t resist cooking up a batch of apple butter and handing it out. Just the smell of simmering apples and spices sends me back to my early childhood in Minnesota and the giant apple tree in our backyard that had seven different varieties grafted on to it. My Mom would spend hours each fall stirring big pots of applesauce and apple butter to put up for the winter.
It seems my earlier pessimism about the threatened value added tax (VAT) on fruits and vegetables was premature. For now, fruit and vegetables will remain tax-free commodities in Israel.
Was it concern for our health or the state of Israeli agriculture that prompted this turn-around? Not exactly. The Byzantine ins and outs of coalition politics are what saved the day. The Shas religious party, a member of the governing coalition, decided to press the issue, and they refused to accept the offered compromise in which the tax would start low and gradually increase over several years.
Israeli sellers laugh, not scream to sell produce
The opening of a new open- air food market is far from headline news in Israel. Nearly every city in the country has a daily or weekly market, where shouting crowds and whistles are heard from miles away. “But this isn’t an ordinary market” affirms co-founder Michal Ansky, “this is Israel’s first real farmer’s market.”
Having just celebrated its one year anniversary, the farmer’s market, located in Tel Aviv’s new port, is officially recognized as an Earth Market-only the third of its kind in the world. Established by two female journalists and culinary experts- Shir Halpern and Michal Ansky- this market enables the public to bypass the ‘middleman’, and directly purchase food from producers. As a result of this direct interaction, the public can associate names, faces, and stories with their fresh food (a bit more interesting than bar codes and price tags, not to mention tastier). According to Slow Food, the market’s sponsor, this special relationship enables the public to become somewhat actively involved in the food production process, transforming them from merely anonymous consumers to ‘co-producers’.
This Friday night, I’m thinking of serving gundi, or gondi, the dumplings that are a Shabbat dinner mainstay for Iranian Jews. What are Jewish Iranians experiencing right now? I know that some Jewish Iranian ex-patriots are siding with the uprising, and that no matter what, this moment is meaningful to Iranians of all religions. It is also significant for Israel. Especially when words may fail us, there is nothing like sharing a meal together. Here is one recipe, and another. L’Chaim.
The plants in the photo grew from seeds out of a packet that was marked “melons” and printed with a picture of round, yellow-skinned fruit. I consider it a miracle. Not that cucumber plants sprouted forth from melon seeds. Rather, the fact that I have cucumbers in my garden. My several previous attempts to grow cucumbers had resulted in plants that yielded maybe one or two measly, pale fruits before turning brown and shriveling up. However the cucumber seeds got there, the guilty party seems to have considerately provided a fungus-resistant variety. And they’re actually pretty tasty for cucumbers, which, lets face it, are generally more crunchy than flavorful.
Tahina, the thick, brownish-gray paste of ground sesame seeds, is one of the latest foods to turn “gourmet” – at least in Israel. If supermarkets once sold only one brand of tahina, today it comes in squeeze bottles and glass jars with fancy labels; brands with Arabic on their labels proclaiming their “authenticity” vie with the all-Hebrew labels of the standard brand. (As far as I know, however, Melo Hatene is the only place to actually offer tahina tasting — the ultimate sign of a gourmet food.)
You are invited to apply (by June 15!) for a highly subsidized five-day Tour of Israel (November 15-19, 2009), from the unique perspective of: food!
Rte. 44 is a two-lane rural road more or less in the center of Israel. Coming from Ramla, right before the community of Karme Yosef, sits a square building faced in limestone set back from the road. A modest sign identifies it as Melo Hatene. (The name loosely translates as The Overflowing Cornucopia.) I had passed the building more than once, but had not really given more than a moment’s thought to what this structure – too classy to be a packing shed – was doing in the middle of an agricultural field. It was my sister, stopping to explore while on a bike ride, who discovered what was inside and brought us there.
In the daily inundation of political scandal, violence, government infighting and general economic and social mayhem that we Israelis can’t seem to live without (judging by our consumption of news media), a proposed new tax on fruits and vegetables has garnered little public outcry.
Until now, fruits and vegetables have been exempt from the 16.5% value-added tax (v.a.t.) placed on nearly every other consumer item. But foods like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplant had been considered basic daily necessities, like bread and milk (both of which are still price-controlled).
(Originally published at My Jewish Learning)
Russians had been drinking tea for fewer than 175 years when Klonimos Wolf Wissotzky founded the Wissotzky Tea Company in 1849 at the age of 25. His timing could not have been better. According to The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou and Robert J. Heiss, it was not until 1689 that a “measurable exchange of goods and materials, including Chinese tea, began to flow between China and Russia.”
Prior to that Russians drank sbiten–a concoction of herbs and honey steeped in hot water. But by the late 19th century, tea was “hot” in Russia and Wissotzky–a young Russian Jew living in Moscow–quickly emerged as one of the country’s most prosperous tea distributors. Wissotzky’s was even named the exclusive tea supplier for the Emperor’s Court.
Shavuot is almost here. I don’t need a calendar to tell me this; I know by the wheat combine driving up and down the fields. I admit I’m a sucker for the sight of shimmering expanses of wheat and agricultural machinery, sunflowers just starting to open and rows of sprinklers spraying jets of water into the sunset. (OK, I know the last is not exactly ecologically correct, but it invariably lifts my spirits.) In another month, the kibbutz wheat fields will be planted with the next crop, and the sunflower fields will start turning from vibrant yellow and green landscapes alive with the hum of bees to ghost fields of eerie dried-up flower heads on shriveled stalks waiting to be picked.
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