When I have thoughts of leaving my tiny metropolis and leaving somewhere else, this is exactly the sort of thing that always dissuades me from doing so. Tel Aviv is one of the most entertaining and amusing cities in the world. Every day there are fascinating things going on. Right now, there’s a coffee and theater event close to my house, and several fantastic exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
However, the most entertaining occurrence these days is Health and the City – a citywide event, happening mostly on the beaches, and designed to make all of us fitter and healthier. The idea is as follows: there are fitness classes, at almost all hours, right on the beach; health consultants, dieticians, and exercise instructors give free advice to all participants; many restaurants in the city are offering discount salads and whole-grain dishes; there are lots of discounts in fitness clubs; the mayor even spoke on the radio, encouraging all citizens to walk more.
I know some of the lesser enthusiasts would see this as a nuisance and perhaps even a paternalistic attempt to regulate the citypeople’s behavior (after all, are we less worthy citizens if we don’t exercise, or if we eat junk?). I also dislike the emphasis on weight loss, rather than health (this city needs less, not more, weight-related neurosis). However, you really have to applaud the city for creating what I believe must be the world’s greatest health support group. Going on my daily walk, I saw folks doing pilates on the beach and push ups in the park; it was fun to see how dedicated everyone was, and I can only hope it will lead folks to explore local farming and nutrition, as well.
Most important, these enterprises always make me smile; it’s so much fun to live in such a benevolently crazy place.
What you see in the somewhat dark picture, is a post-Shavuot dinnertime snack: tomatoes with basil, various types of goat cheese from the desert, and a really cool cabbage salad.
We spent our Shavuot vacation camping in the Negev, Israel’s southern desert area, and were very surprised and heartened to meet knowledgeable and idealistic people who use ecology and organic farming to make the desert a wonderful area for activism. Shavuot is a holiday of harvest and bounty, and a good opportunity to support small farms. In the last few years, several of these small farms have opened in the vicinity of Mitzpe Ramon, a town right next to the breathtaking Ramon Anticline, an amazing place to see Mother Nature at work. I suppose it is this beauty and magnitute of natural forces that inspired good people to come along and start small farms, growing all sorts of interesting vegetables which benefit from the desert climate, as well as raising goats and making excellent goat cheese.
We got to visit Naot Farm, where we talked to the farmworkers about the realities of raising goats in the desert and of making sheep. Apparently, the desert climate is rough, but not impossible, to work with, and the goats enjoy fresh pasture and desert plants. Eating the cheese, one can almost taste the different plants the goats have eaten.
Here’s a simple baking recipe I intend to use with the lovely cheeses we bought; it can be easily done with a twelve-hole muffin pan.
Shavuot Cheese Suffles
3 cups whole wheat or whole rice flour 1 1/2 cup milk, buttermilk or goat yogurt 3 eggs, beaten 1 tbsp olive oil (plus oil or spray for oiling the pan) a rosemary twig 12 cubes of good quality goat cheese
Heat oven to around 200 degrees celsius. Sift flour into large bowl; slowly add milk and eggs and mix until uniform. Add oil and chop in rosemary. Carefully pour mix into muffin holes, filling them up to about 3/4 of their height; then, drop a cube of cheese into the center of every hole. Bake for 45 minutes, or until mixture has finished rising and is golden and fluffy. Delicious for breakfast.
Elsewhere, we were served a simple and nice cabbage salad, involving chopped cabbage, vinegar, oil, and lots of fresh dill. Which we then reconstructed at home with our Chubeza cabbage. By the way, we happened to read, in one of the places we visited, that the common association of cabbage with gas stems not so much from the cabbage itself, but from its interaction with common pesticides; organic cabbages are generally thought to be gas-free.
The nice black-bean-sauce dish we served Ilan over the weekend served us well this morning. We had cooked something like three pounds of azuki black beans, and froze them for future use.
That future was this morning, when I took five minutes to prepare us a great lunch, that can be eaten cold and is extremely tasty. The dish is inspired by (but quite different from) the neat salads in Benny Seida‘s cool salad book.
Black Azuki Beans with Goat Cheese, Tomatoes and Basil 2 cups cooked black azuki beans 10 cherry tomatoes, halved 100 grams goat cheese, crumbled 10 basil leaves 5 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water for a minute or two and chopped 1 tsp pesto sauce
As we got home yesterday, our Chubeza box was waiting for us in the parking lot. We couldn’t wait to get into the house and see what was in it. And, indeed, among many other surprises, there was fresh spinach, and there were summer squashes in three colors!
Summer squash, and its different varieties (like zuccini, crookneck and straitneck squash, and pattypan squash) originates from South America, and despite its presence in year-round supermarkets, is really a summer vegetable. The winter ones are really much inferior to the creamy, rich summer ones, which, while eaten, make you feel as if the sun is warming up your belly from inside. Summer squash is kind of like a “decathlon nutrition source”; it doesn’t excel in any nutrient category, but it provides many of them.
My grandmother used to make a dish called Givetch, which featured zuccini. Each family has its own version of givetch, which is a mixed vegetable dish; ours featured mostly zuccini and tomato. Yesterday, we had our own version, which contained the fresh spinach, as well as basil, and three colors of squash. Actually, it’s sort of a renegade version – because, while in regular givetch, you cook everything for very long until it becomes soft, here you cook everything just barely, so you still feel yourself biting into the vegetables. What you see in the above picture is the beginning of the cooking process – aren’t those colors fun?
Neo-Givetch with Summer Squash
3 large squashes, preferrably of different colors 2 large, ripe tomatoes 3 garlic cloves 1 tbsp olive oil 1 cup fresh spinach leaves 20 basil leaves dash of frsh ground chili pepper
Cut each squash to half, then slice to semicircles. Cube the tomatoes and chop the garlic cloves. Heat up oil in a deep pan or wok, add the garlic. Then, we go by order of hardness: in go the squashes; then, the tomatoes; and finally, the spinach leaves and half the basil. Each vegetable gets added about two minutes after the previous one’s been added. We cook everything a little longer, until the spinach leaves wilt, the tomatoes become the sauce, and the squash is pleasant to eat. Eat happily on top of your favorite grain.
Over the weekend, we had an unexpected but very welcome guest for dinner: my dear old friend Ilan. Fortunately, he came on a day when Chad was energetic enough to cook a very special dish: kale, mushrooms and tofu in black bean sauce.
The little black beans were somewhat of a mystery: I had picked them up in the Asian market, and only days afterwards did I find out they were simply a black variety of azuki beans, which are extremely beneficial for the metabolism. We cooked two pounds of them in broth, freezing most of them to eat over the week, but left out something like three or four cups; the sauce is simply mashed black beans with soy, garlic and some chili pepper. Chad was the architect of this one, but I think I can reconstruct how he did it.
Kale, Mushrooms and Tofu in Black Bean Sauce
1 small package of extra-firm tofu 10 large forest mushrooms 10-15 leaves of kale (our variety had pretty, purple veins) 1/2 a head of a purple cabbage 5 sliced garlic cloves 4 cups of cooked black azuki beans 1/2 cup soy sauce 1 tsp ground chili
Tear up kale leaves, slice mushrooms thickly, slice cabbage into ribbons, and cut tofu into cubes.
In a small saucer, heat up some oil (canola or olive). When hot, add about half of the garlic, then follow with soy sauce. Take about 1/2 cup of the black beans, add them to the saucer, and mash them with the back of a wooden spoon, while mixing them up with the other ingredients. They should puree quite easily, rendering an exquisite, black sauce.
Now, pick up your wok; heat up some oil and add the rest of the garlic. Place tofu cubes in bottom of wok and let brown for a while. Then, add mushrooms, and after a couple of minutes, add the kale, the cabbage ribbons, and a tablespoon of water or vegetable broth. When the kale wilts and is good to eat, pour black bean sauce over the vegetables and gently mix to coat them. When everything is thoroughly coated, serve over the remainder of the black beans, or over rice.
The picture you see in this post comes from the new fashion catalog of an Israeli designer store for women, Comme Il Faut. Comme Il Faut is a fashion store which adopts an interesting and controversial concept: selling expensive, well-tailored, chic clothing – but with a feminist edge. Their catalogues often feature a variety of Israeli women of all sizes, professions, ages and shapes; the glossy pages feature a variety of women in their seventies, lesbian couples, crossdressing men, large women, etc, who are mentioned by name, age and profession. On the store’s shelves, in addition to shirts, dresses and pants, you’ll find basic feminist literature (Simone de Beauvoir, bell hooks, Naomi Wolf) and newer books on women, violence, activism, body image, etc. The store and its image has been the focus of an animated feminist debate. Despite their commitment to fair trade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, equal pay and fair treatment for women, the store caters to upper-class women, the only ones who can afford their high-priced clothing, and is therefore somewhat of an exclusive space, which makes their radical feminist messages somewhat problematic.
This is, however, a blog about food and nutrition, which is why I want to discuss the store’s latest campaign, titled “Bon Appetit, Honey”. The catalog and motto of the summer season is to encourage women to eat heartily, to indulge themselves in food, to avoid depriving themselves of anything, and to reflect on body image and on food choices they make as a feminist issues. As you can see above, the summer catalogue sports beautiful women of all ilks heartily and happily biting into meat, pasta, cake, ice cream, etc, etc.
The store’s focus on food is not surprising. Next to their flag store at the Tel Aviv Harbor, in a special and pampering compound, they have a fabulous cafe, serving great meals made with wholesome, organic ingredients, blended fruit and vegetable juices, and excellent homey desserts. The connection between womanhood, body, fashion and food is therefore a very immediate one. To make things more obvious, the current campaign is accompanied by a brochure explaining how the confinement of women to dietetic, barely-survival food has been a technique for debilitating and weakening women, and for establishing their place in society as people who primarily nourish others while depriving themselves of the joys of food.
Now, I have a lot of sympathy for messages aimed at liberating women from confining social institutions, and, in particular, the institution of fad dieting and pleasure avoidance. So, notwithstanding my criticism of the campaign which will follow, I am happy to see these messages infiltrate our consciousness and take up space which, otherwise, would have been taken up by anorexic 15-year-olds. The store’s guest book features an entry from a young woman with anorexia, who tells them that she hung the catalogue in the wing where she, and other anorexic girls, are hospitalized, and they get a lot of encouragement out of it. Can’t say this, in itself, is a negative trend. Not only that, but some of my clothes, I confess, were purchased in Comme Il Faut, and these ladies are truly talented, so I can’t really begrudge them too much. However. (of course there’s a “however”; you should know me already).
Comme Il Faut is a fashion house. A fashion house, albeit an idealist, activist one, is all about selling clothes. Clothes are designed to make women look their best, and this “best” can’t be entirely disconnected from social notions of what looks well and what doesn’t. Moreover, Comme Il Faut is a fashion house that, shall we put it bluntly? sells clothes to upper- and middle-class women. Affluent women. Women who have enough social cache, resources and leisure to be concerned in many ways about their looks and grooming. It is very probable that many of the customers are those who engage in several delightful activities, like the botox injections we discussed earlier. It is naive to expect that this population will be genuinely moved, by the store’s message, and order a large dish of ice-cream at the cafe. After all, wouldn’t they want to look their best in their newly purchased gorgeous clothes? Yes, it’s important that Comme Il Faut is talking the talk. But let’s not be illusioned into thinking that their customers are likely to walk the walk.
What we have here, ladies, is excellent, politically-correct (and I say this in the most positive, irony-free sense of the word), healthy, empowering ideology, at the service of our old pal, capitalism. Indeed, by shopping at Comme Il Faut we are more likely to contribute to fair salaries of female workers who are treated like family, and to donations to various peace organizations. But primarily, we are contributing to the wealth of an extremely successful enterprise for profit. Let’s not forget that (the same can be said about shopping at feel-good, organic, cruelty-free beauty shops: here’s what my thoughtful new pal (hopefully), Carmit, has to say, in Hebrew, about the Body Shop). The empowering messages make this contribution more palatable, but they don’t cancel out its existence. The more extreme radicals might say that, by having these messages supposedly broadcasted by the hegemony, we are numbing women from engaging in ideological battles (why go out to the streets in protest when we can purchase another gorgeous pair of pants and feel good about it?) – but I’m not sure the situation is made so much worse by this campaign. It just isn’t made as better as we’d hope for.
And here’s where I come to the actual issue – the food. The catalogue is encouraging women not to leave the steak, cake and ice cream to the men, and to engage in the world of sensual culinary pleasure. Yay! Yay? I’m not so sure. I’m not sure that feminism is well served by encouraging women to consume red meat, white bread, sugars and sweets. Indeed, dammit, it’s annoying that food is such a gendered field. It’s annoying that social conventions are regulating different food consumption regimes for women and men. The answer is not to clog our collective arteries in a gender blind fashion. Folks, if we want to conquer the world, what’s going to help us do it? What is going to make us stronger and healthier so we have energy for social reform? A sugar crash from a chocolate cake, or a nice bowl of brown rice and beans with steamed vegetables? Depriving outselves of calories is never a good idea; but depriving ourselves of nutrients which make us competent and help our bodies help us isn’t any better.
My argument here isn’t abstract. The personal is political. So here it goes. My health comes from months of making a conscious effort to eat extremely healthy food. Yes, I’ve lost weight, but I also feel a lot better, phsicaly. Making the effort to eat wholesome and organic was one of the best things I ever did for myself and I refuse to be told that it was a weakening, unfeminist thing to do. How, exactly, would a message encouraging the consumption of ice cream be helpful or empowering for my life? And why does health need to be equated with deprivation? Isn’t this message, in itself, unfeminist, by buying into the existing capitalist foodchain which makes sustainable, organic farming, so removed from the reality of working-class family nutrition? Is it only possible to enjoy life by consuming red meat? Is clogging our arteries the best method we can think about for subverting patriarchy?
Naaaaaah.
If we want real feminist power, of course we must oppose any message that we should starve outselves to fit anyone’s image of beauty. But we must equally oppose any half-baked message that tells us to give up our health and livelihood in the name of feminism. You hungry, girl? Spend the time to make yourself a nice bowl of grains and greens. Grab a nice plate of hummus, and wipe it off the plate with whole-grain pita. Eat a hearty vegetable stew, then lick the plate. Enjoy a refreshing drink of cultured yogurt. Support whoever works hard to grow and supply you with the ingredients for healthy, satisfying meals. Go for a nice walk, fill your lungs with fresh air, and think how lucky you are to live where healthy fresh food is readily available for you. The first step for causing postive change in the world is taking good care of ourselves, so that we have the most important resource – our health – at our hands when we do so. The next stage, is to make this health, through local, sustainable food, available to all. Now that’s real power, and surely if we’ve done that, or at least done our share for ourselves and for others, we all (regardless of our income) deserve a nice, comfortable, well-tailored pair of pants.
The other day I was saddened to read an article on Bananot, an Israeli girl magazine, about botox injections. The author tells of her experience going to get the injection, her sadness at her lost youth, and finally – despite all the shortcomings of the process – the coveted award: a stranger in the street guessed her age to be five years less than she actually is.
I don’t know where to begin my arguments against this article; one has to applaud the author’s bravery at coming out and saying she got the injection. However, I see the fact that people are feeling comfortable to openly admit they get them as an indicator that these procedures have become more acceptable than before, and it’s quite possible that many women I see in Tel Aviv have gone through this. Which is why I’ll add my non-relenting, sanctimonious voice to the choir, and say things most of you have already heard, or said yourselves, in numerous occasions.
My main argument against botox is quite obvious, and simply involves the nature of the procedure: you’re basically injecting yourself with poison. You’re consciously and deliberatly introducing a dangerous, muscle-paralyzing poison into your very own precious body, for the purpose of, well, being something that some would define “pretty”. Have I already mentioned that botox is poison? The author seems to understand this, and nevertheless, the immediate effects on health somehow fail to register. She playfully tells us how one of her eyebrows “fell down” and was lower than the other, but this menacing occurrence does not trigger any deeper understanding about cause and effect. The fact that one might get sick if one drinks, say, ink, is easily acknowledged; why would introducing harmful substances through other means make you any better?
For some reason, this procedure scares me more than that old-timer pal, the facelift. Hideous as going under surgery to tuck in some face may seem, at least it’s expensive, and surgical, and you expect folks to give it careful thought before doing it (though the numbers of women getting plastic surgery, including facelifts, are getting alarmingly big). The botox craze is worse in the sense that it’s less expensive and the process itself is less lengthy. Of course, it is not cheap at all, and involves some readjustment of the face and some recovery, but all in all, the unbearable lightness of poisoning yourself makes everything seem so much more demonic somehow.
And why is that? the Weberian, Protestant-Ethos part of me is upset about the attitude that “easy fixes” are readily available for any inconvenience we encounter. Rather than thoroughly treating our wounds (or realizing they are not wounds at all) we stick cosmetic band-aids on them. Learning to be proud of our faces, which reflect the faces of your mothers, and grandmothers, and ancestors, is too much work. Yes, so much better for all involved if we just inject something. Observing how the corners of our eyes are lined from years of laughing with dear friends, and how our forehead is lined from years of thinking, and concentrating, and worrying about our loved ones, is too much work. Much better for us to erase our past and experiences. The idea that technology will be right next to us, lending us a helping hand whenever life becomes a tad more complicated, propels us to stop our inner search, to stick with the easy solution, to take the proverbial blue pill.
And what is this valuable asset that we wish to recreate by injecting poison into our face? Yes, of course, it’s youth – that wonderful, carefree time, when we were completely helpless in any way that could shape our future. That time when we were cruel to each other, incommunicado with our parents, busy conducting world wars across the social food chain in school, and devoid of any resources for taking control of our lives. Is that the period we wish to relieve? Is this equation of women with teenagers meant at making them as helpless and lost as teenagers? Ladies, do think of your life in your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties; yes, it’s more complex. You have jobs, and families, and dilemmas, and bills, and bureaucracy. But you can take matters into your own hands, and use your wisdom and experience (whose traces are on your wise, beautiful face) to solve your problems. With erasing the signs of your wisdom and experience comes a symbolic, and perhaps more than symbolic, negation of these very experiences and their value to your life. You once again relinquish control and place yourself in the hands of a dangerous chemical, which takes away your control over something which is extremely close to your personality: your facial expressions. You relinquish control of your face muscles, echoing the time when our faces were wrinkle-free and our control over our circumstances, relationships and future was nil.
The ultimate “award” for this dangerous and futile exercise in self-weakening is given in the form of a compliment from a stranger. If we are incomplete and unhappy until some man we don’t know tells us we look thirty-five and not a day older, what does it say about us? What does that say about our relationship with ourselves and with the loved people who have walked all these erased years beside us? What does that tell us about the source and strength of our self esteem? Self esteem, self empowerment, pride in the self, does not come in a plastic container; “for if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without”.
What to do, then? The most important thing is to take pride in who you are, in your age, in your experiences. Easier said than done in an era of aggressive advertisements, but important. No one, apparently, will facilitate this for us – we must do it ourselves. When people ask you how old you are, for heavens’ sake, tell them your right age. When you look at your lines in the mirror, acknowledge the joys and sorrows that shaped them, like small symbolic tattoos marking the stations of change and shift in your life.
This does not mean letting your body weaken. If we want to live and love on this planet, we must do whatever we can to be healthy and strong. The work needs to be done; the children need to be raised; the ideals need to be fought. To do that, you’ll need a robust musclo-skeletal system, a strong digestive system, clean and healthy lungs. Eat whole, organic, fresh natural foods. Cook for yourself and your family. Take a walk, or a swim, or a class on a regular basis. Forge a strong relationship of cooperation between your mind and your body.
And finally, want to be pretty? Your food can give you a hand with that. There is a variety of great resources out there on natural, harmless substances that can heal and enrich your skin. Two of the better books I use are Rosemary Gladstar’sHerbal Healing for Women and Dina Falconi’s Earthly Bodies and Heavenly Hair. This doesn’t have to be a cumbersome regime; you can use some of the vegetables and fruit you cook with to get the benefits.
Two good examples are papaya and lemons, both good for a combination/oily skin complection. Making tchina, vegetable salad, or anything that needs lemon juice? Take a piece of the lemon and slather its pulp over your face. Rinse out in ten minutes. Papaya, which includes the wonderful enzyme Papain, is even better, but be sure to rinse it off in five minutes, as the active ingredients are quite strong. If your skin is sensitive, there’s a variety of organic, hypo-allergenic products out there, and many of them do not experiment on animals (for a great list of cruelty-free products in Israel, see here). The lemon and papaya treatments are tried and true methods for mattifying the skin, cleaning the pores and absorbing excess oils. Naturally (no pun intended), they do not wipe off your laughter or worry lines. Assuming that as a live, vibrant woman, you occasionally worry, and sometimes laugh, we’ll just have to accept you, and your beauty, and your experience – the way you are.
Yesterday, while talking to a student about the food festival, I finally managed to realize and verbalize what was so bizarre for me in the whole experience. There was stark contrast between the survivalist, let’s-eat-’cause-tomorrow-there-ain’t-gonna-be-any-food attitude of the folks and the luxurious, toy-like dishes served. It was, at the same time, a feeling of apocalypse and decadence which made the festival into a military operation of fast gorging of delicacies, rather than the sort-of-Roman-feast it was supposed to be.
Hiya, all; not much cooking this week, yet, except for some organic mashed potatoes. The reasons for this absence from the kitchen are quite complex, but they certainly include our visit to the Tel Aviv food festival, Taste of the City.
The idea is quite fun: many of the city’s wonderful restaurants open large booths, where they sell small portions of the best dishes in their menus for a relatively inexpensive price. For example, a set of four Dim Sum dumplings is sold for 20 NIS. The booths are located around Hayarkon park, and the very many visitors (more than three hundred thousand last year!) walk between them, making a meal out of various interesting entrees.
For the most part, folks behave in a civil manner and don’t push each other on the way to the food, which is also facilitated by the large number of service people on each booth. It is, however, a strange feeling to be part of a large picnic where everyone, including you, is stuffing their faces and standing in line for more. I can see how this pastime can really turn off those of us with more delicate tastes. It also raises the question of garbage, as this festival is based on a huge amount of plastic and paper plates, and there is no recycling structure in sight.
As far as vegetarian options go, things looked quite good. Almost each restaurant had some sort of a vegetarian option. Sushi places offered vegetarian sushi and agedashi tofu; various rice and noodle dishes, with vegetables, as well as veg and tofu stir-frys, were offered at the Thai and Chinese places; pasta places had vegetarian pastas; and there was plenty of fresh squeezed juices and smoothies for those who preferred to pass on the many beer varieties. The best part was a small and modest booth, bearing the sign “sun soya” or “soya sun”, which offered “meat” based on tofu and wheat gluten, with vegetables, silver noodles and brown rice. I think we’re going to experiment more with fake meats at home. And, of course, the nice neighboring booth sold little boxes of raspberries, so we had our breakfast for the following morning in hand. All in all, quite an entertaining way to pass the evening. The one thing that spoiled some of the fun was the commercial megacorp booths, with noisy music, dancers, and incessant flier-handing. As we were heading off (by foot – you would not believe the traffic!), a lady handed us some sugar-free gum samples, to finish off the experience.
When we got home, we found our vegetable box awaiting us, with tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, potatoes, carrots, beets, zuccini (in four different colors!), kale, parsley, cabbage and red peppers. It’s vegetable salad day, today, for both of us; but we promise to be more creative over the weekend.
My vegan friends will have to excuse me for this one entry, in which we shall discuss a delicious and nutritious member of the animal protein: eggs. Eggs contain concentrated, high quality protein, and despite being maligned for cholesterol content, in fact, contain beneficial cholesterol which is essential for our bodies. Good eggs are also an excellent source of omega-3 acids. Naturally, there are various substitutes for eggs, and our recipe for today can be made with any of them, but this is a good opportunity to reflect on the egg industry.
Industrial production of eggs takes place in chicken coops, which are horrible, inhumane places. The chickens are placed in tiny cages, one against the other, with no room to move; many of them get sick standing there, and as a consequence are fed dreadful antibiotics. They are also force-fed things that are extremely harmful for them; given this situation, I’m not too excited about eating eggs that come from this industry.
There are other options, which, while not perfect, are substantially better. Free range eggs allow the hens to walk freely in the yard and eat organic, plant-based food. However, as in the regular egg industry, hens are often debeaked, and male chicken killed and discarded at birth.
Choosing to eat eggs is a very personal decision. For those who have eggs once in a while, choosing organic and free range diminishes the problems with the industry, though it doesn’t make them go away. Either way, you can have the following recipe with eggs or tofu, to suit your choices.
The recipe is for yet another Israeli staple, this time, originally, from Libya: Shakshuka. Shakshuka is an egg dish where the eggs are cooked in a hot skillet filled with spicy tomato-pepper sauce. It works really well as a breakfast; those of you who feel well combining starches and protein are welcome to wipe off the remaining sauce with some good bread.
Shakshouka (serves four)
3 red peppers 2 tomatoes 1 large onion 6 cloves garlic 1 can organic tomato paste water or vegetable broth fresh ground chili 8 organic, free-range eggs, or a block of firm, crumbled tofu fresh parsley
You’ll need a large skillet with a flat bottom, which you’ll glaze with olive oil and heat up. Then, you chop the onion and garlic in and add chili. When the kitchen starts smelling like there’s something good happening, you chop and add the peppers and tomatoes; when they start getting soft, you add tomato paste, water or vegetable broth, and more chili. The liquids need to be added to the point when the mixture is quite diluted and watery. On a low fire, keep the sauce simmering until it reaches a viscuous quality – can take up to half an hour or more (why not do your laundry in the meantime? and while you’re at it, clean the kitchen!). When the sauce is nice and viscuous, you add the eggs or tofu. If you’re doing tofu, simply place the crumbs on top of the sauce. If you’re doing eggs, gently break them up and place them over the tomato mixture – DO NOT MIX (it’s prettier with the eggs whole). Then, cover the skillet and cook until the tofu absorbs the tomato sauce, or the eggs get hard to your heart’s desire. Serve in the skillet, or carefully slide onto plates.
Now that we’re out of tomatoes and peppers, we have only the sauerkraut, and a few cucumber survivors and some lettuce, to keep us until the good people of Chubeza bring us our new vegetables on Monday. But we shall be back with the new bounty!
