Cottage cheese sale

July 1, 2011 - 9:56 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Business, Food, General, Israeliness, Life 

(Credit: Virtual Jerusalem)

It’s a victory for the Facebook boycott of cottage cheese, and really, for cottage cheese consumers countrywide. One of Israel’s largest dairymakers, Tnuva, announced this week that it would be reducing the price of cottage cheese — which still only comes in one size — to NIS 4.55 from NIS 5.20, that’s the price sold to retailers, which allows them to offer it to customer for NIS 5.90 a container.

However, says Facebook Tnuva boycott initiator Itzik Alrov, the reduction isn’t enough, so the boycott is going to continue. In the meantime, Israeli supermarkets are making special offers on cottage cheese, two for NIS 10 at Shufersal; NIS 4.90 for the rest of 2011 at Rami Levy. And on the subject of dairy products in general, boycott organizer Alrov is planning on adding other dairy products to the list, including yogurts and yellow cheese.

So, gotta be proud of the power of the Facebook boycott, as it’s good to know we can force manufacturers to pay attention to what consumers are saying. Particularly when it comes to Israeli cottage cheese, which is the best. Even in the lower fat percentages, that stuff is creamy, bears no resemblance to the American equivalent.

So pick up some containers and celebrate! If you’re feeling particularly flush, consider making this recipe for fluffy cottage cheese pancakes from Whole Foods:

Serves 4

In these moist and tender pancakes, the cottage cheese adds quality calcium and protein. Serve with a bit of butter and maple syrup or, for a special treat, top with fig spread.

1 cup unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
4 eggs
1 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons canola oil
Canola oil cooking spray

In a large bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, salt and sugar. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, cottage cheese, milk and oil. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and whisk until completely blended.

Spray a large skillet or griddle with cooking spray then heat over medium heat. Working in batches, form each pancake by spooning about 1/4 cup of the batter onto the skillet. Cook, flipping pancakes once, until golden brown on both sides and cooked through, about 5 minutes total. Transfer to plates and serve.

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A butter famine

November 25, 2010 - 10:54 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, Environment, Food, General, Israeliness 

It’s a butter famine, says one friend of mine. A butter shortage, say the experts. Call it what you will, but it is nearly impossible to find blocks of the yellow stuff in recent weeks. It started with a a dearth of the 200 gram Tnuva blocks, and you could only find 100 gram blocks. Then, last week, the husband came home from the grocery store with imported butter, for double the price. Double the price! From Holland, of course.

Anyway, given that it’s Thanksgiving weekend, we’re cooking turkey and the associated dishes this weekend, and not needing much butter. But still. muffins, eggs, toast — all the usual butter requirements are still out there. I’m starting to ration the stuff. And so, I needed to know why it is that there is no butter.

First off, it’s the worst butter shortage in the country’s history. And the weather is to blame; but not the long summer, rather the long autumn in which the cows have yet to produce their usual surplus that helps produce the 9,000 tons of butter that Israelis generally produce.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Welcome to Eggs-rael

June 20, 2010 - 9:15 PM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: Food, General, health, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Pop Culture, Travel 

Pinch me, I must be dreaming. For the first time in all my years here, I’ve found a place with egg white omelet on the menu. Not that you aren’t able to order an omelet made of egg whites in Israel. But this generally this involves making long explanations to young wait-persons who generally respond with everything from a blank stare of utter confusion to a just-as-confused-but-trying-to-be-helpful, “Are you sure you only want the whites? I’m going to have to charge you for a regular omelet anyway, you know.” So, having it on the menu is a big deal.

It got me thinking about eggs, which are a very important part of the daily diet for most Israelis – and not just during Passover when it’s all eggs, all the time. According to a 2007 report by International Egg and Poultry Review, hen egg consumption in Israel was 30.98, putting Israel 36th in world per capita consumption. In 2004, Globes reported that the average Israeli consumed 239 eggs per year.

One of the reasons consumption is so high is because eggs aren’t just for breakfast in Israel. I still remember this revelation at the age of 7 or 8 when I was invited to dinner at the home of a little girl in my Grandmother’s Jerusalem neighborhood. Her mother served us fried eggs, sunny side up. Wow! Breakfast food for dinner! This must be a pretty good country to live in if you can have that.

Of course, actually coming here to live meant dealing with some of the peculiarities of egg procurement. For example, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, eggs were taken away from consumers and delivered straight to our soldiers. The only eggs available were tiny little substandard ones — and then only through the black market.

Meanwhile, Israel’s soldiers were being stuffed silly with four, five and six eggs a day. Eventually, this artificially created shortage ended, eggs came back to the grocery shelves and those soldiers — now in their 50s and 60s — treat their high cholesterol levels with statin drugs. (Israel’s Hadassah Hospital, you should know, was a pioneer in the use of statins for controlling high blood pressure).

Another weird thing was that there were no egg cartons, just trays of eggs. If you just wanted to buy a few eggs, say 6 or 8, the grocery store proprietor would place them very carefully in a little brown paper bag and hand it to you to carry gingerly back home. And if you were lucky, most of them would arrive whole. This led to the development of the portable plastic egg carrying case.

Even before the State was founded, most of Israel’s eggs were marketed by evil monolith (I am not kidding) Tnuva which at one point in the 1980s marketed 66% of all of the country’s eggs. To its credit, Tnuva did standardize levels of production and was the first Israeli company to qualify for ISO 9002 international standardization. Nonetheless, times have changed and today Tnuva has to make do with controlling a mere 35% of the egg market in Israel.

I’m too young to have experienced the austerity regime of Israel’s early statehood but the excellent Nostal site (in Hebrew but with lots of pictures) has a nice entry about powdered eggs, which seem to have characterized the era for many.

But I am old enough to have seen one of the last egg stores in Tel Aviv, which was located on Shenkin Street right next to Cafe Tamar. It was not a boutique. It was a dumpy little store that sold one thing and one thing alone: that perfect oval symbol of rebirth.

Today, we have egg cartons by the dozen, restaurants like Tel Aviv’s Benedict that serve eggs all day and all night, and shakshouka, a North African dish consisting of eggs poached in tomato sauce, is a staple on every menu. (The Israel Poultry Council has a nice recipe here).

As for the aforementioned egg white omelet, it was served to me at the Si Espresso cafe. Located at the Latrun junction, the cafe is a popular hangout for mountain bikers from all over Israel (hence the healthy Lite Breakfast)*. Definitely recommended, even if you aren’t wearing biking shorts.

*This past Friday morning was no exception; the bikers hadn’t yet received the news that one of their own, triathlete Shneor Cheshin, had been killed while riding by a hit-and-run driver. You can read more about it in Yossi Melman’s impassioned editorial, Drivers to Blame, in Haaretz.

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The white holiday

May 26, 2009 - 2:12 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Food, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness 

dry-bonesShavuot is approaching, and what I like about this holiday in Israel is that you can celebrate it from a variety of approaches. If you’re observant, there’s the standard ‘yontif‘ handling of the holiday, which means food, prayers, something white to wear, and heading to a tikkun on Shavuot eve to learn all or part of the night.

But as one of the three pilgrimage festivals — Sukkot and Passover are the other two — Shavuot ranks up there in Israel, with all kinds of alternative and traditional festivities that appeal to even the most secular of Israeli Jews. There are the kibbutz celebrations, which include small children dressed in white, arms akimbo in order to hold baskets of recently picked fruit and vegetables to mark Shavuot’s stance as an agricultural festival. There are the usual family gatherings, as Israelis so love to do, including tables groaning with all kinds of homemade dairy fare, since this is considered to be the ‘dairy’ holiday. (See this great JTA article about alternatives to dairy on Shavuot.)

And since Israelis also love their dairy — we have more types of yogurt drinks per capita than any other country — one of the local dairy companies, Tnuva, puts out a Shavuot magazine each year, as an insert in the local newspapers, with dairy recipes from the kitchens of their employees. Nicely done, and, I have to say, it has been the source of more than one good recipe that’s come out of my kitchen.

There are also the learning celebrations, given Shavuot’s source as the holiday celebrating the giving of the Torah, and that has led to the traditional tikkun, all-night learning that takes place on the night of the holiday. In my city of Jerusalem, a city of much learning, there are hundreds of tikkunim to choose from, held at every synagogue, yeshiva, school and place of learning. But what I’ve loved in years past is to head to Tel Aviv, where the streets are full of people dressed in white heading to all-night lectures of the more alternative type. Those can include poetry readings, yoga and Torah, discussions about the place of Torah in a secular society, or, for the more party-oriented, all-night clubbing in honor of Shavuot. For that matter, since Tel Aviv is considered the white city for its collection of Bauhaus architecture, you could celebrate Shavuot by doing a midnight tour of Bauhaus structures.

I will be making cheesecake, but I won’t be heading out for some all-night (not that I ever did) learning this year. But if you’re in J-town, I did notice some great options for the Tikkun, including an Israeli singdown and a 12:30 am walk around the Old City, hosted by the Tower of David Museum.

Happy learning and eating.

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