One of the benefits of the truce we are enjoying with the Palestinians is wild figs. At the entrance of Ariel are trays full of small figs, light green and dark brown, freshly harvested from wild trees. There are no sellers as they hide from the police. I stop and choose two trays and take it to my car. Suddenly appears a boy or an old man, and we start the traditional bargaining. He fears the police and is pressed to agree my offer of 10 shekels for tray. The figs are small and not as sweet as the cultivated varieties. They get eaten one by one while driving, only one of the trays arrives home.
8 comments:
J,
This is the fellow who left the message yesterday requesting that you get in touch regarding an idea. Can you let me know if you intend to do so or not so I do not have to continue bothering you?
Sorry, I havent seen the message. Can you please repost it here? Thanks.
Dear J,
I am an Israeli-American living in Jerusalem who is nurturing an idea for an initiative that I think would be quite relevant to your interests--Zionism, global wealth, IQ, etc. If you could, please e-mail me at greggreene28 [at] yahoo. I'm interested in your feedback and possible collaboration.
Fresh figs were one of the things that immigrants from southern Italy missed most when they came to the US. Fig trees will not survive the winter in the northern US unless they are elaborately wrapped up in the winter to protect them from frost damage, and the old Italians somehow knew how to do this. Nowadays we can get fresh figs now and then in the store but they are still not a common item.
One of the things that I see very rarely but love very much are fresh dates - they are much more subtle and less sugary sweet than the usual dried dates. When we do see them in the stores (usually in an Arab market of all places) they are imported from Israel.
K
Sorry, I am not interested in global intiatives. I am too old and busy for that. Saving the world is for the young, I did my portion a long time ago. Now I am just talking.
K
Fresh yellow dates eaten raw are the best. Here you can buy them just harvested. They are not sweet yet. Full of digestive fiber. Unfortunately my wife is partial to exotic seeds. I cannot convince her that unprocessed wild oats are not human food, in Hungary only very hungry horses ate them.
My mother and father always argued about corn (maize). In Galicia, where she was from, it was a regular part of the human diet - sweet corn on the cob, corn bread, mamaliga (corn meal mush), etc.
In Russian Poland where my father was from, corn was animal fodder. My father told me that when he was a little boy in the wake of WWI, his family received some cornmeal as donated food aid from the United States and when his mother was not looking he dumped the mush out the window - better to go hungry than to eat animal fodder. Note that in Yiddish (and in German) there are even different words for eating by humans (essen) and eating by animals (fressen). Even though scientifically they are the exact same thing, culturally they can be viewed as two different processes.
In his famous 1755 dictionary, as an insult to the Scottish, Samuel Johnson defines oats as 'a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.' So yours is an old joke.
K
It seems that prejudices learned at an early age never disappear. In my dictionary too, oats are for horses.
I dont mean oat meal, but oat grains with their sharp silica shells.
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