Take Israeli society and narrow it down to the sub-set of English-speakers, then divide it further to get those people who blog in English, and then take away another giant slice, to capture those people in Israel who blog in English about food – and you come up with about ten people, all sitting around a table in a Tel Aviv restaurant last night. The invitation to join colleagues who indulge in a similar hobby was appealing enough to make the trip all the way to the big city – leaving the billowing clouds of smoke from the fire on Mount Carmel behind.
I enjoyed meeting Miriam from www.israelikitchen.com, Baroness Tapuzina www.baronesstapuzina.com: , Liz from Café Liz http://food.lizsteinberg.com, and lovely Emily, whose healthy glow makes perfect sense when you read her uplifting blog http://triumphwellness.com/blog, as well as others whose blog addresses I somehow neglected to collect. I love living in the Galilee, but the occasional trip to Tel Aviv pumps oxygen into the corner of city-girl in my heart.
But back to the catastrophic fire – which was a seemingly inevitable outcome of the horrendous drought/heat wave we are experiencing here. As someone said last night – they don’t remember ever celebrating Hannukah in the summer. There hasn’t been a drop of rain since the beginning of October, and for edible wild plant gatherers this is a disaster. By the beginning of December, we should be gathering the first tender leaves of the season, but at this point, everything is brown and dry as far as the eye can see…. At least this morning there was a small consolation – at the Bedouin vegetable market I found this fresh, green spinach – cultivated of course, but better than nothing!
It was lovely meeting you too. Believe it or not, that spinach is making its way to markets in Tel Aviv also.