Succot, Oddly

This is the oddest holiday in the Jewish calendar. I thought this as I sat in a succa looking at the stars through the palm fronds. Succot, of course, has just ended. I had a nice time, sitting in some friends' succa with a few other people from the kibbutz, eating, drinking and talking about nothing special.

Still, the holiday is odd. It's another of those marathon holidays, the kind that test your endurance until the timer runs out. Christians don't have these, unless you count Lent which is a Catholic invention. We're supposed to build these huts out of nothing substantial, decorate them with species of the plant kingdom, and sleep or at least eat in them for a week. I have a problem with this from the get-go.

I'm not a builder. As a kid, Lincoln Logs were a mystery to me. As an adult, Ikea fills me with fear and trembling and is pretty much out of the question. So no hut will be built. But if I had a hut I wouldn't want to decorate it with fruits and greenery that have to be perfect to be acceptable. This is simply insulting and if I were a vegetable I would howl in protest. Wildly imperfect human beings demanding plant perfection – it's laughable. Perfection is not for this world, certainly not for anything that lives.

By now all the huts have been taken down and thrown on the compost pile. Succot is over and there are no more holidays until the next marathon one in December. Hanukkah at least features jelly donuts.

Cornbread Heaven

Today I'm baking again, cornbread this time. I have always loved it. Corn muffins have been my favorite breakfast since childhood. But I was in Israel for years before I knew that it could be done here.

There was a restaurant in either Raanana or Kfar Saba, I can't remember which, that was this American expatriate's idea of heaven. They served barbecued steak with barbecued beans – you see where my heart lies – and cornbread. I don't think the place lasted very long because it was just too American. Israelis want their plates of humus and don't seem to like gastronomic experimentation. I asked the proprietor where he gets the cornmeal and he said it's readily available in every supermarket.

Sure enough, they even have it in the tiny kibbutz store. Turns out it's the main ingredient of something called mamalika, a porridge-like concoction similar to polenta. The cornmeal is a finer grind than I would like, but it still makes acceptable cornbread.

The best thing about baking cornbread is that it's so forgiving. You can add one egg or two, milk or water or buttermilk, mix the ingredients in any order you like and the results are infallibly delectable. Served warm with the melting butter just disappearing into it – it's happiness on a plate. And how can anyone have too much happiness?

Blessed Quiet

One day a year everything is blessedly quiet. No street noise, no loud music, no shouting. Just glorious peace and twittering birds. I'm speaking, of course, about Yom Kippur.

This is a secular kibbutz, aggressively so. It's part of a movement that is so left wing that in the early days adoring pictures of Stalin were hung in the children's classrooms, a bit of information I would file under "What the hell were you thinking?" When we got married so many years ago it was forbidden to have a huppa in the public areas – rabbis were forbidden. You could have it at your house, but not at the dining hall. While this rule has since changed, the attitude has not. So it's fair to assume that most people here don't fast.

Still, the day is treated quite respectfully. Why this is, I don't really know. Maybe because it's tradition, or part of Jewish identity, or because the rest of the country has shut down and there's nothing else to do. For whatever reason there are no barbecues and no kayak races on the fish ponds. One day a year, those precious hours of silence. It's marvelous.

The Lime Tree

Israel is a country with a long history of growing just about every kind of citrus except one. Stroll through any market I know of and you will not find limes. There are oranges and grapefruit of every description, pomelos and a gazillion lemons, some of which are deceptively green. But if you want limes you pretty much have to grow them yourself.

I loved my lime tree from the moment it was planted. The gardener called the next day to apologize for not checking with me about the price and offered to replace it with a smaller, cheaper one. I said no thanks, we've already bonded. But the tree has never been the kind of lush citrus that I see in other places and I didn't know why.

It has its own watering system controlled by the garden guy's computer and the soil is the same as in the rest of the kibbutz. When I talked to the gardener he said I should give it more fertilizer. This produced more limes but still not so many leaves and branches. The poor thing was looking so scraggly and unloved that I was quite distraught. What could be the problem?

Then it dawned on me. I would never dare besmirch the garden guy's automated system, his knowledge of plants or his computer controls, but maybe it wasn't getting enough water? I started to take a bucket out to it every day. After two weeks it had tiny green leaves sprouting all over. That was a month or two ago and the tree is noticeably better. Still not lush, but better.

New problem: what am I going to do with all these limes? Lime pie, limeade. There are only so many gin-and-tonics one can drink. Margaritas. Does lime go with rosemary garlic chicken?