She Said: She Said: Summertime nosh

It's the Bein Ha'Zmanim. For a few weeks, a lighter mood infuses the goings on of the Klal. Death and other losses still occur (for example, my doc just diagnosed me with post-mono bronchitis, and, a few days earlier, a child of mine misplaced another offspring's school book list), but the overarching sentiment is cheerful, even frivolous at times.

Throughout the city, families can be spotted picnicking, having fun at playgrounds, walking, schmoozing, touring, shopping and noshing. Whereas most of those pasttimes appear, universally, to be concomitant to holiday plans, the list's last item seems to be regarded, in Israel, as a cultural rite/right.

In other words, many indigenous folk, during their hours spent away from learning or earning, fill their time with activities that are neither staid nor commonplace, while concurrently embracing odd sleep schedules and eating strangely. The net effect of such behaviors is considered to be "relaxing."

The nature of "sleeping in," of napping, and of staying up late is understood. The nature of vacation eating habits is not as well comprehended. Let's regard this phenomena together.

First, there's the matter of eating out. To entrepreneurs' delight, some of the shekels families might otherwise guard get spent during nonworking, nonlearning hours on vendors' fare. From pizza and falafel shops to the fanciest resteraunts, around this time of year families often elect to let someone do the cooking.

Second, there's the matter of convenience food. A little informal research shows that no sane head of the house or wife makes the regular effort to cook during these weeks. With the exception of Shabbat and smachot, during this span, many adults are content to allow their loved ones to fill up on chemically-enhanced schnitzels, wurst and sliced meats.

During this period, makolets do a great business in nut butters and the ubiquitous chocolate spread. What's more, the produce stands are doing good business during this season since some families do away with structured meals altogether and merely hand their kids ripe fruit, boiled eggs and bags of snack food.

This last idea brings me to my prime consideration; vacations' effect on the consumption of nosh. Few are the children who do not bellow, or who do not at least meekly pout, during any time of the year for abnormal amounts of ice cream, cookies, wheat or corn-based confections, or chewing gum. Since we adults recognize that such orchestrated cacophony is part of a conspiracy executed by offspring under five feet high (as abetted by their teen siblings), ordinarily we yield little. During holidays, the majority of us are guilty of abandoning nutritional guidelines in favor of quiet.

Accordingly, during the Bein Ha'Zmanim, our children's breakfast might be hamburgers left from the night before, or fruit shakes straight from the blender. We might answer their cries for lunch with a handful of grapes and a can of soda. Dinner could turn out to be popcorn, fresh cucumber slices, and a taste of their father's leftover stir-fried rice. Or, we mind try to pawn them off with fistfulls of chocolate bars.
After all, during vacation meals, too, "ought to be fun."

-Hannah

I just got back from a ten-day seminar that was meant to prepare me for sherut leumi.  The location was great, the other girls there were great, and the counselors were great.  The food was great too, except for someone like me.

I don't eat milk or meat.  I'm a parve-atarian. The salads were great, but there's only so much salad a person can eat.  So I decided to supplement by swiping hummus from the kitchen and eating it with crackers. I didn't really "swipe" the hummus; I simply relieved the lunch table of it, after everyone else had eaten their full. It was a mitzvah, ba'al tashchit, for me to take it so that it wouldn't be tossed with all of the other leftovers.

Once I had secured the hummus, I needed crackers to go with it. Those, too, were easily to acquire. Friends and I, all of whom are geeks, visited a market down the block.

We stood in the middle of the market, mostly oblivious to the other customers, and compared cracker net weights and prices. My non-geek friends, who had trailed behind us, joined us in our discussion and told us that they didn't care how much we spent, as long as we got onion flavor, which was their favorite. 

In truth, the crackers weren't the only snack we bought. At the seminar, our room became known as "snack central." We provided everything from "healthy" granola bars and "yummy" cakes to crackers and hummus. We also had home-baked chocolate cookies. 

One of my friends and I, before the seminar, had made a bet about whose cookies tasted better. Both of us baked cookies and bought them to the seminar. We set them out on plates and asked every visitor to taste both types.

Although I won 13-5, I felt like I lost because after the contest there were no cookies left for me.

Although one might think that a week and a half of nonstop noshing would be tiresome, one would be wrong.  I like nosh. I like to nosh.

I don't really care what I nosh, but I tend to nosh more on junk food since its easier to prepare than healthy stuff. To get potato chips ready, all you have to do is open a bag.  Making tofu involves a wok, a spatula, onions, garlic, soy sauce, mushrooms, bean sprouts, whatever other leftovers are in the fridge, and cleanup. 

Noshing is great to do when you have are bored, or are procrastinating, or both. In fact, since I was procrastinating about writing this blog, I made sushi.

-Becca