Day 34: Strawberries & Hummus

Yay!  Strawberries!  Here in Israel, we are only able to buy what is growing in season - there is no great temperature variance as in North America where someone living in Maine can buy Hawaiian pineapples in the dead of winter.  Nor are the neighboring counrties, who DO grow in different climates, exactly willing to ship to Israel.  So we are on our own here to eat what we grow, close to where we grow it, in the season when it's grown.  Eat Local, Eat Seasonal - here in Israel we don't have a choice to do it any other way!

The growing seasons are somewhat different than they were in North America and it was a big adjustment for me to learn what grows when, and to learn how to enjoy the many different fruits and vegetables.  I literally stood in the market with a useless shopping list CRYING, until I got used to it!  Strawberries, for instance, are available in the winter here and by Spring (the growing season in the US) they are already gone.  The happiest coincidence is that I live in the heart of strawberry-growing country and can, in fact, WALK to the strawberry fields and buy just picked semi-organic berries still warm from the sun!  Yum!

So this morning we enjoyed Strawberry-Banana Smoothies:

For 3 servings:

One banana

2 cups strawberries

2 T ground flaxseeds

1 cup rice milk

1 cup water

Last week I made pickles.  Despite the rainy weather we are having, they appeared to be done today.

I don't eat pickles, so I don't know how they tasted by my kids were literally eating them as fast as I could slice them! (Although that could be because they were starving after getting a dinner of Black Quinoa and Tempeh last night, hehe)

So the pickles were PART of the entire meal I prepared for our Friday lunch today. I also made slow-cooked browned eggs (Huevos Haminados), a green salad, Ful (stewed Fava Beans) and tahnia sauce, that we served over freshly-made organic hummus from our local Eden Teva market.  This is all served piping hot by the way with warm fluffy fresh pita for scooping everything up.  This is stick-to-your-ribs vegan comfort food at it's finest!

Here are some pics of our yummy meal.  And no, I myself, did not eat the eggs.

Hanukkah ends tonight.  By Sunday the local bakeries will have changed over Sufganiyot* production to Hamentaschen**.

*Sufganiyot are jillion-calorie fried doughnuts eaten on Hanukkah which thank heavens I don't like!

**Hamentaschen are jillion-calorie cookies we eat for Purim in March, which sadly I adore.