Among all the countless tragedies and losses of this current war is the blow that has been dealt to the already fragile relationships between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Even in the best of times, suspicion and distrust have been the default sentiments among most Israeli citizens about their “other” counterparts. And it is against … Read More »
bedouin
Wild to Cultivated to Wild
What a great pleasure it is to have a hakura, or kitchen garden, next to the house – particularly when its yields peak in mid-winter. Yesterday I stripped the hakura of just about all of the swiss chard to make a crispy filo-layered pie. Washing and trimming the fleshy leaves, I realized how viscerally I … Read More »
The Hakura
I recently received a telephone call from a man named Adel, from the nearby Bedouin village of Ayedat. He is in the final stages of submitting his master’s thesis and needed help with editing the English abstract. I frequently edit English texts on you-name-the-topic, but when he told me the subject of his thesis, I … Read More »
A Foraging Celebration
Yet another rainy day and we can’t believe our good fortune – this has been the wettest winter for years and the landscape is celebrating. The hills are lush and bright with wild flowers. And of course, for foragers, there is a bounty of edible wild plants to pick. We started the wild asparagus season … Read More »
Why Can’t We Cook Together?
These past weeks I’ve been feeling too disheartened to write, but the outings I had yesterday and today, investigating places for my culinary tours, did much to lift my spirits. I started Thursday morning at Lavona Grove, on an exceptionally beautiful slope overlooking the Sea of Galilee. That morning, missiles from Lebanon had hit sites … Read More »