Comfort Food

I love tuna, always have. It’s the one thing I could eat everyday and not get sick of it. Nothing is more reliable – you know what you’re going to get every time you open a can.

Some decades ago tuna was something of a rarity in the kibbutz. They had a few tiny cans of it in the store, but you needed protekzia to buy them. I was fairly new then and I remember waiting hopefully at the counter while the shop clerk asked the Lady-In-Charge if I could be permitted to buy one. She looked around the corner to see who had the temerity to ask for it. “No.” This was my first actual encounter with Stalinism.

Those days are thankfully gone. Today I am allowed to buy all the tuna I can hold. So I decided the other day to attempt to recreate my favorite dish from childhood, the staple of Middle America, tuna casserole. My mother, of blessed memory, had many sterling qualities, but cooking skill was not among them. Tuna casserole was the one thing she could make well.

I couldn’t exactly recreate the dish. Sadly, there is no Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup in Israel – why doesn’t Campbell export? – and the kibbutz store doesn’t have egg noodles. I had to improvise with real mushrooms, sour cream and pasta shells. Topped with buttered bread crumbs and baked in the fine baking dish my step-daughter gave me as a house-warming gift, it turned out pretty well. In any case, the taste of tuna, mushrooms and pasta was enough to time-warp me back home. Sometimes, nostalgia can be very comforting.

Money Is Just Dirty Paper

I watch the news from America and it is grim. Mostly all they talk about is the deepening economic implosion: plunging stock prices, rising unemployment, foreclosures. It seems there was never a better time to be a kibbutznik.

I don’t have to worry about my portfolio being suddenly worthless. I never met Bernie Madoff. The kibbutz owns my house so I have no mortgage. Of course, I also have no money, so no matter how bad it gets I’m unlikely to be worse off. I find that actually somehow comforting.

What puzzles me is why anyone thought the American economy was so great before this, better than it was, say, forty or fifty years ago. I grew up in a middle class family. My father worked, my mother stayed home and kept house. On one income we had a house, a new car every three years, all the food we could eat and enough gadgets to keep everybody entertained. This is the way it was with everyone I knew. All this changed sometime in the 70’s. Suddenly it took two incomes to keep a family afloat. Few of my generation are living better than our parents did and I think it’s likely that the future one won’t live as well as we are. This is profoundly sad.

Not so on the kibbutz. Fifty years ago people lived in asbestos-roofed shacks. Things are infinitely better now. Socialism may well have failed everywhere it was tried, but capitalists have no cause to gloat at the moment. True, I still have no money, but in this socialist society I don’t deserve any.

Gray is Beautiful

Getting a haircut on the kibbutz is a scary experience. This is mainly because the cutter in question tends to get a little drunk with power. Instead of the light trim you asked for, you are likely to find half your hair suddenly on the floor. Not only that but every single time I go she discovers to her surprise how much gray I have.

It’s not a surprise to me. I’m well aware that the clock does not go backward. More to the point, the gray in my hair is appropriate to my age and I feel no need to cover it up. I’m actually happy to be getting old because it’s so much better than the alternative.

Of course, this all can be attributed to my background. I grew up in a very conservative city. Divorce was unheard-of, women always wore skirts and never trousers, and they never, ever dyed their hair. I rarely speak of this now. People will think I grew up on a different planet.

Perhaps I did. In any event, I take my graying head as a survivor’s merit badge. I earned every gray hair, and most importantly, I’m still here.

Hearts and Flowers

I didn’t post last week, never quite got around to it. It was my birthday as it happens and my step-daughter came to visit. It was the first time she saw me in my new natural habitat and we had a nice visit, lunching at The House of Wine.

Having my birthday on Valentine’s Day was always something of a mixed blessing. My parents played the heart theme to the hilt. I had hearts on my pajamas, heart-shaped pillows on my bed, heart-shaped rings on my fingers. After a while, corresponding with my progression into adolescence, it got to be a bit much. Then there were the strangers’ reactions whenever I had to give my birth date. “Your birthday is on Valentine’s Day? Aw, that’s so sweet!” With typical adolescent grouchiness I vowed that someday I would live somewhere where Valentine’s Day did not exist.

That of course came to pass when I moved to Israel. Nothing connected, however tangentially, with any Christian saint is officially sanctioned here. Under the chapter heading of Be Careful What You Wish For, I found I missed the sweet Valentine birthday specialness. I missed the ownership, the feeling that Valentine’s Day belonged to me in a way that it didn’t to most other people. I missed the chocolate hearts.

Not to worry, Valentine’s Day has been making a grassroots appearance over the last decade or so. This has been spurred I think by the vast marketing opportunity the holiday represents. Flowers, chocolates, romantic restaurant dinners, pieces of jewelry – the potential is too good to pass up. So if the trend continues, I may find myself back where I started. But this time without the grouchiness.

Love is Forever

There’s nothing like a good wedding to give you a rosy glow for an entire week. Two young people, bonded in love, joyous and radiant – nothing is better than this. Then there’s the added bonus of schmoozing with people you haven’t seen for far too long. G-d, I love weddings.

My step-granddaughter was married on Sunday in a ceremony that was understated and elegant. There was no phony opulence. The bride was not drowning in masses of white tulle and did not arrive in a horse-drawn baroque carriage. No doves were released. Instead, she wore a gown that was gorgeous in its simplicity. The hall was decorated with white lilies. All was simple and tasteful.

Her grandfather would have been so proud. I drank a whiskey in his honor. Ok, two. He really didn’t drink a lot, but there was nothing that man liked more than a shot of scotch, a trait he shared with my own dad who taught me how to drink it.

I’m a romantic. I admit it. I believe that everyone has a soul mate. I believe that some things are just meant to be. Most of all, I believe that love is forever.

Bagel Bagel

Back home in America there was no nicer way to spend a lazy Sunday morning than by reading the paper while munching freshly baked bagels bought from the neighborhood bakery. Bagels are the quintessential Jewish food and one of oddest things about Israel is how rare they are here in the Jewish homeland. It’s counter-intuitive.

Of course, there’s no end of round bread. But dense, chewy bagels are as rare as water in a desert. I’ve heard that there are a couple of places in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where they can be had, but that’s too far to shlep. Once upon a time a local baker delivered lots of them to the kibbutz shop. These were golden days for me. There were plain bagels, onion bagels, garlic bagels, raisin bagels and – my personal favorite – blueberry bagels. But they stopped making them, no demand. I’ve been bereft since.

Then along came “The Jerusalem Post” with a bagel recipe which of course I had to try. I spent most of this afternoon kneading, shaping, boiling, glazing, baking and hoping for the best. Shaping them was the hardest part. After bagel number 8 I started getting the hang of it. 9 through 12 are ok, but the others are the ugliest things ever baked by man. How do they taste? Reasonable, but still not chewy enough. Maybe I’ll try again, but intensity of the labor is a little off-putting. Laziness after all is my weekend objective. I think I’ll go lie down.

January Blahs

I am struggling with a fit of January gloom and doom. I blame the weather: I woke this morning to find the air heavy with – what is that? – it looks like fog but I think it’s dust. The promised rain has not arrived and there’s nothing to clear the air of this stuff.

January is the hardest month. Long, bleak days. Sunless, doomy skies. Nothing to do but wait for spring. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be. But this year is different. Not so cold, plenty of sunshine which sometimes also gives off heat. As Januarys go, this one is not the worst.

Complaining about the weather is my winter ritual. I can gripe about the Siberian temperatures and the rainwater in my shoes and always find a willing ear among my fellow sufferers. Then at the appointed hour spring appears, sort of. The odd thing about spring and fall in Israel is that they consist mainly of alternations between winter and summer. A few days of each back and forth until one day somebody pushes a button and it stays summer. Or winter.

But this year’s mild temperatures and virtual rainlessness – worrisome in itself – have not saved me from the January blahs. Just one week to go until February arrives with its promise of better days ahead. There, I think I’ve almost cheered myself up.