Buying pumpkin in Israel 101

I woke up this morning feeling all inspired to be healthy (after eating a billion and one pastries on our Jerusalem weekend) and decided to make myself my favourite veggie soup - pumpkin! Hurrah!  I walked myself to the supermarket but to my utter horror and despair they were fresh out of pumpkin.  Now, pumpkin isn't really something that you can really replace if you're trying to make yourself pumpkin soup, so disaster had really struck.

After reviewing my options (including attempting to make some sort of broth pumpkin soup sans pumpkin), I decided that my best chance would probably be to visit my trusted veggie man.

Now I'll admit, I've never seen pumpkin on his veggie shelves before but he really was my last chance if I wasn't going to abort my pumpkin soup mission.  After getting my groceries at the supermarket, I popped over to his store and asked him whether he had any pumpkin in the hope that it was out the back or hiding under a palate of onions or something.  And, thanks be to G-d, he replied yes and called his fellow veggie man (we will call him veggie man B for the purposes of this story) from the back to help me.

To my surprise, the pumpkin had been there all along basically staring me in the face under one of his veggie shelves and it was legit the size of a two year old child.  Veggie man B bent down to face the small child pumpkin and pulled out his carving knife (I am not kidding) as veggie man A asked me how much pumpkin I wanted.  A little shocked, I sort of motioned a decent square sized piece of pumpkin and bam - veggie man B cut me up a fresh slice of pumpkin and handed it to me upwrapped all ready to be taken home and turned into soup.  

So.... basically ... pumpkin shopping complete (of course I had my phone out the entire time to document this experience because it was too amazing).

I guess it goes to show that if you don't ask, you'll never know.

**pumpkin soup was a massive success.

MM x

It's storming in Israel!

Today, Israel experienced a decent winter storm with wind, thunder, lightening, rain and hail.  This, is a fairly normal occurrence in Israel during the winter butttttttt this was the first decent storm in a while so Israel sort of went nuts.

For example:

• There were at least 10 kids missing from each of my classes today because of the storm;
• Posts were all over Facebook about the death of umbrellas, whether people should go to work and requesting fellow ark builders; and
• News story after news story about how we all needed to prepare for power outages and objects flying through the streets.

In saying that, it did snow in Jerusalem which is only meant to happen every couple of years (and it snowed last year).  So schools and roads were closed in Jerusalem and they mobilised their fleet of 150 snow plows to take to the streets to clear the snow.  But in Rishon, it was just your average mildly serious winter storm.

There were no school or road closures here :( which meant I was at school today but it ended early because there were so few students (#lessstruggle).  It was easy enough to get the bus home but on the 20m walk to my house from the bus stop I got violently hailed on.  It was quite painful tbh.  Tiny pellets of ice coming at me from every angle.  I was legit running down my street holding my umbrella and screaming.  It would have been quite the sight.  And honestly, I'm surprised I made it home in one piece.

The after math of my near death hail experience

Tiny pellets of pain

I followed this up with a visit to my host families house for some much earned beef stew for lunch and a game of Jenga, the perfect rain time activity.

 

Then, after braving the cold to get home again, I baked some winter-inspired chocolate chip cookies, if I don't say so myself.  They were butter-free and had walnuts in them so were very healthy.

MM x

Jerusalem in photos (and a few words)

Mum and I spent today walking around the Old City of Jerusalem.  The Old City is incredible.  It is reminiscent of Rome (not that I really know what that would have been like but you can just imagine).

We started off with a crowd favourite - the Western Wall:

My Mum then did the tour of the Western Wall tunnels, which I did a few months ago so I spent my time at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  My understanding is that the Church is considered by many to be the place where Jesus was crucified and buried, but all that aside, it is absolutely beautiful:
We then hit up my favourite place ever for dinner - Machane Yehuda Market (the shuk) which is still hustling and busting up until about 9pm:



Seeing as it's the first night of Hanukkah (chag sameach to you all!) we saw quite a few menorahs with the first candle lit on our walk to the market.  It's really amazing to be in Jerusalem for this Jewish holiday because you really see people celebrating it everywhere.  It's such a change from Australia:

Beer menorah

We saw a lot of outdoor menorahs

All in all, a successful day of sightseeing.

MM x

Tel Aviv in photos (and a few words)

I had today off #yay so I started off my day by walking around Floretin - Tel Aviv's hipster neighbourhood aka the dream:

Followed by lunch near the Shuk at The Bun.  The Bun does incredible Asian food.  I had fish bao.  It was truly 10/10.

Followed by my first winter israeli strawberries! Strawberries in Israel are like strawberries on crack - unbelievably sweet and delicious.

MM x

Winter in Israel

It's finally getting cold in Israel.  This is a massive change because up until last week, we were rocking out at 26 degrees Celsius in the middle of the day.  Due to those blazing hot days though I wasn't really expecting Winter and I wasn't really expecting it to be this bad.

Winter here means rain though which is a massive change from home.  Being from Brisbane, it usually rains fairly wildly in summer and then winter is mildly cold but nothing too bad.  Melbourne of course is a different story but Winter slowly rolls over so you can sort of prepare yourself for it. 

Here it is torrential flooding followed by freeze with a dash of wind.  People tell me it only lasts for a few weeks but I am freezing.  Mostly because everything I packed is super light and the houses / buildings are not built for it.  And I really mean that.  Inside feels about 20 degrees colder than outside.  Thank God for space heaters and my puffer jacket.

Anyways, that's my complain over.  My Mum is coming to visit in two weeks and I couldn't be more excited! (She's also bringing me jackets, jumpers and my fav beanie so that will help).

 

Thanks to DT for taking this photo - me and one
of the housemates battling the floods on Sunday.

MM x