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 »
nazareth
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 »
Jordan Chickpeas
Christmas in mainstream Jewish Israel is a non-event, but in the Galilee, where 50% of the population is Arab, it’s another story. In those Arab cities and towns where there is a Christian population, Christmas lights and decorations light up the evenings, and nighttime Christmas bazaars attract visitors, regardless of religion, over the weekend before the … Read More »
Back from Oxford
I just returned from my first time participating in the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery – an annual conference of food historians and other professionals and non-professionals who are engaged in food inquiry. It was an extraordinary experience to be in the company of so many like-minded individuals from all over the globe, in … Read More »
Wheat, and Zaatar, to the Mill
I’ve started to research in earnest for the paper I’m going to present at the Oxford Symposium this summer. The subject of the symposium is markets, and I will talk about the market in Nazareth as a site of pilgrimage, not just for Christians visiting the site(s) where the Annunciation is believed to have taken … Read More »