Food/Israel

So, the food and cooking experience here has been quite different than what I am used to. First of all, it's been difficult to find most of my staples- luna bars, kashi cereal, whole wheat tortillas, fresh spinach, chicken apple sausage (totz not kosher), any meat for that matter, goat cheese...all my faves are nowhere to be seen. Instead my dietary staples have been whole wheat pita, cucumbers, turkey, hummus, dried fruits and nuts and seeds, and apples. The dates and figs here are incredible, as well as the tomatoes, avocados and apples. So many apples. The shuk at Machaneh Yehudah is incredible- as you can see above- a total culinary heaven- and this doesn't even give you a sense of the atmosphere...
This is the quantity of food they serve at your typical restaurant. It's insane- literally 22 different salads with fresh pita and pickles. That's all you really need to eat when you go out anyways- we barely order anything else.


We can buy alcohol legally here! But we can't technically get into most bars/clubs that we want to- they're usually 24 and up...how ironic, right as i'm turning 21, I go to the only country where you have to be 24.
Gotta love the English translations of the menus...I think I'd much rather just eat the chicken without knowing what it really was...

A new job and some old pics

Agh! Sorry about the lack of posting of late. I have been in Jerusalem for a month, without a single post about the food here. Have I been cooking? Yes. A lot? Not really. But I did land an internship in the kitchen of a restaurant called Eucalyptus in Jerusalem. It's this awesome place that specializes in Biblical food- kind of the perfect place to be for a religon major foodie like myself. Read reviews here, aodand there are articles about it on the restaurant's website. I start next week and am very excited! But before I post about the little I have cooked here, I wanted to put up some pics that got left behind due to finals last December. Way back during finals week, Barbara and I took a break to make this healthy butternut squash casserole with apples, onions and nuts. It barely used any fat, and turned out pretty good. I think it would have been even better with more nuts and more thinly-sliced red onions. The sandwhich that we improvised to go along with it was divine, though. Mine had a veggie burger, a poached egg, arugula, goat cheese and apricot preserves on a toasted cinnamon-raisin English muffin. !!!



Later that week, after the Alis had completed their finals but everyone else was still chugging along, they offered to make us all dinner and it was such a wonderful night! They made Dijon potato salad, spinach with cherry tomatoes and feta, artichokes, salmon, AND shrimp! t was a feast and thinking back to it warms my heart:)