Tu B’shvat was here
Filed under: Environment, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness
The Levinski market in TLV (photo credit: FreeIsraelPhotos.com)
Seriously, though, a one-day, minor holiday became a four-day celebration in our life and my kids’ gan, beginning Tuesday, into the actual day on Wednesday, and then bringing home the ‘fruits’ of creation today, including ‘potted’ trees made of styrofoam peanuts and the de rigeur plastic cup full of dates, figs and raisins. To complete the season, tomorrow is the gan trip to a citrus fruit orchard at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, where they will sum up a month-long lesson plan on trees, fruits and how things grow.
In truth, unless you’re invited to a Tu B’shvat seder or have a child bringing home the signs and symbols of the day — sometimes the only connection you have to Tu B’shvat is seeing and buying mounds of dried fruit (Ynet reported NIS 200 million in sales of dried fruit over the holiday) from the store. Unless you actually went out and planted a tree, as many do, really. But despite my gentle cynicism, it’s been interesting to note its comings and goings and see how people relate to it.
I noted on Facebook that some of my more religious friends were discussing the issue of eating dried fruit as opposed to fresh fruit on Tu B’shvat. This blogger comments that we eat dried fruit because our ancestors did, given the lack of fresh fruit during the winter, when Tu B’shvat is celebrated. Makes sense, and as I passed a carob tree on the way home, I picked a piece off — it’s not really the season now — and munched on it.
And, in the spirit of the day, I took myself out to our backyard, where I haven’t spent much time lately, and wandered around, appreciating the fresh pink blossoms on the peach tree and the various winter bulbs that are starting to peek out of the ground. The shkedia, the almond tree, that is sung about during Tu B’shvat is in full bloom right now, and there are pink-blossomed trees all over the place.
Finally, I am thinking about making this chicken recipe, or a version of it, for dinner on Friday night, even though it’s days after the actual ‘chag’, it’s still good to celebrate. As the Israelites like to say, ‘siba l’mesiba’, a reason for a party.
From Cookkosher.com via Ha’aretz:
Tu Bishvat dried fruit chicken rollup
Prep time: 20 minutes
Level: Medium
Serving/Yields: 4-6 servingsIngredients:
4 whole boneless skinless chicken breasts (double)
¾ cup diced assorted dried fruit (apricots, dates, raisins, figs)
4 tbsp pine nuts
2 eggs
½ tsp paprika
1 cup flavored cornflake crumbs
Oil, for fryingPreparation:
1. Pound each double chicken breast thin, and set them aside.
2. Combine diced dried fruit with the pine nuts and set aside.
3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with a fork. Mix in, adding paprika, and set aside.
4. To assemble: Place a pounded chicken cutlet in front of you; position it lengthwise. Place two Tablespoons of dried fruit filling across the middle of the chicken. Roll up the chicken breast tightly and carefully; beginning from the narrower end. Make sure all the filling stays inside.
5. Using both hands, transfer the roll into the beaten egg mixture and then into the cornflake crumbs. Coat it well. Place the roll on a clean surface. You can now secure any ends with 1 or 2 toothpicks if necessary.
6. Repeat with the remaining cutlets.
7. Heat the oil in a frying pan. When the oil is hot, place the rolls seam side down into the pan. Fry them until they are golden brown, turning the rolls so all sides are done. If necessary you can leave the toothpicks in place.
8. Make sure the flame isn’t too high; you want to be sure that the filling is cooked without burning the outside. When the rollups are ready, remove them from the pan and drain them on paper towel.
9. Let them cool slightly, cut them on a diagonal into round slices, and serve.
Icecream for breakfast
Filed under: Blogging, Entertainment, Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life
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.
Foto Friday – Winter Wildflower Wonderland
Filed under: education, Environment, Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Travel
I am not a great fan of rain and so this winter has been a particularly miserable one. Rain, rain, rain and more rain. However, even a sun worshiper such as myself can admit upside to the horrible, awful, gray, chilly, soggy, foggy, never-ending wet and damp: the landscape is green, the waterline at Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) has risen and the winter wildflowers are coming into full bloom.
This month, Israel’s nature-lovers will take their annual trek through field and forest in search of their favorite flowers. The Society for the Preservation of Nature (SPNI) is hosting a series of tours in celebration of the season and the upcoming Tu b’Shvat holiday. As always, they will seek out the shy and elusive Persian Cyclamen…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
Fields dotted with blood red Crown Anemones are always a magnificent sight, but their light purple cousins are no less lovely…
Photo by Amikam Shoob – Wildflowers of Israel
The Common Narcissus, whose fragrance is nothing if not controversial…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
The elegant and stately Wild Hyacinth…
Photo by Sara Gold – Wildflowers of Israel
And of course, Tu b’Shvat wouldn’t be complete without the blossoming almond tree!
Photo by Mike Livne – Wildflowers of Israel
Aspiring nature photographers take note: Wildflowers in Israel, in conjunction with Jerusalem Botanical Gardens and FujiFilm, is holding a photo contest and there are still a few days left before the deadline closes on February 8. Information and a list of subjects (in Hebrew) is available here or submissions can be emailed directly.
Internet medicine is coming: doctors protest
In my last post, I wrote about how I managed to get an MRI done in a hurry by arranging it in Beer Sheva, rather than Jerusalem where I live. The trip was a schlep, but the best part of the experience was actually after the fact.
Rather than needing to call the hospital for the results and then have them faxed to me, I was given a website, username and password and told to simply log in a week later, where my MRI information would all be online. I am happy to report that the system worked as promised.
It’s not the first time I’ve been able to handle medical issues via my computer in Israel. I can routinely check the results of blood tests – they’re updated in real time – and I can also request and receive permission for a referral to a specialist and even make appointments without ever picking up the phone.
Sounds like Israel’s HMOs are finally getting their digital act together. Which was why I was rather surprised to open the morning paper and discover that doctors and the Israel Association of Family Physicians were loudly protesting increased use of the Internet for the very functions I’ve found so useful. The reason: it’s likely to “downgrade the professional status” of doctors.
The complaints so far are being directed at the Clalit HMO, probably following a very public advertising campaign to raise awareness among the public of the new services being offered. Clalit is the nation’s largest HMO with 3.9 million insurees.
Listen to what some of the doctors quoted in the article are saying: “You no longer have to go to the doctor – the clerk in the branch will do what you ask via the Internet.” How is that a bad thing? It saves time for both the patient and physician.
And “this campaign and others continue to destroy the image of the expert family doctor, which was created with great effort – the doctor who specialized for years and is a professional in his field and provides good medical care for his patients.” Oh really, how exactly do you spoil the image of the gruff, abrupt Israeli doctor with no observable bedside manners? Sure, the Internet has no bedside manner, but you don’t expect it to.
The physician’s association was more measured. “There is room for online work alongside a family doctor, as well as for the use of various technologies, but… there should be limitations.” That is, “Internet medicine is good when it’s done in moderation.
Look, no one is saying that a website can replace a doctor entirely, heaven forbid! If my Internet service provider says cough or bend over, I’m making sure that I’m still on the Israelity site and not some “other” URL. Still, anyone who has ever waited hours in a cold Israeli HMO clinic fighting with the other patients over who was there first (“I was after him” is as common at the doctor’s office as in the line in the supermarket), increased computerization is the last thing I’d want stifled.
A Clalit spokesperson got it right: “We have to suit the service to a new generation that wants quick answers and quick service. Medicine is no different from other services, such as those of an electric company or a bank….why can you get forms on the Internet today from any government institution, and only in medicine will people have to continue visiting the clinic and waiting in line? In such a situation, the patient will also develop greater responsibility for his health.”
The services offered by Clalit are still rather limited and can always be superseded by a doctor’s request – for example, in many cases you can renew a prescription automatically over the web, but the doctor can insist the patient come in for an appointment first.
The real revolution – and the one the doctors probably fear the most – is when the HMOs start providing complete transparent access to your entire medical records. Imagine the whining that will arise when you or I can actually see what our doctors have written about us – entirely unmediated by the professional judgment of an inflexible stethoscope.
Clalit hopes to launch the new service by the middle of 2012. Physician: heal thyself.
Foto Friday – 2011 beginnings to be continued
Filed under: A New Reality, Entertainment, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Picture of the Week, Politics, Pop Culture, Social Justice
2011 was a year of tentative beginnings. Burgeoning consumer awareness sparked by skyrocketing cottage cheese prices brought Israeli citizens to the streets. They then proceeded to sleep on those same streets for the rest of the summer in protest of the high cost of housing. The peaceful tent city campaign culminated in a really big rally…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
But for most of the summer, it looked like this…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Sadly, it still does look like that in Jerusalem’s Sacher Garden, where the truly homeless continue to reside in the cold and wet. The next chapter in the Social Justice movement remains to be written in 2012.
Some chapters were closed in 2011, which marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the homecoming and start of a brand new life for Gilad Shalit after over five years of imprisonment by Hamas.
Photo: IDF Spokesman via Wikimedia Commons
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak were present at Shalit’s release — so much so that they were accused of being publicity hounds (does no one know anything about politicians?) — and Netanyahu’s image was used to create the first Israeli photo meme.
There were other beginnings as well. A rare sand cat was born at the Ramat Gan Safari…
Photo: Tibor-Jager
Jerusalem held its first marathon and got its first Light Railway…
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Dead Sea was not selected as one of the New 7 Natural Wonders of the World…
Photo: New7Wonders
On the other hand, the nomination campaign may have served to draw public attention to the salt lake’s plight — just this week, Israel Corporation subsidiary Israel Chemicals reached an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on terms for the Dead Sea’s rehabilitation from excessive salt harvesting. It’ll be interesting to see if this promise, along with many others made in 2011, will be fulfilled in 2012. Here’s to that, and to a hopeful and happy New Year!
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