Ben and Jerry's Israel ad for their ice cream club

In fact, when I typed ice cream for breakfast into the search bar of Facebook, dozens of posts popped up for celebrants around the globe, from Mexico, Seattle, Louisiana and Philly to Maine, Albany and Shanghai.

According to Serious Eats, all you need to do is eat ice cream, for breakfast, and on the first Saturday in February.

We’ve always celebrated on Saturday, Shabbat in our house, which is the only day that we’re all around, fairly calm and relaxed, and have the time to enjoy the wonders of ice cream for one’s first food of the day. Usually it’s a good selection of Ben & Jerry’s, sometimes with homemade ice cream as well, thanks to my nephew Natan, the artisanal ice cream connoisseur. Toppings? Not always, but it does add to the experience.

Serious Eats also adds that “the holiday was started in the 1960s in Rochester, New York by Florence Rappaport, who let her kids eat ice cream for breakfast on the first Saturday of February to make winter more bearable for them. Now this custom is done all over the world, from Minnesota to Israel to Australia.”

Turns out, there’s an official IEICFBD blog, where you can list your own celebration — there are four in Israel, including one in my own neighborhood of Talpiot (I think that one is hosted by other neighbors of ours) and one down at Kibbutz Ketura, where given the hot weather nearly year-round and a surfeit of American-born kibbutzniks, they’ve been celebrating for some 30 years.

It comes down to the fact that you just need to celebrate sometimes, and even with the upcoming holiday of Tu B’shvat, which, lord knows, offers ample opportunity for celebration, February can be a bleak month. So, if you missed it today, go for it next week. We won’t tell.

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Pit spitting in Spain

If its organizers were not so earnest, this would definitely qualify for the world’s wackiest competitive sport: olive pit spitting. Yes, there is an association, the International Federation of Olive Pit Spitting that operates out of Spain and is promoting pit spitting to be included as an official sport at the next Olympics.

Now, Israel is getting in the game. The Givat Brenner Pickled Olive Festival has invited the pit spitting federation to come to Israel and run our first official contest. Israel21c’s Viva Sarah Press reports that event is scheduled for February 10-11, 2012 at the Givat Brenner Nurseries.

Now before you fire up the TV and play Monty Python’s “Spot the Loony” game, consider this: olive pit spitting may go back to the stone age. According to the federation, prehistoric cave paintings depicting the sport were found in the Spanish city of Cieza; the town would like the pictures to be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Right…

Archaeologists speculate that the competitions moved from caves to villages and, by the time of the Greeks, were even proposed for the Olympic games (they lost to the Discus Throwing Competition). The pit spitting website also goes into great detail about how the sport was banned (Islam didn’t much care for it, so Christians needed to play clandestinely).

The rules for a pit spitting competition are remarkably detailed. Participants with false teeth are recommended to “fix them well into place…the organization will not be held responsible for any injuries.” Ditto if “a participant experiences abdominal pain caused by a massive ingestion of stones,” or if a stone hits someone on the head (that spitter will also be disqualified). And just to be sure, the rules state that there must be no sexism – men and women are invited to compete in full equality.

As for the Israeli competition, our Sabra newbies have their work cut out for them. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the number one spit projectile at 21.32 meters.

As they used to say on television: “don’t try this at home kids.”

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The Gad cheese grandfather

Carpet tiles (Photo credit: Tchochkes)

But the point of the video, says one commentator, is to recognize the metaphor of the movie. The peak in life, is not necessarily the refrigerator shelf, where it appears that everyone should be situated. But rather, the garbage pail, which may represent the margins of society or a greater mix of products, may offer more self-expression, and, more happiness.

It’s good to get the inner meaning, but you can just appreciate the clever aspects of this student project that has already been viewed more than 30,000 times.

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Haagen Dazs white almond raspberry truffle

I have to admit that I prefer Ben and Jerry’s to Häagen-Dazs. Maybe it’s the fact that Ben went to my college or that their ice cream is simply more available in Israel. But that doesn’t mean I want Häagen-Dazs to go the way of Starbucks, Burger King and Dunkin Donuts, well-known American brands that didn’t make it in the Holy Land.

Nevertheless, that appears to be what’s happening. But not for economic reasons. No, it’s more of the haredization of Israel – now Häagen-Dazs isn’t kosher enough for Israel and the State Rabbinical Authority has issued a proclamation stipulating that any store selling the ice cream with the made-up Scandinavian sounding name will lose its kashrut license.

The reason: the milk that goes into the ice cream is made by non-Jews and not supervised by the official rabbinic authorities. Never mind the fact that religious leaders have for years used milk that is not chalav Israel (that is, made by Jews) under a ruling by none other than leading Jewish legal decisor Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that, due to strict Western regulation, there is no chance that pig products will make into bovine sourced milk.

But that’s not good enough for Israel, where the rabbis have decided that, since we now live in “Eretz HaKodesh,” as Rafi Yochai of the rabbinate’s kashrut division put it, “the majority of the milk produced is supervised [here], so there’s less reason to permit these products.”

Hence the decree that all liquid milk must now be Jewish-made or supervised. Ben and Jerry’s, by the way, uses milk powder (which apparently is still OK) and so, as a result, will still be available.

Not everyone agrees with the new rules. The Orthodox Union, which for years has been the gold standard of kashrut in the U.S., and increasingly in Israel, says it will stand by Häagen-Dazs. But who will sell it? My local SuperSol isn’t going to risk alienating the large number of kosher-adherent Israelis who shop there just for a little white almond raspberry truffle.

A fight for one’s right to consume Häagen-Dazs is unlikely to ignite the masses to return to Rothschild Boulevard, the site of this summer’s social justice protests. And, with increasing rumors of an imminent attack on Iran, it’s unlikely this latest round of religious rigidity will make much of a blip on the culinary radar.

Still, I shudder to think what’s next. No more Toyota cars and trucks in Israel because their carburetors aren’t sufficiently supervised? A blockade on iPhones because the workers in the assembly plants might be eating ham and cheese sandwiches while checking the screens for glitches? A ban on seaweed for sushi because it might contain traces of shellfish (oh, wait, that already happened…

For now, it’s just Häagen-Dazs, though. When asked what the brand’s aficionados should do now, Yochai from the rabbinate replied, “Love God more than ice-cream.”

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Wine and chocolate at Tishbi

I’m a big fan of wine tastings. And an even bigger fan of chocolate. So when I had the opportunity to visit the new Tishbi tasting center, which combines both wine and gourmet imported French chocolate, my interest was piqued. Moreover, my palette was proud of yet another Israeli innovation, not so much hi-tech this time, but palpably pleasing nevertheless.

The Tishbi winery has been around since 1984 and is run by the family of the same name, which is committed to keeping it small and boutique. Winemaker Golan Tishbi was the one to come up with the idea of mixing wine and chocolate. The new tasting center, which was opened earlier this year, has been a word-of-mouth success, bringing in more than 40,000 visitors so far.

Tishbi takes its wine and chocolate seriously. Once in the tasting room, you settle into a standing station around a wooden bar. In front of you are three glasses and a rectangular box with six pieces of chocolate. Each chocolate is paired with a specific wine to bring out the flavors in both.

The glasses are of different sizes: the larger the glass, the more of the wine’s vapors enter your smell receptors, changing the overall sensory experience. I didn’t notice it so much, but I’m sure the late Israeli dean of wines Daniel Rogov would have.

For each chocolate, Tishbi instructed us to break off a piece and let it rest on our tongues. Taste it, feel it, let it melt, he beseeched us. It was hard not to bite, but then I was never very good with lollipops either. Once the tongue is thoroughly coated with chocolate, you drink in the wine. Let it float over the chocolate, Tishbi implied.

We then had a choice: let the wine carry the chocolate down, like a wet pill, or take them in one after another.

After a few moments of contemplation, it was on to the next wine and chocolate pairing. We learned the difference between “Manjari” chocolate from Madagascar and the Caribbean “Caraibe,” as well as the percent of cocoa inside (up to 85%, as decadent as they come).

At NIS 30 (less than $10) for a 45-minute gastronomic and oenological indulgence, it’s worth the gas to huff it up to Haifa (Tishbi is on the way, in the picturesque village of Binyamina). And if you need to chill out afterward and let the wine settle, Tishbi has a nice dairy restaurant right next door. But go for the apple pie – enough chocolate for one day!

There’s more about Tishbi and other delights in Israel’s Carmel region in this article I wrote for our sister publication Israel21c.

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Chefs at work at Machneyuda

Anyway. I was pleased to find that they quoted Asaf Granit, one of the chefs from the very popular Machneyuda, which is in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market and is considered one of Israel’s top restaurants right now. Unusual, really, as Jerusalem is seldom considered the have the best of anything trendy in this country. We may not care, but, sigh, I guess I do. So his contribution to this piece about coming up with unusual dishes was the following:

“Last week, there was a married couple and four young women here for a bachelorette party. We quickly got into a very interesting discussion and I decided to prepare a dish of beef tartare for them – right in their hands,” says Granit. “We put on their hands a layer of beef, onion, parsley and capers, all minced. We squeezed on some fresh lemon, drizzled a little olive oil, and all they had to do was lick their fingers.”

A traditional mahlabia

Lovely. And, finally, a quote from Itai Rogozinsky, who owns the Vaniglia ice cream parlor chain and is most proud of his frozen yogurt made with rosewater, roasted pistachios and apricot jam, kind of a takeoff of mahalabia, a pudding dessert that is popular in many Arab countries. How does this boy who says the yogurt is “a nostalgic reminder of his childhood in Kochav Yair” — a suburban town east of Kfar Saba that has been around about 25 or so years, created by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to solidify the Green Line — know about mahalabia? Probably from the excursions his family used to take to nearby Nablus, Kalkiya and Tulkarm, three Arab towns in the vicinity.

It’s all good, drawing from memories and good flavors to create new tastes. And, interestingly, way down in the article an unnamed source commented that Israeli chefs just travel abroad to the chicest restaurants and come back to copy what they ate there. Would have liked a little more on that idea. Just a little context would help, oh Ha’aretz editors.

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Israel To Go is the name of a new cookbook slated for release in the coming months. The book, says Vardi, will present kosher Israeli cuisine with recipes and artwork solicited via crowdsourcing, which is an open call conducted mainly via online social networks, such as Facebook.

Photo: Untitled - Sasha Abramowitz

Contributing artists include Tali and Jonathan Korman, graphic designers with a sideline in fashion. Their T-shirt company, Bubulu Design, features images inspired by life in Tel Aviv — like this one, Hallo Artik, which pays homage to the humble beachfront popsicle vendor.

Photo: Hallo Artik – Bubulu Design

“We are looking for photos, artwork, drawings and graphic works documenting the Israeli culinary experience wherever it is. For example, a family dinner, people cooking, children playing with food, unique dishes, a special angle or places and situations that make your mouth water. Every artist has their own take on things, and their own taste.”

Photo: Israeli Breakfast – Orit Kovatz

“Israel To Go will be published in A6 (postcard) format – small, sweet and sassy. This size allows tourist to carry the book easily in their bag or pocket and take it home as a souvenir — a delicious gift for friends and family.”

Photo: Jerusalem – Benny Sharoni

Lunchbox is still soliciting artwork submissions and while the project does not pay it does offer exposure and, of course, copies of the book. In addition, Vardi says, “We also hope to organize an exhibition with the launch of Israel To Go in bookstores.”

Photo: Dining Room – Adi Kfir

Interested artists and photographers are invited to submit according to the following specifications: 1. Files in jpeg or eps in full color (CMYK) and print quality (dpi300); 2. Vertical work size: width: 11 cm, height: 16 cm, lateral work size: width: 22 cm, height: 16 cm. 3. Contact details: First Name (English only), Last Name (English only), email address and website (if any). Works should be sent to israeltogo1@gmail.com. Deadline is January 15th.

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But soon after checking in, and returning from a quick walk to the Dead, we returned to the hotel, and found tens of guests in the lobby with hotel staff lighting around 15 different hanukkiyot. We joined them – some observant, some not, some even non-Jewish tourists (and without any separation between men and women) – and then participated in singing a few Hanukkah songs. A hotel worker wheeled out a tray of fresh sufganiyot and passed them out to everyone.

Even though I appreciated the gesture, I’ve already eaten my share of fried dough and jelly for the next few years, so I passed, and headed to the hotel spa. Not a bad way to spend the sixth day of Hanukkah.

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Eli Mizrachi, the man who started it all

The menu is spare, fresh bread and spreads, excellent sandwiches, fishes, simple foods that go well with the great beer list, including all the Israeli microbrews. But it’s the space that’s the best part of this bar, located as it is in the former site of a British officers’ bar cum bordello. Now it faces the Georgian market of the shuk, an inner courtyard that includes a bakery and other small stalls. The bar itself is dim but not dark, with the right selection of tables, bar stools and outside tables. It’s intimate, friendly and most importantly, very well stocked.

Make sure to visit soon.

Directions: From Rechov Yaffo (Jaffa Street), walk down the open part of the market, turning left at the first left and continuing into the courtyard. The bar will be on your left.
And it opens at 12 noon every day, perfect for a beer and sandwich before or after a shopping trip.

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