Via Jewschool, via Treehugger:
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye — everyone in the Middle East. Saddle your camels – Israel is announcing that it is to open the largest health food store in the region and among one of the largest in the world, reports Israel Today…
Eden Teva Market, a $6 million project invested by businessman Guy Provisor is expected to open this June in Netanya. On its shelves will be stocked more than 14,000 products in 20 different departments, which will include a bakery, a deli, an organic hummus stand, and an ice cream parlor – to name a few. Organic will be a focus but also specialized products manufactured by small companies will be kept in stock.
Full story.
I spent this afternoon wandering around Mahane Yehuda, the famous shuk (market) in Jerusalem. This indoor/outdoor market bursts with fruit and vegetable stands, bags of spices: rosehips, paprika, chili pepper, and curry…, baskets of roasted pecans, dried apricots, and dates, drippy buckets of herbed olives, cuts of meat hanging in refrigerated cases, and a few scattered bread and pastry stalls selling crusty breads and phyllo-wrapped treats. The stalls function a little like the kiddush table at shul, with grandmothers and youngsters elbowing each other out of the way to edge themselves closer to the best goods.
Israelis and tourists alike revere the shuk as a place to get “the freshest produce ever” (it seems that people speak in hyperbole about everything in Israel). A friend of mine who studied at Hebrew University recounts her weekly trips to the shuk where her lunch consisted of a seedless cucumber, a fresh, red tomato, and a hunk of bread. “That’s all I needed,” she wistfully recalled.
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Ready for another round of food updates from my trip to Israel? I’m very aware at how *dull* it can be to listen to stories from someone else’s trip, but I promise these are keepers:
Wheat berries on Shabbat -One of the Shabbat dinner guests arrived with fresh wheat and proceeded to roast it, extract the roasted wheat berries (by crushing the wheat stalk and rubbing it vigorously between his hands to release the berries), and “winnowing” it (separating the chaff from the grain) through a collandar. “What better way to count the omer?” he asked as we sampled the nubby, slightly nutty-flavored wheat berries. He countered himself, saying that barley would actually be preferable, because the wheat harvest isn’t supposed to happen until the end of counting the omer (Shavuot). But we appreciated the effort. (p.s. this is definitely a fun experiment to try at home!)
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This morning I arrived in Israel via a red-eye flight for the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride. It’s my first time visiting the country, which means everyone I mentioned my trip to gave me a lengthy list of things I absolutely ”must” do and see. For the most part I’ve taken these suggestions with a grain of salt - I’m happy to be here, and not terribly anxious to see absolutely everything in this first trip. But when it comes to food, I’m taking all the advice I can get. Jcarrot Blogger, Phyllis Bieri, painted tales about the superbly fresh hummus, creamy labneh, and green falafel balls that are equal-parts fluffy, and crisp.
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Are the people who serve your fries getting sick leave? Does your barista get paid for overtime? Are the dishwashers getting paid minimum wage?
The folks at Bema’agalei Tzedek are working to make sure that everyone entering a public eatery in Israel can answer these questions. Their social seal program, which is active in five Israeli cities, takes the idea of fair trade one step further, assesses the whether or not a restaurant or catering hall is living up to its social responsibilities towards it employees and patrons. The social seal sticker makes it easy for customers to do a quick ethical check before they scan the menu. Read more »
If eating seasonally generally makes me feel somewhat closer to nature, I’m not quite sure what to make of the Israeli phenomenon of seasonal yogurts. In late August, when we arrived for the year, just ahead of the High Holidays, I saw an ad for pomegranate flavored yogurt. I was excited to try it but didn’t get around to looking for it for a few weeks and when I did it wasn’t there. I assumed it was just another one of those things that one needs to be ‘really’ Israeli to be able to find in the supermarket. I settled for strawberry, mango, and chocolate sponge cake flavors instead.
But a few more weeks passed and the chocolate sponge cake was gone.I was sad but grabbed some apple pie and some citrus mix which I was mostly sure I had not seen before. (again I was not sure how much was my lack of supermarket skills and how much was reality!) Upon inspection, I noticed to the bright yellow sticker on the side which announced that these flavors were “New! Temporary!” It finally dawned on me that like the fruits and vegetables, yogurts in Israel are seasonal.
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This September will mark the beginning of shmitta, the period every seven years where soil in the land of Israel must be left uncultivated, which until 2007 has raised an important question among the ranks of observant Israeli farmers: “Oy, whattam I gonna eat?”
The answer apparently has been provided by Israeli high (low?) tech:
(JTA) An Israeli company has found a way of circumventing a religious injunction to let agricultural land lie fallow: fake soil.
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(Thanks to Jcarrot reader, Sara Shalva, for this post)
Last week I was staying with friends in a beautiful apartment off Kikar Hamedina in Northern Tel Aviv. Down the street a bit were two cafes, with the same name, across the street from each other. Unlike the US with Starbucks on every corner, this was a bit of an anomaly to me. I asked my Israeli friends, who explained, “one is kosher, one isn’t.” Opting for the kosher and kosher l’pesach café because, it was the season, I kept marinating on this silly aspect of life in Israel. Segregation. The religious and non-religious water fountains/ eateries. Separate but equal.
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X-posted from Sustainable Apple Pie, an exploration with Israeli black cumin:
Hannah’s Kezach Bread of Wonder (not to be mistaken with Wonder Bread)
Ingredients:
2 cups water
1 package of dry yeast
1 (heaping) tbs. brown sugar
1.5 cups wheat semolina
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tbs. olive oil
3 tbs. black cumin
1 tbs. kosher salt
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Just got back from 2 weeks in Israel with my husband, 3 daughters (ages 7, 5 and 3), and Israeli nanny. This is a brief re-cap of some of our meals, in chronological order:
Orca - Tel Aviv. The finest dining experience we had. Hip, understated decor. Great wine list, smooth service, remarkable food. Surprised by the veritable treyf fest on the menu, though Israeli friends said this was a trend in Tel Aviv over the past 15 years. Had to try the fire-roasted tomato soup, garnished with “squid stuffed with pork.” In the states we would at least call it pancetta or chorizo, anything but “pork”.
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Haaretz reported last week that their second-largest supermarket chain, Blue Square plans to buy a natural foods chain, as well as sell natural groceries in its own chains, Mega, Super Center, and Shefa Shuk.
This move, which mirrors Walmart’s push to sell organic food, and Tesco’s plans to offer more local and regionally-produced products - seems (not surprisingly) motivated by profit margins. Ha’Aretz says, “Blue square CEO Gil Unger has said in the past that he sees the health trend as an engine of growth for the chain.” Read the full article here.
When I did my weekly grocery shopping earlier this week, I was faced with an interesting dilemma: should I buy strawberries (which two pints were being sold for $5- which the price I bought them for in the summer!), even though they aren’t in season in New York and they were imported from Mexico, or not? I had to stop and think about what I wanted to do – I really love strawberries and summer fruit, yet at the same time I have been trying to purchase some of my produce based on their seasonality. Though I came close to calling my friend for moral support, I chose not to buy them. So I reverted to buying pears. At least they were grown in America (even though they could have been grown in a place which is further away than Mexico is from NY – but I am not going to stress over this too much!) and generally always in season since they store well, as apples do.
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X-posted courtesy of Sustainable Apple Pie:
Yesterday I bought a whole chicken at ShuferSal (which I will always call SuperSal, by the way) that was “natural and antibiotic free”, but I passed up the organic eggs, only because they were twice the price of regular eggs. In the shuk, you can buy strawberries covered in pesticides or strawberries that supposedly don’t use pesticides - but if you ask an Israeli they’ll tell you it doesn’t matter, they’re lying to you anyways.
All of these things give me hope that Israel’s moving in a greener direction and that maybe someday we’ll have more options when we want to buy Israeli products that are not covered in chemicals or contain MSG. Currently, most organic products are imports from Europe and are more difficult to locate if you don’t have a natural foods store nearby. They are also a lot more expensive, making most of my less-eco-conscious friends roll their eyes at buying such items.
This article discusses how Israeli companies are starting to see a different green when thinking about organics and investing in smaller organic businesses like Harduf Organics and Zuriel Dairy Farm. Perhaps it will start to trickle down into the consumer mindset that going organic is good for you and your country.
