Where we get our water

February 11, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Environment, Food, News 

Israel's National Water Carrier

Two items were in the news this week concerning where Israelis get their drinking water.

The first is good news: the water crisis, which we’ve been suffering through for nearly a decade (this winter appears to be a welcome exception), may be coming to an end in the next year. And by 2020 or so, we may actually have a water surplus!

Mekorot, Israel’s national water company, told the Knesset Economics Committee this week that, due to increased desalination of seawater (Israel has six desalination facilities), by 2013, 75% of Israeli households will be using desalinated water, alleviated some of the two billion cubic meters of water the country is currently missing. All this extra water will allow for the rehabilitation of Israel’s Coastal Aquifer and may lead to a restoration of safe water levels in the Sea of Galilee.

Even better: by 2030, Mekorot predicts that Israel’s agricultural irrigation – which uses more water than households – will be completely based on desalinated and brackish water.

That covers water from the tap. But Israelis also get their water from bottles – mineral, spring and filtered water – and that’s the other piece of news that surfaced this week: the coming restaurant water wars.

Strauss Water plans to offer restaurants free purified water from its Tami 4 water filter systems if they serve the water in pitchers bearing the company’s brand and – more importantly – they stop selling mineral water from Strauss’s competitors: the companies that make Mei Eden, Neviot, San Pellegrino and Sam Benedetto. Strauss sees it as a way to sell more Tami 4 machines.

Strauss will pay the restaurants a premium, given that the new arrangement will cut into the eateries’ bottom lines (mineral water sales can make up to 2% of a restaurant’s sales). The bottled water industry in Israel is valued at $270 million; 38% of that is sold in restaurants.

The restaurant industry is skeptical. The Strauss premium would have to be pretty high to make up lost revenue. And an article in Ynet points out that Strauss has only concluded one restaurant deal so far, so it seems like the road to its marketing success will be a dry one for a while, but Strauss is one of Israel’s biggest food conglomerates, so it may not go thirsty for too long.

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Icecream for breakfast

February 4, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Blogging, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life 

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

According to my calendar, today was International Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. I always thought that certain friends of mine down our Jerusalem block were the creators of this particular chag, LOL, but it turns out — thanks to the Facebook world — that they’re not, and many other communities worldwide celebrate the day.

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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Olive pit spitting: don’t try this at home, kids

January 27, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Food 

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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A cheesy metaphor

January 17, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Art, design, education, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Movies 

More about food. Sort of.

The Gad cheese grandfather

In this clever, tongue-in-cheek video by second-year film students at Hebrew University’s Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, the faces of an assortment of familiar Israeli and imported food products — the Gerber baby, the Gad cheese grandfather, the Kinder chocolate child, the Quaker men — talk amongst themselves in the fridge and cabinet about the smelly Gad tzafatit cheese in their midst. I found it amusing that they chose tzfatit — such a quintessential Israeli cheese, at least to me, that was once sold in salty, crumbly chunks, sliced off a large, damp mound from the corner makolet — as the smelly culprit of the fridge.

Carpet tiles (Photo credit: Tchochkes)

As their ‘owner’ removes the cheese, tastes it and proceeds to throw it out, he moves around a very Israeli kitchen, from the pullout drawer of oils and vinegars to the floor laid with classic Persian carpet tiles.

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 not kosher enough for Israel

January 17, 2012 by · 7 Comments
Filed under: Food, News 

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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