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 »
bread
When the scales will tip
These are grim times here, where a disproportionate number of innocent people are enduring great suffering because of the actions of a few. Nothing new about that, and yet it is heartrending every time. In the pastoral Palestinian town of Arrabe in the Galilee near the Bet Netufa Valley, they are mourning a 14 year … Read More »
Relating to Wheat
These spring days, the roaring of combines rumbles in the background – rending thick fields of wheat into neat rows of shorn stalks. In the pre-industrial order of local agriculture, not only would this method of harvesting be unfathomable to a farmer watching from the side, but also the timing. Why would anyone cut down their good wheat … Read More »
Breaking Bread in Galilee
I consider it very auspicious timing, that my new book – Breaking Bread in Galilee – A Culinary Journey into the Promised Land – has entered the world during the height of spring. These days, there is gold everywhere you look, in vast waves of wheat stalks rolling in the breeze, or shorn and flattened … Read More »
Hubs el Tabun
As I put the final touches on my soon-to-be-published book – Breaking Bread in Galilee – A Culinary Journey into the Promised Land – bread seems to be looming large in my consciousness. Yesterday, on a particularly enjoyable visit with the Murad family in Kfar Manda, I was lucky enough to watch Samakh baking hubs … Read More »