I recently visited my old friend Ayoub in Fassouta up near the Lebanese border in the Western Galilee – one of the few Arab villages populated almost, if not entirely by Christians. Ayoub’s wife likes to use a certain kind of rennet for making cheese from the goat’s milk from their herd, and I had … Read More »
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I could make ftayir myself
I have the recipe and all the ingredients. But preparing these little wild spinach filled pastries is one of those tasks that is more fun with a friend, and so I took the two bags of greens I’d gathered and went to visit one of my most esteemed culinary mentors, Um Malek, at her home … Read More »
Winter Does Not Apply
February is arguably the dreariest month of the year, and at this point my family and friends in the United States and Europe are paralyzed with winter fatigue. While winters here in the Galilee are generally mild, this past month we’ve been treated to several snowstorms and in recent days I’ve even had to pull … Read More »
A Fresh Look at Some Local Foods
I was flipping through some photographs I’d taken recently, and found these three images, all which show interesting ways that indigenous local foods are processed in Galilee Palestinian society. This is a photograph of luf (arum palaestinum), which was collected this winter during the season it grows wild in the area around Nazareth. I took … Read More »
Basil – Permitted
This fall, I enrolled in an intensive conversational Arabic course at one of the country’s top language programs. I had taken several two-hour once-a-week courses in the past, but was still incapable of expressing myself much beyond “my name is…, I live in…,” and my desire to communicate in Arabic remained as strong as ever. Pricey and … Read More »