Desert Bound

Hello from a bus heading to Be'er Sheva!  There is WIFI on the bus making posting on my blog an option!  So welcome to the seat of the action - the bus smells slightly like a gym locker, so trust me, it's not glamorous!  

The blue dot represents where I currently am, the red dot is where I'm going!

I'm bound for the desert, by means of Be'er Sheva, only one stop on my route to Shivta, where I'm joining an archaeological expedition from Haifa University excavating the ruins of a Byzantine settlement that collapsed around 1,500 years ago. 

Indiana Jones may have piqued a lifelong curiosity in all things dusty and ancient in me, so when the opportunity to join the excavation as a volunteer presented itself, I found a way to make it happen. 

Once I've arrived in Be'er Sheva, I catch another bus that beelines into the Negev desert.  The bus will likely be just me and a bunch of military personal, because the only other thing in the desert besides Byzantine ruins, is an army base.  So this has the makings to be a really unique and interesting experience!  

For the next few days, I'll be working from dawn to dusk in the Negev desert.  Despite my delusions of Indiana Jones themed grandeur, I doubt there will be many treasure maps and Xs marking the spots.  It's going to be hard work and long days, but I'm excited for the chance to experience something I've always dreamed of doing! 

Land of Milk, Honey and Whobasa

One of the many creative spellings of Neve Eitan

For the past 19 days I've been calling Neve Eitan and the Local Center for Health and Community my home.  It filled my days up with new flavors, alternative ways of thinking and lifestyle options I had never considered.  

If you had told me six months ago that I'd be living at the border edges of Israel, working at a small local community center and living communally, I'd have probably have laughed my ass off.  The person I was six months ago habituated Starbucks soy lattes and would plan a weekend around Lululemon sales.  I navigated farmers markets and got my organic vegetables from farm stands and CSA  (Community Supported Agriculture) shares.  These foodways existed as reliable solids in my life and my access to them happened automatically, almost without thought.  I had no relationship of my own with the origins of my food and I never wondered what would happen if these things suddenly disappeared or were challenged.  

Homegrown broccoli from the LCHC gardens

So when it did, it sent me down the rabbit hole.  I needed to work from the ground up to understand my relationship with food and its effect on a balanced lifestyle.  I found myself drawn to a small kibbutz on the fringes of Israel, where I amazingly had the chance to study and learn from a world recognized expert, Uri Mayer-Chissick on wild edible plants in the Levant, fermentation and living a nutritionally balanced life.  

So after 19 days here, I can walk through a field and recognize whobasa, silpad and dillion, collect them if I wanted (wearing thick gloves for the silpad!) and make a stir fry out of them; I can ferment cabbage and lemons and understand the biological environment needed to make that chemical transformation take place; I've weeded gardens, watched broccoli and radishes grow and most importantly spent time with the wonderful people who add personality and warmth to LCHC and Neve Eitan. 

Stir fry of whobasa, silpad and onions

I've become much more involved and aware of where my sustenance comes from.  It's an incredibly cathartic feeling to be able to understand your ingredients and the venerable traditions being incorporated into the flavors a dish provides.  I underwent no apotheosis to become an amazing cook, but I know a little bit more about the origins of my food, how to find ingredients at my doorstep and the benefits of using them.  My favorite seat in the house has always been the kitchen; I've found it very meditative to listen to the sizzle of a frying pan, smell the spiced aromas swirl around and feel the warmth and energy generated by a meal.  

I hope that I've done a good job relaying the experience and interactions I've had.  Hopefully you get the feeling that I've been very well taken care of, feel a part of a family and been living some where unexpectedly beautiful.  It's been amazing to learn everything I have in such a unpretentious and down to earth, little corner of the globe.  I was trying to come up with the words to sum it all up, so I went out on a run to try to see what would come to me.  It was between rainstorms and even in the middle of such rapidly changing weather, the scenery was breath taking.  As the saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words, so I think that's the way to convey it!

Hello ladies! Kibbutz = working farm.  Probably one of the reasons I feel so at home here!

Typical view of the farm fields past Neve Eitan

The view looking towards the mountains of Jordan.

Coming storm over a field of whobasa 

My running path

Some of the many date groves in the area

The road I run down, with Jordan in the distance

A different evening, out on a run, pelicans migrating overhead

These pictures are pulled from a few different runs.  I could never make it through an entire hour's run without stopping to take a couple photos of what was around me.  Apparently I became a recognizable figure on the kibbutz while I was here - I was "that American who runs".  

I'm now on this really unexpected adventure that seems to be focused on the power of food and the way it intertwines our lives.  From Uri, I've learned just how nutrition can bring together a community and provide a chance to teach others and interact more with the world around you.  As I've been blogging about what I was experiencing, it's really amazing how many people seemed to respond and be curious about the information I am finding.  I'm not sure what I plan to do with it, but I'm excited and optimistic about all the possibilities.  If you're curious, many of the recipes will be available from Uri's webpage, so I encourage you to check it out and interact with them!  

Chocolate bar I made and then promptly ate all of it!

So now I'm packing up my large, semi-mobile bags and heading south from Neve Eitan.  To those who welcomed me, put food in my belly and treated me like family even though they knew nothing about me, thank you.  I don't know if you realized how much you healed me and gave me a community and a place to call home.  I'm happy to know that I can always return here, and I hope that one day you visit me in the States.  You always have a place to stay with me and I will try my best to provide you a healthy and tasty meal! 

And now to the open road - which in Israel, is actually not that open since there will likely be traffic - although my next adventure is taking me somewhere much more open, which I can't wait to tell you more about - TOMORROW!!!

Food for Thought

At the end of the summer of 1890, Claude Monet began an impressionist study of haystacks in fields of Giverny, France.  His flecks of colorful brushstrokes captured the changing angles of glinting sunlight on his subject in the morning, noon, and evening; in the summer, the fall, the winter and spring, in order to capture and represent how the same subject can take on a completely different look and feel depending on the sunlight.  

Monet's haystacks entered my mind this past weekend as I watched a sunset over the green hills of Harduf, in northeastern Israel.  The sun had passed beneath the mountains, but the light show had only just begun.  I was wrapped up in a warm sweater, with a mug of tea in hand against the chill and I watched the sky turn a vibrant, incandescent red and mute itself into a veil of deep, opulent lavender and I found myself reflecting on Monet's devotion and appreciation of the way light effects and landscape.  

For me, actually being in this location watching a sunset was quite surreal.  Two days earlier, I decided "what the hell", thrown a couple shirts in a backpack and joined the two Belgian filmmakers visiting us at Neve Eitan, on the road to Haifa.  The Belgians had been visiting Uri to make a documentary about wild edible plants and the connections they form between people in Israel, Jordan and the West Bank/Palestine. After 12 days of filming around Israel, they had gotten all the shots and interviews they needed, so now it was time for Ben to see a bit of the country and Jesse, to head home. 

As for myself, I was supposed to be attending a weekend retreat on Nonviolent Communication taking place at the Ecological House where I've been living.  I thought I'd make it back in time to participate the next morning, so we headed to Haifa for some sushi and beer before Jesse caught a train to Tel Aviv to for his flight and Ben and I stayed a night in a hostel in Haifa.    

Obviously, I wound up being completely wrong about making it back to Neve Eitan in time for Nonviolent Communicating.  Between technological malfunctions of two GPS devices and navigation based on guesswork, we didn't make it to the bus station and I joined Ben on the road to Harduf to visit some friends.  I have friends who live there too and had always wanted to visit, so it wasn't such a bad direction to be heading. 

Harduf is a community designed around the implementation of Anthropophy, a style of thought based on German philosopher Rudolf Steiner.  If you've ever visited a Waldorf school, then you're seeing Anthroposophy in action.  Arriving in Harduf is like making it to an island superimposed in Israel.  The entire society is dedicated to caring for each other, the earth and their neighbors.  There's a lot of cooperation between Harduf and its surrounding Arab neighbors.  

I met Ben's friends Nitsan and Lilach and their son Michael, then we all headed to a nearby Arab city, Shefar'am for hummus.  This was actually my first time visiting an Arab city, and I realized that I was actually a little nervous since so much time and energy has been spent not going to these places.  Everything turned out completely fine and we had some tasty hummus and strong Arab coffee.  

Wild, edible flowers in Harduf

Nitsan, Lilach and Michael took the two of us for a tour of the community where we saw the elementary school, high school and agricultural fields. Walking through fields with this group was a lot of fun.  Ben is a professional herbalist specializing in edible plants and running his own company for tours and catered meals in Belgium; Nitsan, Lilach and Michael are all practiced herbalists in the flora and fauna of the land around them.  So as we walked, someone would reach down and pick some shoots and leaves and say "Hey, you can eat this!" almost every yard.  

Nitsan, me, Michael and Lilach in front of a Harduf sunset

Really that's what it all comes down to: food and act of eating.  The ways in which we eat and drink together are an important aspect of being human and forming relationships.  These connections are so important, that the a transgression against it can be the motivation for nasty and brutish conflicts.  The Trojan War was partially caused by a breach in the traditions of breaking bread together and the guest-host relationship. When Paris kidnaps Helen from her husband Menelaus, Paris had been a guest in the house of Menelaus.  Ancient Greek society had very strict rules on the practice of hospitality and how the guest-host relationship was established surrounding the traditions of eating. A host welcomed his guest into his home in safety and did not ask his name or his purpose of visiting until after he had eaten and drank.  Once two people have supped together, they are bonded for life and do no harm to each other.  

Paris' infraction between the contract of sharing a meal together, caused a 10 year war and thousands of deaths, including his own.  So please, tip your waitress and think twice before you double-cross someone that you've had at your dinner table.

Food is such an amazing motivator, a force of interaction and experience. I used to say that I could tell if I'd be good friends with someone if they'd eat my mushrooms from my plate since they were not a food I liked. I am proud to announce that I have finally begun to eat them myself, so I'll have to find some other food based tell to determine friendships by. 

So many of my recent connections in Israel have been based around my desire to find like minded people who through eating and wanting to live a well balanced life.  My amazing travels and experiences from the past few weeks have all been possible because I had an inkling of a desire to find people who were knowledgeable and conscious about food.  It motivated me to find the Gilboa Cooperative and then lead me to Uri Mayer-Chissick's doorstep.  I've really made a community from all these different people who strive to eat better and live balanced lives.  Its given me the ability to travel to new cities, meet new people and feel welcomed at the dinner table. It's really driven me to places I never thought I could go for my own diet and lifestyle. 

Sunset in Harduf

Over the past weeks, I've been eating a predominately processed sugar-free, and whole wheat diet and I can honestly say that I feel pretty amazing. Not only does my body feel very strong and efficient, but I've felt able to trust myself and be open to new experiences. I've been having an adventure that I only dreamed of and thought was impossible for me. I didn't think I was brave, assertive, or capable enough to pull off this kind of independence and undertaking. But doors have opened and I walked through them.  I'm not going to lie, I've been having fun!  I can't remember the last time my lifestyle was devoted to conscious enjoyment of life. 

As I watched the light change on the landscape in Harduf, I reflected over food being a deus ex machina of good things in my life.  Eating is more than just a stimulation of your taste buds, mastication and the digestive process in order to fuel the body.  It does that and more; it's a whole body and mind experience that involves all of the senses being utilized. It can bring back memories, or create certain feelings inside you.  It can change your whole mindset and outlook on the world.