Dinner at HaBonim Beach

Hello friends & family! How was your weekend? We had a lovely weekend in & around Haifa. We went back for a 3rd time to our new favorite beach at the invitation of our friends Osnat & Gilad. This time we went in the early evening and had a picnic dinner. So beautiful & relaxing.

Noah & Gali happily played in the sand for hours. You can see campers in the background.

Osnat V'Sarah

Gali v'Osnat

Osnat v'Gilad

We built a campfire on the beach as the sun set. There are half-drums strewn about for your fire-building convenience & the snack shop sells firewood.

The next day we went to the Haifa zoo. Noah has been so good about going along with our plans and what we want to do the past year, that we let him choose the activity for the day. Noah took scores of photos, but I’ve never been into taking pictures of animals in cages. They did have free-roaming peacocks and roosters roosting in trees, which I had never seen before (roosters in trees, I mean. I’ve seen peacocks). It was a small, but nice zoo with a small prehistory museum with displays of prehistorical archaeological discoveries along the Carmel coast near Haifa. They even had some big animals like Syrian bears, Bengal tigers, & lions.

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers!

A Fulbright Shabbat

Last week we hosted an unofficial Fulbright Shabbat dinner for all of the 2010-11 Israel Fulbrighters. Since public inter-city transportation does not run on Shabbat I invited the out-of-town’ers to stay over if they had no way back home. So, it turned into a Shabbat dinner/slumber party. We had 21 guests, not counting infant twins, and 6 overnight guests (+ the infant twins) from Rechovot and Jerusalem. It was a grass-roots affair, with everyone contributing – we are lucky that we only have friends who are excellent cooks.

cooking for a crowd - everyone helping to prepare the vegetables for the grill

enjoying our feast!

We made sumac chicken, turmeric rice, and grilled mushrooms, eggplant and sweet potatoes. I had a pumpkin pie in the freezer leftover from our Thanksgiving in February party. Our guests brought the most amazing salads and desserts. With the leftover fruit salad & challah, we had french toast with fruit sauce (and pumpkin pie) for breakfast in the morning. Thanks to everyone for coming and for being such awesome guests and especially to Molly & Tom for being such masterful grill-masters.

Accidental Meat Purchase->Friendly Barbecue

We were at the Megabool supermarket on Friday and wanted to get some meat to grill on skewers for our weekend barbecue ritual. There was some beef cut in chunks and we asked if it would make good shishlik (kebab here always means ground meat), and were told no.  The butcher then showed us a piece of meat wrapped in plastic that would be “the very best” on the barbecue, and took Sarah behind the counter to show her the poster showing the different parts of the cow and that this part (cut #15, if you’re wondering) was recommended for barbecuing. We asked for half a kilo, but he said that since it was shrink-wrapped, we’d have to take the whole thing.  Okay, we’ll freeze half, we decide.

The whole conversation unfolded with him speaking very simple Hebrew and us speaking even simpler Hebrew: a combination of illiteracy and shyness had backed us into a corner.

When he cut open the shrink wrap, we realized we were buying filet.  While he cut it into steaks, he made small talk and asked where we were from, and welcomed us to Israel. When he finished wrapping it up, he came out from behind the counter and shook our hands. Our first thought was what a nice butcher to welcome us with a handshake. How sweet!

When we got to the checkout we realized why he had been so friendly: we had just spent $75 on meat, and were probably his best customers of the day. Well, as long as we have such nice food, we should have someone over.  We called Sarah’s friend and collaborator Osnat and had her family over.  It was without doubt the best meat we have ever cooked and it’s nice to have people to share it with when we’re so far from home. Suddenly, overspending turns into a very nice evening.

Noah played with Osnat’s kids and is fluent. FLUENT!  It’s really amazing when your child learns things you could never have taught him yourself.

Caesarea

Last Sat. we set out to do some sightseeing with Roy’s parents. Caesarea is a national park holding archeological sites that is south of Haifa along the coast. On our way we had to drive through a plume of smoke from the wildfire near Atlit that was blowing west out to sea. After we were through it, we realized that it didn’t extend as far south as where we were going, so we continued on.

Caesarea started as a Phoenician settlement in 568 BCE and changed hands 7 more times until the late 19th c. when Ottoman authorities settled Bosnian refugees here. The park contains the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, which was built during King Herod’s rule of the city (30-4 BCE) and is the oldest theater in Israel. The park also contains the remains of a hippodrome that used to hold chariot races, public bathhouses, planned city streets from Roman and Byzantine times, and the city wall and moat from Crusader times. Fun fact: since the city was where the opposition to the Bar Kochva revolt was headquartered, it is likely that Caesarea was where the Jewish leaders led by Rabbi Akiva were tortured to death. We saw a pretty good CGI film that showed what the city probably looked like during different periods. Archaeological exploration of the site began in 1873 and continues until today.

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Hai-Bar Nature Reserve

The first-weekend-without-a-cast celebration continues. We wrote briefly about the Mount Carmel National Park when we took a walk there erev Sukkot. It is 20,000 acres, so we only got a glimpse the first time we went. This time we went back to the Chai-Bar Nature Reserve, 1500 acres inside the park, dedicated to the restoration of wildlife that have been extinct in the area due to hunting, deforestation, or poisoning.

Wild goats - the symbol of the Israeli Park service and repopulated from Crete

Gazelle

Fallow deer - imported from Iran via covert operations & subterfuge

Normally, photos of animals don’t usually have much drama, but to put into perspective where we were, the following picture was taken from the same spot where I took the one of the goats:

U. of Haifa campus

We went home that evening to make pizza on the grill and experienced more wildlife in our own backyard:

look near the wheel (for scale)

biggest beetle we'd ever seen

Missing farmer’s market dinner

There are a handful of farmers markets around Israel, most in Tel Aviv & its suburbs, but not in Haifa. They are almost always held on Friday mornings (which is not a work day, although the kids have school). Last week we decided to take a little drive to Netanya to check out the market there. The plan was to drop Noah off at school, go to Netanya, and be back in time to pick him up (Fridays are early dismissal). The directions were non-existent on the website, but we thought we had enough information to get there. We found a mall and can you recognize what else?

guess where we are?

familiar color scheme?

The Mediterranean IKEA

We bought a few things including a mattress pad for Noah, who has gone 3 dry nights in a row without a pull-up! Go, Noah! Our big boy!

So, we drove around into different parking lots and shopping centers. No farmer’s market. Did we just drive 45 mins. to go to a mall? In the back of one shopping center, we spotted a green awning with the word Teva on it. We knew that Teva means “nature”, so we thought we’d go see what was there, despite the awnings looking kind of dingy & dirty. Turns out, we struck gold! It was not the market we had come for, but it was kind of like the Israeli Whole Foods – a modern market, with organic groceries, evoking traditional middle eastern markets.

gorgeous spice bar

A whole bar just of spice mixes to cook with rice

We salvaged the trip! Although it turns out that there is a branch of this store in one of the suburbs of Haifa. Let’s not dwell on that. It was quality-road-trip-together time. And we were able to get everything we needed for the latest installment of Fri. grill.

Noah says hamotzi over the best challah we've had since we've been here.

beef & sweet potato kebabs & okra & tomatoes (inspired by our Druze lunch the week before)

grilled figs with honey ricotta

Weekend in Haifa with friends

A friend back in Brooklyn recently asked if we had made any friends since we’ve been here. Did we have anyone fun to hang out with? With all of the traveling we’ve been doing to take advantage of the holidays, we haven’t had much quiet time to just hang out. This weekend was devoted to spending time with friends, relaxing, and eating well.

Fri. night we had Shabbat dinner with Anat & Menachem. Roy was able to reconstitute some dried sourdough starter, so he’s been able to start baking again. The 2nd loaf was his contribution to the meal. Menachem thought that Roy should spend his sabbatical opening a bakery.

Our charming hosts: Anat (my host for the year) and Menachem

Tamar, Anat’s daughter, was also there with her family. They have their own Noach, who is about 6 months younger than our Noach and we had been wanting to get the boys together. It is hard for us to tell how much Hebrew Noah is learning because he won’t speak Hebrew with us. It was so interesting to see Noach Echat and Noach Shtayim communicating with each other. They were playing a board game & our Noah has no trouble counting & saying the colors in Hebrew.

Speaking the universal language of Legoes

At one point Noah dropped a toy in a chair cushion that Menachem was sitting on & he said, “Kadima, kadimah, l’mallah! (forward, forward, get up)” so he could reach it. I was impressed.

Noah and Avi

On Sat. afternoon we went to a zoo in the kriot (the suburbs) of Haifa with the family of a classmate of Noah’s. Mark, the dad, had kindly been one of my interpreters at parents’ night at Noah’s school. Mark & Nataly speak Hebrew, Russian, and English, but the children speak only Hebrew & Russian. They thought it would be good for Daniel & Noah to play together to exchange language (sensing a theme).

Noah & Daniel at Chai Park (with Emus)

The best part of the zoo was the open monkey cage where we could be in the enclosure with the monkeys. One of them tried to nibble on Noah’s finger when he was resting his arms on a railing!

up close & personal

It was hard to get Noah & Daniel to play together at the zoo, where there is always something to run off and see (or in Noah’s case, scooch forward in the stroller to make it roll where you want to go). But, we’ve been invited to a BBQ at their house so the boys can have a playdate with more opportunity to talk.

Since we were at Anat’s for dinner Fri., our weekly grill was moved to Sat. night and we had our friends Yaffa & Menachem over. Roy’s 3rd loaf was gone in less than 24 hrs.

Old NYU buddies, together again

Roy & I went to the shuk talpiot on Fri. morning & bought fish to grill which had been caught just that morning. The fish are laid out whole in crates, some of them still flopping around. When you tell the guy what you want, they take it in back & scale it & gut it. Depending on how many people are in front of you in line, you might wait a while until your fish is cleaned (which we did). We learned the “right” way to buy fish: those in the know buy their fish first, then go do the rest of their shopping at the other stalls, and come back later to pick up the clean fish. We learned the hard way, but now we know for next time.

Two people (hi, Mom) reminded us that this week was parsha Noach. Apropos of that, it rained Fri. night and tonight. It was only for a few minutes each time, but apparently it always rains in Israel on parsha Noach.

Fri. night grilling: Yom Kippur edition

For our erev Yom Kippur/Shabbat meal this week, we tried to go local & continue our new shabbat grill tradition. Despite Maggie Mason’s advice, we think the food is part of the experience.

barley yogurt soup with fresh mint & parsley & sweet paprika. with homemade vegetable stock.

Greens in pomegranate sauce and grilled eggplant marinated in fresh mint/lemon/garlic and cherry tomatoes

• soup
• greens
• eggplant

Friday night grilling

Shabbas dinner is nice.  We are in Israel where it’s warm, and we’re excited to have outdoor space and a barbecue for a year.

Put the above sentiments together and you have the makings of a new tradition: Friday night grilling.

Night one, we go middle eastern, chicken kebabs marinated in labneh, lemon juice, turmeric, and mint. Plus, cherry-lime Rickeys!

Challah from the Grand Canyon Mall.