Life without chocolate

March 10, 2010 - 10:31 AM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: health, Life 

Have you ever tried to go off chocolate? I can tell you from first hand experience, it’s no mean feat.

My banning of chocolate has to do with a book I’m reading called Insomniac by Gayle Green. The author, like me, suffers from chronic insomnia and, as with anyone who is sleep starved, she has researched every angle and suggestion for ways to relieve her nightly distress.

One of those potential remedies is eliminating caffeine entirely from your body. Some people, Green writes, are so sensitive to caffeine that even a small hit in the morning can keep you up at bedtime. That’s in part because it takes up to 12 hours for caffeine to get out of the body. So if you have something with caffeine at 10:00 AM, it’s still with you before retiring.

Now, I’m not a coffee drinker but I do love my chocolate and the latter contains caffeine (although not in the same dosage as a cup of java). Throughout the day, you can catch me sneaking a piece at, both as a pick me up and as a way to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Could chocolate be contributing to my insomnia, I wondered?

Avoiding chocolate in our sugarcoated society is tough. The kids prefer chocolate in their cookies, ice cream and even pancakes (a monstrous defamation of the pure butter and syrup goodness I grew up with). Visit the local bakery and it’s chocolate this and chocolate that. And don’t even get me started about the predilection for chocolate filling in hamantaschen at Purim (whatever happened to old fashioned poppy seed?)

The irony of going cold turkey on chocolate is not lost on me: as an insomniac, a frothy ice coffee at Aroma or Café Hillel serves as a great pick me up on a particularly groggy day. And what’s Shabbat without rugelach from Marzipan?

Still, I’m doing pretty well, all things considered. I managed to get through this past Shabbat dessert by buying my own baklava, which is intensely sweet, drenched in syrup and stuffed with nuts…but no chocolate. For snacks during the week, I’ve taken to popping granola bars and dried fruit. Guests this weekend even brought almond cookies (delicious and gluten free to boot).

The bottom line, though, is: is it helping? For the first couple of weeks, I saw no noticeable difference in my sleep. By the third week, my sleep seemed slightly improved. I got through several nights without a second sleeping pill – that doesn’t make me meds-free, but perhaps it’s a start.

I’m going to keep at it. I look at it as a kind of challenge – like keeping kosher in California (where we lived before moving to Israel 15 years ago). And if it helps me sleep even an hour more, that would be an achievement worth sacrificing for. Chocoholics – I am no longer a member of your tribe.

Tags: , ,

Foto Friday – Hanukkah in Jerusalem

December 11, 2009 - 5:41 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Foto Friday, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Pop Culture, Travel 

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, starts tonight with the lighting of the first candle on the hannukiya – the seven-branched menorah. Jerusalemites have a tradition of lighting oil based hannukiyot encased in glass boxes against the wind. It is a beautiful sight.


© pmos_nmos

Of course, it is more dramatic when lit up at night!


© RomKri


© RomKri

Hanukkah this year fell on a chilly Friday but despite the foreboding clouds it felt like the city was settling into a holiday mood, with young couples taking their babies out for a stroll at the new Mamilla Mall and overwhelming demand for sufganiyot at the Roladin bakery-cafe.

roladin_sufganiyot_box_menuBoth Nicky and David have blogged about the caloric and nutritional disaster that is our local holiday fare, so I will only add that Roladin has, for several years now, taken up the mantle of master sufganiya baker. They’ve created a whole series of so-called gourmet doughnut delights – the “Hanukkah Collection 2009″ – ranging from pistachio and banana to dulce de leche as well as the traditional red mystery jam. They’ve also devised a gaily decorated long square box for easy transport.

This week’s photos of Hanukkah in Jerusalem are courtesy of the wonderful Jerusalem Shots site. I should note that, as I do each time before sitting down to write the holiday column, I tried to figure out the current spelling of the Festival of Lights’ name, this time putting Google on the case with the following results: Hanukkah – 1,920,000 hits; Chanuka – 222,000; Hanuka – 219,000; Hannukah – 141,000 ; Channukah – 129,000; Chanukka – 71,800; Hannuka – 66,100. So, (although it’s not spelled as it was when I was a girl) — Hanukkah wins.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Coffee roasting and other gourmet hobbies

March 18, 2009 - 8:14 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Business, Food, Israeliness 

Coffee cupHyper-specialized gourmet-themed hobbies are getting really big in Israel. It’s no longer enough to just be a “foodie.” I have a friend who has made really good beer, and I’ve met several people who have been involved in one way or another in boutique wine-making. Homemade-style chocolate boutiques are springing up everywhere now. Olive pressing (for olive oil) and curing is emblematic of the region’s symbology, with many of my peers debating various methods of cracking and spicing the fruit.

And then there’s coffee. Israel is one of the few countries that has actually survived an attempted Starbucks infiltration – and has responded by exporting our own espresso bar chain to the USA. The Eretz Nehederet sketch comedy TV show once spoofed newfound Israeli coffee snobbery with a poignant vignette (viewable here with English subtitles)

When I visited Vietnam a few years ago, I had the opportunity to enjoy “weasel coffee” (if you need to ask, click here), so I probably out-snob any of the local coffee snobs – without taking myself as seriously, of course. I buy cans of ground beans at Café Joe, after all.

But check this guy out. He takes coffee snobbery to a new level. Dima Ingret, a 36-year-old high tech worker who lives in metro-Tel Aviv, apparently likes to roast his own exotic beans, which he orders on eBay when he travels abroad on business. But more and more of these varieties are apparently appearing in Israeli stores, making things easier for Ingret and his fellow enthusiasts.

According to the piece in Haaretz which profiles Ingret, as well as Shaul Rubin, CEO of coffee and coffee accessory importer Amigo, the Israeli coffee aficionado scene has clearly reached a turning point:

Israelis have jazzed up their hobby with shiny machines and home roasters to such an extent that the hard-core members of the coffee clubs are invited to the launchings of designer machines (bothersome events that were reserved until now only for top-of-the-line machines). The coffee market in Israel has turned into an experts’ market….

Maybe we would’ve been better off had Starbucks succeeded here.

Image by jevnin from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Nostalgia Sunday – Stuff we had to do without

November 24, 2008 - 12:41 AM by · 6 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Life, Nostalgia Sunday 

Stuff we had to do without
Back in the old days, children, not so very long ago, newly-arrived American immigrants to this dry and barren country could not buy chocolate chips for love or money.

Desperate for the foods of our native land, we took matters into our own hands. We made chocolate chips from what was available locally, stuffing a few Elite “cow” chocolate bars into a plastic bag and bashing away with a hammer. From the shards and cocoa dust, we fashioned cookies.

Moreover, there was no peanut butter. And so, we learned to roast and grind peanuts into a paste in our newly purchased 220v blenders (adding a half-cup of oil would prevent blade getting stuck in mid-grind).

There was no cream cheese to put on the New York bagels that in any case we did not have. Once again, ingenuity prevailed; we mixed one cup of yogurt with one cup of soft white cheese, hung the liquid in a cheesecloth bag over the sink and hoped for the best.

But perhaps our worst deprivation at this season, dear children, was the lack of cranberry sauce.

Emissaries were dispatched to bring us cans of the stuff. Sometimes they arrived, and sometimes they arrived bearing Tasters Choice instant coffee as well.

And when they did, it was surely a time for thanksgiving.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Site by illuminea | Sitemap