One Kilo, Bavakasha

Few things remind of us of home more than rosemary, Christmas music and hamburgers on the grill! We brought the rosemary with us (and planted more here), and the Christmas music has randomly been played a few times. And this week our grill arrived!

We were told before we came that we'd have a "grill area" at our apartment. We fantasized about a custom made grill on the roof large enough for a full pig roast! Ha! It was a huge empty space to put a grill. So we used credit card points to buy a nice big Weber Grill!

"The Grill had Landed!," Paul emailed the minute it arrived. I quickly grabbed my grocery bags and headed to the shuek (market) to buy some stuff for dinner! Blah, blah, blah....after surveying the scene I finally chose a butcher.

The butcher had only beef in his case - but oh did he have beef! There were ribs...no, a rib cage...and hooves, a whole leg, and large cuts of meat that I couldn't identify. "Umm..One kilo, ground, bavakasha." (I don't know how much a kilo is but it sounded good.)

Wait...let me start over. Close your eyes and imagine a butcher...now take off his white apron and put on a gray sweatshirt. Replace the white pants with old jeans. Take off the white hat. Lose the gloves and the metal finger protector. Put a cigarette in his hand and give him a 5 o'clock shadow. This is the butcher at the shuek.

"One kilo, ground, bavakasha.." My butcher nods, puts the cigarette in his mouth and grabs one of the cuts of beef from the glass case. He sets it on the cutting board in front of him and whacks off a chunk. Plops it on the scale...adds one more small chunk. He removes the cigarette from his mouth. "Good?" he asks me. Sure! He puts the meat through his grinder and straight into a plastic grocery bag, then puts that grocery bag into another grocery bag and hands it to me. (No...I didn't forget to write about the gloves, the hand washing, or the wrapping and packaging of the meat...it didn't happen.) But, Oh were those burgers delicious!

Despite the completely foreign experience of buying the meat - it really tasted like home! (And no, we didn't get sick.)