'Tis the season...

...for figs!

One of my favorite things about Israel (of course it would be food-related) is the abundance of fresh produce here. There are only a handful of fruits and veggies that the States does better - apples and corn, to name two.

Our landlord has tons of fruit trees around the yard. Unfortunately, this year's weather prevented the berry and cherry trees from producing much of anything. My disappointment at not being able to pluck fresh cherries from the backyard was compounded by the fact that the same weather affected all the country's orchards, thus driving up fruit prices at the market. It's hard to spend 12 shekels/kilo on peaches when last year they were half that.

But the figs! The figs survived! The figs are coming! Ron collected all those you see in the photo (minus the half-dozen we promptly devoured for breakfast). And they are so. Good. And I think this would explain the appearance of two fruit bats to our yard last night - last year we would sit outside after the sun went down and watch them fly around the yard, confused by Ron's squeaking bat-calls. Last night was the first night we saw any! All because of the figs!

Driving with the Devil (all 8 million of them)

On the day I turned 16, my mom (bless her heart) and I went to the DMV in Apple Valley, MN without an appointment, stood in line and hung out on the lawn of the testing center watching the hired pedestrians pacing around the side of the road. The days before I had diligently practiced parallel parking (I knew my weakness!) our old Chrysler minivan in our driveway, and then suffered a minor freakout when, for some reason that evades me now, there was a last-minute substitution for my dad's Toyota Celica. You'd think I would be thrilled, because Celica > Caravan any day, but I hadn't practiced! I didn't know where the hazard light button was!

So, it was with pounding heart I sat in the driver's seat, looking frantically for that little red triangle without being obvious as one of the largest men I have ever seen tried to squeeze himself into the bucket seat of the Celica. I bet he was wishing for the Caravan. He managed to get his bulk, plus his clipboard, safely buckled in, and we were off! At a screaming 20 mph! I even managed to parallel park, even though I was a bit far away from the curb. That, and "not inspecting the intersection before I entered on a green light" were my only infractions, so I had passed! Happy birthday to me!

Fast-forward 13 years later, and once again I found myself needing to pass a driving test. I had started the bureaucratic process of converting my US license to an Israeli one 6 months ago: getting an eye exam, detouring to renew my visa, getting permission from the Misrad haRishui (the Israeli DMV) to schedule a lesson and exam, scheduling said lesson and exam, going to the post office to pay fees. I had a contact of a driving instructor from fellow Ulpan students who had successfully changed their license. At 7:30 one Sunday morning, he met me outside of the University for my 20 minute behind-the-wheel lesson. I have been driving in Israel on my US license for over a year. There's nothing like learning by immersion, so this lesson was more a formality - "so you can't say you've never heard this before." I was shocked to hear him tell me to "stay on the right" and to "not enter the intersection on yellow" and to "give right-of-way to pedestrians" and to "always signal when turning" because I was certain these rules had disappeared from Israeli memory. "You're technically not supposed to use your horn except in case of emergency but no one enforces THAT rule." Ah, okay, that's better.

It took a month before I was scheduled for an exam. I was given an appointment at 8:20 am, which meant full-on Jerusalem rush-hour traffic. Joy. As I dropped Ron off at work, his one piece of advice? "Don't drive like an Israeli. You drive well, but don't drive like you normally do." Um, okay, thanks?! When I arrived to the testing center, I chatted with the other couple who shared my appointment. They were a nice young religious couple from the States, who were on their second try. They had horror stories about the woman who tested them the first time: she grabbed the steering wheel, she used her brakes, she screamed. Her goal in life, it seemed, was to fail drivers. This was far removed from most of the stories I had heard, where the instructor just wants to make sure you've driven before and have control of the vehicle.

Finally, our instructor arrived, and true to the apparent trend I have, he was thankful the instructor's car was a practical sedan and not a Celica. I sat in the backseat as the couple took their turns: 10 minutes or so of aimless driving around the Talpiyot section of Jerusalem. This meant many cars, many round-abouts, many small streets. Both of them seemed to be driving scared, but they were fine. It also was apparent that the instructor was not out to trick anyone. His vocabulary consisted of "right... left... pull over... change drivers." Then it was my turn, and we basically just had to return to the testing center. I was on my best behavior: no horn-honking, no quick moves to pull into the round-abouts, no maneuvers to get around buses. And then it came: I was on a two-way street that had only enough room for one car at a time. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Brinks van came barreling down the street with no signs of slowing down. I had to slam on the breaks and pull my nose over. And I could have SWORN the tester used his brake. That's it, I thought, it's over. I failed. He used his brake.

Now, due to some unpleasant incidents in the past, you don't find out on the spot whether or not you pass the test. Instead, I had all day to convince myself I had failed the test. And I did a fine job of it: I had drawn out scenario after scenario of being disgraced. A failure! She can't drive, even well enough by Israeli standards!

At 4:36 I took a deep breath and called my instructor to find out my results. "Hi Erin, how are you?" "Fine... I think. You tell me."

Dum-dah-dummmm.

"Oh, there is no problem. You passed."

I actually felt the weight being lifted from my shoulders. Whew! So, after another trip to the Misrad haRishui, I am the proud holder of an Israeli license. Not as proud as I thought I'd be, because I'm only here on a visa so I have only a flimsy piece of paper that has to be renewed every six months. No pretty plastic card with a bad picture for me. At least I don't have to take the test again!

I almost died today. Or felt like it. In my head, parking a few km down the mountain to start my usual Saturday 20-24km run would mean my run would be flat.

The run was beautiful, looping around trails in the mountains outside Jerusalem, near Givat Yearim and Kesalon:

Problem was, it wasn't flat. Not even a little bit.

During all those yellow/orange/red sections - so, like, an hour+ - I was kicking myself for not making gazpacho yesterday. It would have tasted amazing post-run (although, let's face it, my running socks probably would have tasted amazing provided they were chilled first). I had stocked up on extra veggies at the market especially with this recipe in mind. I made it once before, and it's lovely. Granted, my recipe looks a bit different from the published recipe on Epicurious.com, in that I entirely ignore the quantities (do people really measure out vegetable amounts in recipes?!). Like most recipes, I tend to use them as guidelines, rather than hard-and-fast rules. I'm by no means a seasoned chef, but I know my way around the kitchen enough to feel confident tweaking recipes even if I've never followed them before - it's just a matter of knowing which things you can change or substitute (# of garlic cloves) and which things are best left alone (flour:sugar:egg ratios in baking). Of course, if a recipe involves yeast, the only thing I change is adding the instruction "hold your breath and pray."

Well, after a fantastic banana-pear-yogurt-milk-flax-peanut butter smoothie (thankfully I did not have to eat my socks), I set to work making the gazpacho I spent 7 brutal miles drooling over.

First things first:

Because cooking isn't cooking without a glass of wine.
Please note the still-wet bottles from my water belt. I have an amazing transition time in my running-drinking biathlon.


One of my favorite things about living in Israel is the plethora of amazing fresh produce. Cucumbers here have FLAVOR. Plus, you don't have to peel them, because their skins aren't made of wax. And, it's cheap - peppers right now are about 4 shekels/kilo, which works out to about $1/kilo, which works out to 45c/pound. So many conversions, so little time.

Ingredients all assembled, I set to chopping. And chopping. Like I said, I didn't measure anything, I just made sure I had room left in the bowl for the liquid ingredients and that all the colors were in a nice proportion. Final count: 2 peppers (one yellow, one orange), 3 tomatoes, 3 cucs, a handful of cilantro, 2 little red onions, one hot pepper, cumin, pepper, homemade chicken stock, the remainder of the bottle of white wine vinegar, a 3-second pour of olive oil, one liter tomato juice, juice from half a lemon. Plus, the mashed garlic-salt-egg concoction (with 3 cloves and sea salt) and breadcrumbs to thicken.

  Before:                                            

                      
After:

It's now merrily chilling, and unless we eat during the Germany-Argentina game, it will be dinner. Unless Ron gets to it first, I already had to keep his nose out of the bowl once!

Motivation

Well, obviously I haven't posted in a while. I think my "Israel is funny" angle just isn't motivating me enough to post regularly. I mean, if I'm supposed to be acclimating, I can't be fixated on the differences between here and the States, otherwise I won't be making a complete transition to my life here. So, I'm going to try a new angle - to just write about MY life here, simple as that. I hope to emphasize the "only in Israel" aspects of my experiences, but also use this blog as an outlet to vent, complain, brag, babble aimlessly, whatever. So, with that, I've got a post percolating in the ol' noggin that should make its way here in the next day or two :)