In the broadest of strokes, there are basically two seasons in the Galilee, a brief verdant winter that melds into a vast spring- summer-autumn stretch of dry heat. Yet at the cusp between the two – as those who have lived here throughout time have come to understand, one never knows what to expect from […]
April 7, 2013
When I first started researching for my book, I had a conversation with a very distinguished food historian. As I enthused about the marvels of wheat, she warned me that people who begin to immerse themselves in the history of grain tend to bore everyone around them, as inevitably, no-one finds the subject as fascinating […]
January 5, 2013
A few days ago, Balkees and I spent the day with a journalist from Israel’s top food magazine, as she prepared an article about the edible wild plants that are now in season. We started the morning in the village that Balkees grew up in, tromping through the lush greenery in the vast field behind […]
November 10, 2012
Once again the olive harvest. I like to speculate that not an autumn has passed since they were first cultivated, back in obscure pre-history, that people haven’t gathered olives here in this place that I live. Taking part in this ritual makes me feel like the tiniest link in a very long chain. But the […]
October 6, 2012
While family and friends in North America are already in sweaters, here in the Galilee the temperatures are still in the 30′s (high 80′s F). It’s not that we don’t sense the passing of season – the evenings are significantly cooler, and fat, billowy clouds have started to reappear in the sky after months of […]
September 13, 2012
Looking out my window at the full-grown green olives weighing down the branches of our tree, I am reminded that the Jewish New Year does not begin neatly at the end of one traditional agricultural year and the beginning of another. These olives, last of the summer fruit to ripen, will only be harvested in […]
July 12, 2012
Living in the Galilee, I am occasionally gifted with transcendent moments of timelessness – where the landscape and the scene that unfolds within it have more to do with thousands of years of history, than the blink of an eye of the latest decades. At least once a summer, together with Balkees and Muhammad, Ron […]
June 30, 2012
Summertime – and fakus are in season. Fakus are like a downy, zucchini-skinned cucumber but tangier, crunchier and more refreshing than your average cuke. They are eaten raw, without peeling – their fuzz is as inoffensive as that of a peach. I first encountered fakus in the “baal” vegetable field of friends – who grow […]
May 15, 2012
In a recent post, I wrote about my coming of age as a forager, marked by my ability to recognize wild chicory. Now I thought it would be interesting to show what happens when chicory comes of age. It’s late spring and the edible wild plants have pretty much closed up shop, shedding their tender […]
May 11, 2013
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