A Morsel of St. Patty's Day

First off, Happy St. Patrick's Day!  Or...as Paul says..Happy St. Paddy's Day.  I tried to tell him it is Patty like Patrick - but he assured me it is Paddy as is Pádraig.  Touché!

I don't remember if we wrote about it on here or not, but last year we tried to go authentic Irish with soda bread and brisket.  The soda bread (recipe compliments of Mary Vaca!) was great.  The brisket was pretty good - but probably still the most expensive piece of meat we've ever bought.

So this year we are taking a slightly different angle.  We're saving the soda bread for the weekend when we'll be home.  And we're skipping the brisket, hoping that the Irish pub we're going to tonight has good Irish food.  If not, we'll go to a different butcher and have brisket with our soda bread this weekend.

Instead - I made a few Irish-esque treats for work.  First, to be culturally sensitive to our Muslim colleagues who don't drink, I made shamrock sugar cookies with green frosting.  They were delicious!  Although, like other attempts to be culturally sensitive, I found that many (not all) of the Muslim colleagues preferred the second treat:  mini-chocolate Guinness (stout) cupcakes with Bailey's Irish cream frosting.  Delicious little bite-size treats! 

Finally - the best of all...a Chocolate Guinness Stout Cupcake (full-sized) with Bailey's Irish Cream Frosting and....drum roll.....a Chocolate Whiskey Ganache filling!  Hmm!  I think there are enough calories in this to count for a weekend's worth of treats!  The top picture was sent from my phone to let my friend know to come grab one.  And then I forgot to take a picture until I was half-way done with mine.  Oops.

I used to wonder why my roommate made treats to give away at work and now I know....first, if you keep them at home (which we've done with 2 cakes now) you start to notice that your stomach doesn't feel so flat in the morning.  :(  But more importantly - you should see the looks on people's faces when they try them!  The big surprise in these treats (to me) was the reaction to the cookies.  Three or four colleagues said they were only going to break off a small piece...and then came back for the rest of their cookie.  Another three colleagues asked for the recipe!  Another said I should be selling these cookies!  Another said it was the best cookie they'd had..."when is the next holiday!?!" 

Maybe 25% of what they said is just them trying to make me feel good...but I can tell when you are just trying to make me feel good and when you really do like my food. 

If I may pat myself on the back for a moment - I made the cookie cutter from scratch!  And I didn't even slice open any fingers in the process.  Also - the cookies really did taste like those ones you buy at the store that have the powder on the bottom and are super super soft and thick.  And...do you see the swirls in the frosting on the cupcakes?  Finally got that right!  But...so you know that I don't think I'm all that and a box chocolates...it took me three tries to get the right shape for the cookie cutter...and one batch of frosting just slithered its way off the cupcake...and the cookies probably should have been thicker.  (Ha!  No one even touched the box of thin mints on my desk - do you think that means I can have them all!?)

The answer to when the next holiday is?  Tomorrow!  It's Purim!

On Saturday we headed north to Mt. Gilboa which lies right on the border of northern Palestine and Israel.  Paul and I, and Dave and Emily set off at the crack of noon in search of Shirsh Zallouh, also known as Ferula hermonis Boiss…wild mushrooms!

A group from the Embassy went about 3 weeks ago.  We hoped to mimic their trip, simply put:  find and collect mushrooms, sauté them with onions, and enjoy with a great bottle of wine.

This is what we were looking for...not what we found.

The mission was….............a complete failure. 

We got to the site (or what we thought was the site – Mistake #1) at about 130pm.  We were all hungry so we had our gourmet picnic lunch before the hunt.  (It was delicious and a lot of fun.  We had roasted red pepper tapenade, caramelized onions, Jerusalem bread, goat cheese, fresh dates and a bottle of Spanish rioja!)  The guide said to take a basket (like little red riding hood) to put the mushrooms in so the dirt and spores fall back to the ground.  Well we aren’t professionals or anything like that – so Dave carried a reusable grocery bag and Paul has a glow-in-the-dark pumpkin bucket.  Haha.  We spread out and searched the field, all four of us staring at our feet looking for fennel.  Yes, fennel.  Wild fennel.  (These mushrooms grow ONLY at the base of wild fennel plants.)  Mistake #2 – you shouldn’t be looking down for wild fennel.  It is about 5 feet high with bright yellow buds on top and wispy leaves all around.  You can’t miss it.  So if we didn’t see it in the field in the first 5 seconds we should have moved on.  It was like the hunting for sunshine in a cave.

We decided to drive a little further up the road and 5 minutes away Emily spotted a fennel plant (and remembered what they looked like.  The rest of us were basing our search on a google image displayed on a BlackBerry with no concept of scale.).  We quickly parked the car and ran into the field with renewed spirits!  No mushrooms.  This was the last weekend of the season and the Bedouins had probably already been through to collect these mushrooms close to the road…so we pressed onwards into the field.

Israel is usually very brown and dry and dead – but this is winter, or the rainy season, so things are as green as they get right now.  The fields were knee high with random weeds and grasses, some of them prickly, but despite this challenge (and my fear of snakes or other small creatures crawling in the grass where I wouldn’t see them) we persevered.  Emily and Dave and I found an orange tree and – happy to have some fruit to show for our 2 hours of efforts – we picked 6 or 7 oranges.  Mistake #3 – you should try one before you pick the next 6.  There are more varieties than we see in the grocery store and this isn’t Florida.  These were sour like lemons with really tough peels and lots of strings and seeds.

Anyway…no mushrooms in this field so we pressed on to a hill covered in fennel.  Rewind – the fennel in this field was only as tall as the other brush, so you couldn’t see it until you were on top of it.  So we press on.  To conquer this hill which we are sure will have mushrooms, we split up and scour the base of every fennel plant we can. 

Nada.  Nilch.  We are losers.  In my mind, the Bedouins won.  As we turn to leave, giving up our hopes of wild mushrooms, Paul yells out “I found one!”  (So it wasn’t a failure?!)  No…still a failure.  The mushroom was big…and slimy and wilting and full of little bugs. 

Okay…on a more positive note.  The mushroom part was a failure, but we had a great lunch!  It was a lot of fun and now we know where to go and what to look for next year.  And we know that we have to go at the beginning of the season.  The best part – as we were leaving it was close to sunset (but not yet dinner time) and a friend had told us of this great restaurant which happened to be right across the street from our little field.  We thought we’d try it out. 

We walked into this cute cabin with low ceilings and wood all around (which is odd for Israel given the general lack of trees.  Most construction is done with cement.).  After about 10 minutes they seated us outside on the patio, overlooking the valley.  Before they served the food, the sun set.  Beautiful!  The waiter put down a large placemat on our wood table and in English it explained how they use local food that is in season and try to let the flavors of the food shine (not covering them up with sweeteners or sauces) – perfect!  Despite not finding mushrooms, it was a very fun day filled with delicious rich food!  I can’t wait until next year when we can do it again…AND find mushrooms!

To the Bottom of the Earth

Last weekend (before the work retreat and the Palestinian fashion show) we embarked upon a journey to the bottom of the Earth!  We didn't go alone, we took our friends with us :)

On Friday night we packed up our backpacks with all of the essential camping gear (tent, sleep bags, water purifier, headlamps) and the lightest food possible (couscous, granola, peppers, and lots and lots of water).  I consider these trips to be like a workout boot camp - we hike up, we climb down, we carry 30lb bags, then we eat just veggies and whole grains, and not very much of them because they are too heavy to carry all that way.  Is the best weight loss plan I can think of because you really have to choose between the chocolate bar and a clean pair of underwear.

We parked our car on the side of the road in the middle of the desert and headed up the first hill (pictured above) and got our first view of the Dead Sea, our destination just 6.2 miles away...on the other side of the desert.  I'll admit that I have a slight fear of heights and the first climb down took me much longer than the rest of the group. 

The area around the Dead Sea is...well...dead.  We only saw a few flowers (which smelled great!) and one or two small green oasises where water once collected.  It was beautiful to go up and down and in between massive rocks and cliffs, noticing the change in the color or the shape as we went along. 



Waterfall below. This is where the two trails "cross."



Israelis are really into hiking (but not camping) so they have books and webpages devoted to marking trails.  These are mostly in Hebrew so they are useless to us.  But there is one good site in English.  The trail guides generally haven't been updated in a few years so the first "waterfall" was dry this time and last time the "river" was really a dried up rock bed.  There are also cultural differences such as the time when "family friendly" included a 10 foot climb up a rock face.  For the most part this guide was good - but the trail itself was like walking through the desert...it was walking through the desert.  Every step gave you more and more desert. This trail guide said at a certain point two paths crossed.  My plan was to take the easy path and avoid the "400 meter steep slope down" which would be "difficult."  Well, the paths crossed, but we were at least 20 stories above the easy path with no other way down than the "steep slope." 

I was a little slow and shaky, but when we finally reached the bottom we found the waterfall and stream with plenty of time to set up camp, collect fire wood and start on a delicious dinner.  In the morning we followed the stream to the Dead Sea.  Our friends headed back to Tel Aviv and Paul and I headed to the beach for our first dip in the Dead Sea (more on this later).  After a swim we showered off and as the sun was setting we headed North in search of another camp site.  Though I usually plan FAR in advance, I had no clue where we were going (hopefully not too far or it would be dark and we would end up in the West Bank).  "What was that? Is that a trail?  Will you see if I can pull the car off the road there?" 

We pulled a U-ey and carefully exited the road onto the sandy/rocky ground.  As soon as our car was a safe distance from the traffic we grabbed our gear, threw on our head lamps and headed up the mountain/cliff.  The sign at the trail head said "no diving" so we figured there must be water - which would mean life and thus firewood....and hopefully some flat ground so we didn't sleep on pointy rocks! 

On the way up we saw our first Ibex!  Actually our first three!  The family was very suspicious of us and we didn't have time to grab the camera, the sun was setting and we had no clue where we were going or what we would find on top.  Lucky for us, when we hit the plateau there it was:  a beautiful green oasis with one live tree and one dead tree!  The ground was comparably soft with no rocks and best of all - we had an amazing view of the sunrise in the morning!  We got sooo lucky! We had enough firewood for 4 hours, there were no lights around so we could see the most beautiful starry night, and because it was the desert we didn't have to worry about wild boars or vultures.  The downside to this camping spot was that - as a green oasis it is the feeding ground for the Ibex....and the ibex....use the restroom where ever they are.  Long story short:  we smelled pretty ripe in the morning when we arrived at our work retreat!



Sunrise Over the Dead Sea - from our tent.



Dead Sea Fashion Week

Okay, so it wasn't part of a Fashion Week, it was a fashion show...and I was a model!  Wearing a dress worth worth around $3000 - with accessories of equal scale.  I modeled a 150 year-old traditional Palestinian dress...from Gaza! 

Yes, it was awesome! Yes my head was covered! No, Paul did not recognize me! No, I didn't know they had women that tall but the dress went to the ground. Yes, the sleeves were too short (or maybe that was the style).  Yes, picture here.

As a part of a work retreat one of our colleagues worked with a museum in Jerusalem to organize a fashion show for the staff, using the staff as models.  They brought 8 Palestinian dresses from the area including Bethlehem, Jaffa (Jonah and the whale), and Gaza.  All of us had our heads covered by scarves, my face was also covered very creatively! and another girl had a head cover made coins - kind of resembling a helmet (worth $3000 for the head piece alone).  But they all did the job of covering your head.

The dresses were very intricate and heavy, leading us all to wonder when we could take them off and how the Palestinian women 150+ years ago wore these dresses in the heat.  The other interesting revelation was that they chose (among the 8 models) three of the tallest women at the mission.  Models are usually tall, but the average Palestinian woman 150 years ago...I didn't picture her as tall.  We thought for sure the dresses would be too short on us, but they weren't! They were just the right length. 

I was sworn to secrecy so Paul had no clue I was participating (or that he was attending a fashion show!), so he didn't know it was me until after I was off stage.  In fact, only one colleague recognized me.

Palestinian dresses.  I'm on the far right.

Beyond the pictures and the dresses, the interesting part of the fashion show is that the other models included my boss and a few women from work that I didn't know too well.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with them backstage, try on the dresses together and talk about how we should walk and where we should stand.  Half of the women were Palestinian, but for me - an American who doesn't fully understand the history or culture of Palestine - it was really interesting to think of myself presenting (or representing) Gaza.

How would a Gazan woman walk?  Would she be shy or bashful with her face covered? Or would she be like my colleague who presented the bridal dress (which was black with red embroidery too) who was dancing around and lively?  Would she strut her stuff, twirl around the dress, make large sweeping motions with her arms to show off the dress...where did the line between presenting the dress/culture and modeling? Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, my "walk" was less then two minutes and I was instructed to sit on the ground and mortar coffee with the prop I was given. (Huh..throw in another trick of how to sit on the ground and stand back up in a 150 year old floor length dress...without stepping on it or ripping it!)