Food Part One

The food is good here and rich in the healthy traditions of the Mediterranean diet.  Humus everywhere.  I like hummus.  I used to make it myself back in Seattle, but there’s certainly no need to do that here.  Traditionally eaten with pita bread, but it’s good with potato chips, too.

Henry Rollins likes hummus, too.  I saw his little spoken word tour thing he did in Israel on DVD, and he was gushing over hummus.  Gushing.  He called it “sex in a bowl.”  His words.  Oh, Henry.  Thou need to get laid more.

But I’ve eaten a lot of hummus here, although I stopped eating it for a while after I saw Don’t Mess With the Zohan.  Horrible, horrible movie.  One of the running jokes in it was about how much hummus is eaten in here.  I got it.  Everybody eats hummus in Israel.  I was even eating it as I was watching the movie.  Hummus on everything,  hummus in everything.  Then I saw the Zohan himself brush his teeth with it.

He was actually brushing his teeth with hummus.  Ewww.  Yes.  Ewww.

I couldn’t eat it again for six months.  I couldn’t even look at it.  But I’m better now.  Even though Adam Sandler almost killed me hummus for me.  But here you go.  Have some sex in a bowl. 

Then there is falafel.  I could eat falafel every day.

Falafel b’pita, b’vakasha.

Im salat?

Betach.

Chips?

Betach.

Tehina?

Betach.

Kharif?  Pelpel?

Oh, you better believe it, boyo.

All for fifteen shekels or less.  I hold it in my hands.  This fat pita stuffed with stuff.  True manna, my friends.  And wherever you eat it, the falafel never quite looks or tastes the same.  It’s like a new culinary experience every time.  The same goes with the hummus.  Always a little different.

Then we have the salad.  Or salat, as it is called.  Mostly chopped cucumber, chopped tomato.  Sometimes some parsley and onion.  All chopped.  I think we used to call this back in the States a chop salad.  Anyhow, it’s eaten at virtually every meal.  Including breakfast.  I first heard that and said, “Salad?  For breakfast???  You gotta be kidding me!”  But it’s good.  I didn’t even have to get used to it.  When we were here on our pilot trip—oh, that seems so long ago—and staying in hotels, we had a full Israeli breakfast every day.  Eggs, cheese, rolls, fish, and salat.  And I ate it and ate it and ate it.  No problem.  All that cucumber.  I ate more cucumber in the ten days of that pilot trip than I had eaten in my entire life.  That’s no exaggeration.  And Israelis love cucumber.  I’ve watched more than Israeli on the street munching on whole cucumber.  Here, have a snack.  Cucumber.

More to come.