I'm Back

Yes, I’ve been gone from this space for quite a while.  No real reason.  Some might call it writer’s block, a slightly presumptuous term for a simple lack of inspiration.  No matter, it’s time to climb back on the hobby-horse to see if I can still trot.

One of the odder things that happened in recent months was this:  we all got a sms from the head office telling us not to approach the jackal that was lurking near the high school.  Since I live not far from there I took notice.  Not that I would know a jackal if I saw one – I would probably just have thought it was an especially homely dog.  A few days later there was a sign in the dining hall, saying not to worry, the jackals that have been coming onto the kibbutz are not rabid.

Well, that’s a relief.  Who wants a rabid jackal nipping at your heels?  Of course, I knew they were in the area.  You can hear them whooping at night.  Before I knew animals were making that noise I had thought it was teenagers howling at the moon to be, I don’t know, funny.  But why, I could not help wondering, did the beasts decide to come into our little village?  Jackals are supposed to be shy and really wary of human beings, so what were they doing here?

I can only guess that they were tired of foraging in the wild and came looking for fast food.  It’s only natural that they would be tempted by the smorgasbord of the kibbutz.  And while I can’t imagine they would be dangerous to people, I have been practicing my Cesar-Milan-Dog-Whisperer skills – no touch, no talk, no eye-contact, calm, assertive energy.  Just in case.

Rosh Hashana

I want to wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!  Shana tova!

The Great Escape

When you live in Israel, you get used to a paper full of bad news. But this story made my hair stand on end: there was a mass escape of about 50 crocodiles from a wild-life park in the Jordan Valley. They think they were all recaptured. The article then went on to regale us with Nature Authority personnel fretting over the possibility of escaped crocs mating and setting up a nest in the wild. It seems – I swear I did not know this – that they were an indigenous species until they were hunted to extinction in the beginning of the 20th century.


I parsed the article carefully. “About 50” means they don’t know exactly how many animals there were. So they “think” they were all recaptured, but they don’t know that either. The Nature guys said all those keeping crocodiles must invest in better fences. That means there are even more of them out there, plotting to get loose.

I like animals and although I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about reptiles, I’m not afraid of most of them. No, not even snakes. If I see one I prefer to just let it go on its way, no harm, no foul. But crocodiles and alligators are different. They’re fast, they’re ruthless, they have powerful jaws with lots of big teeth. And most importantly, they’re hunting you. By “you” I mean me. They scare the bejuices out of me. I don’t even like the look of alligator shoes.

It’s a fair hike due west to here from the Jordan Valley. But the kibbutz is bordered by reasonably substantial stream that runs east-to-west, so I’m not taking any chances. When I open my door, I look left and right – no crocs? – ok, I can proceed to leave the house. Still, I don’t like living with this anxiety. So my next question is, is Crocodile Dundee a real person and does he make house calls?

Frankengrass

Lawns in Hometown, America were delicate things. People, usually men, would spend their weekends caring for and obsessing over them, sitting up nights to admire them. They had to be fertilized, mowed and raked, all the while maintaining constant vigilance for the dreaded crabgrass. If all was done perfectly, you would wind up with a proper, well-manicured lawn that must not be walked on. Grass plants are tender and liable to die if tread upon.

The backyard of my childhood home was more mud than grass for just the reason that it couldn’t withstand stomping children’s feet. When I was finally old enough for “Keep off the grass!” to be reasonably enforceable, my father set about replanting the lawn with scientific precision. The ground was aerated and prepared and then the grass seed mixture was planted. It included Kentucky bluegrass which I did expect to be blue. It wasn’t.

Israeli grass is a whole different species. Not only will walking on it not kill it, you can’t kill it. At least, not for long. It always comes back. The stuff is relentless, growing runners with new grass plants on them that cannot be stopped. While mowing does give you the illusion of control, the problem is where the lawn meets the borders. There the tendrils advance without mercy, swallowing everything in their path. Like the Little Prince and his baobabs, if you relax your attention for even a moment you’re going to be inundated. The kibbutz gardeners do what they can to help. A few times a year a guy comes around with a tank of Agent Orange and sprays it around the borders, which does help for a little while. But it always comes back.

I don’t have any proof, but I suspect this grass is a mutant strain, the result of genetic engineering gone wrong. Maybe somebody, with the best of intentions, wanted to develop a variety that could withstand the Israeli climate and a few dozen tanks rolling over it. I’m just speculating. But having just spent the afternoon battling the tenacious tendrils, I’m convinced. This stuff has Mad Scientist written all over it.

Do Not Try This At Home

What do you suppose would happen if you boiled some eggs on the stove and left them there boiling for a couple of hours until all the water evaporated and the temperature continued to rise…? I found out recently when I put a pan of them to boil, all neatly arranged, and then… forgot all about them.

I don’t actually know much about cooking. My mother was a woman of many wonderful qualities, but she wasn’t really a cook. Most of what I know I learned from watching the amazing Julia Child. “The French Chef” was one of those iconic shows of the 70’s that made an indelible impression on everyone who watched. She took you step by step though the process of whatever she was making, explaining so simply how to do it, what it should look like and, most importantly for me, how to fix it if it went wrong. From Julia I learned how to make a roux and turn it into a fabulous sauce, how to tell if a fish is fresh and how to boil eggs.

I still do it the way Julia said, first punching a tiny hole in the large end to release the air bubble which is what pushes the egg out into the water if it cracks and then boiling for 12 minutes, no more, no less. That is, until senility took over. It’s not even that I was doing anything important, just the usual afternoon stuff. Toward the end, I did smell the scent of something odd cooking. But I live next to a restaurant, I’m sort of used to that.

And then it happened – boom! What was that? Are kids playing with fireworks? BOOM! Is that Hizbullah in the parking lot? I looked toward the window to see what was going on – and then I saw it. The EGGS! They were exploding there on the stove. I got them to the sink as quickly as I could, hoping to save the pan if nothing else, the water hissing and crackling as it hit. Peering through the steam, I saw that the pan could be cleaned and so no real damage was done. But I was dumbstruck by my own dementia. And this surprised even me – exploded eggs are still edible.

Really Cheesy

This is what Israelis eat for breakfast: you take a cucumber and a tomato and chop them into itsy bitsy pieces, such that they can be swallowed without any meaningful intervention of teeth, and douse them with olive oil and lemon juice. Then you plop some cottage cheese on top or something called white cheese which looks and tastes exactly like the technically non-toxic white paste they made you use in kindergarten for your artwork. Coincidently, this is also what many eat for dinner. Just the thought of facing that in the mornings is enough to turn me and, I think most of my fellow Americans, green – and I don’t mean that in a good way.

Luckily, today there is no lack of granola and Count Chocula to keep me from aggravated nausea. But back in the early days of the state, everyone was poor and food was not so easy to come by. You pretty much ate what you could grow, namely cucumbers, tomatoes and eggplants, or what you could coax from a cow. As often happens, necessity has become tradition, hence the centrality of dairy products to the Israeli diet. And since this is Israel, you’re expected to pay through the nose for them. So imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning to the Cottage Cheese Rebellion.

It seems the price of humble “cottage,” as it’s called, has doubled recently – I wouldn’t know because I thought it was way overpriced long before this and refused to buy it – and one righteous guy has had enough. He has organized a boycott on Facebook that has become wildly popular. Now suddenly the media are discovering that we pay twice as much as other countries for all kinds of stuff. It’s looking like the beginnings of a consumer revolution and it’s coming none too soon.

Even the Knesset is getting into the act, responding in true political style with emergency rhetoric. They’re threatening to legislate this, control that, while desperately looking for something more to tax. But even they have not proved totally useless: our Knesset has taken great pains to publish a recipe for making cottage cheese at home. I knew they’d come to the rescue. Now, where did I put my cheesecloth?

Get Me to the Church on Time

Like every other little girl in the western world, I grew up on the Cinderella story. Back then, Walt Disney was king. After seeing the movie of course I had to have all the paraphernalia that went with it. My favorite was the record and the accompanying book with all the beautiful images from the film and a helpful mouse named Gus to tell you when to turn the pages. So you know when this generation’s royal wedding made it to the screen, I was there, glued to my TV.

Kate was a beautiful bride and Prince William was as handsome as he needed to be. Most importantly from my perspective, the dress was fabulous. Diana’s dress, since comparisons with the previous generation are unavoidable, was hideous. It was a style best described as Hillbilly Chic with ruffles, huge, puffy sleeves and a bow in front. It looked like it was designed by Granny Clampett. But Kate’s was elegant and lovely. What a relief!

Speaking of the Clampetts, there were those family members who should have been left at home. I mean, of course, the princesses in the hats – my sister calls them the ugly stepsisters. It’s never a good thing to leave the palace with chunks of it stuck to your head. You’d think they would have learned that in Etiquette 101. And while I’m on the subject of Just Plain Weird, what was with those trees in the church? Couldn’t they at least have been flowering varieties? It is spring after all.

But I’m nit-picking. It was a lovely, romantic occasion and I wish the young couple boundless happiness. Mind you, I hate monarchy and aristocracy in principle. Like any self-respecting, free-born American I believe that all are created equal and rebel at the idea that an in-bred aristocrat has the right to lord it over me just because an ancestor did something worthy 400 years ago. As an old Yiddish saying has it, aristocracy and carrots have one thing in common: the best part is under the ground.