Insights into various aspects of the local food scene.
Here in Israel, the school year began a week ago. Schools here are on a healthy kick, with new government regulations banning sugary, fatty foods from the country’s schools and preschools. Yet packed lunches aren’t fully under government control – while the school makes recommendations, parents still make the final …
Once so often we rent a car and leave the city. The festival of Shavuot a month ago was one of those times. We headed up north into the Galilee, one of my favorite places to visit. There, we spent a day in Beit Lehem Haglilit (literally Bethlehem of the …
Desiccated donkey dung. How’s that for a description of food? Does it make you want to taste it? Eat it? I have to say, when I first heard that description – in reference to the truffles that grow in sands around the Middle East, including Israel’s Negev desert, it caught …
So, where have I been? We’ve simply been overwhelmed with life – least of all because my daughter was born late last year. And then a few weeks later, we moved to a new apartment. So it’s been hectic, to say the least. In late January, I attended Sommelier 2015, …
If there’s something that compares to the joy of a toddler shoving a slice of apple into a chunk of freshly harvested honeycomb, I’m not sure what it is. We were out in the countryside, pretending to be farmers for an afternoon, alongside a few dozen other families who had …
Good things have been happening in Israel’s boutique beer industry. It’s been close to two years since the last beer expo. The annual expo is only in its fourth year, and it’s coming into its own. This year’s expo, held last week, took place outdoors in the late summer among …
How much does the average family spend on groceries in Israel? It depends who you ask, but figures seem to vary widely. The question was recently raised on several online forums. Some people claimed their families couldn’t get grocery expenses under NIS 3,000 or NIS 4,000, while others said they …
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say this is the most difficult recipe I’ve ever written about. I have tested it literally 50 times over the course of three years, and my family has eaten hundreds of mediocre flatbreads as I attempted to crack the secret to perfect, bubbly lahoh …
Like many people I like to shop in bulk, which means that once so often I find myself lugging my toddler’s weight in rice home from Levinsky market. Sure, I could be buying rice around the corner from my house in the convenient air conditioning of Eden Teva Market — …
Many, many years ago, after buying Himalayan salt or Atlantic sea salt or something of the type, I wondered aloud whether you could buy salt harvested from our very own Dead Sea. Why import when you have a product that is local and plentiful, and hopefully high quality, too? My …
