Ilana-Davita lives in France and blogs Jewish social commentary and recipes. Just today an interview with me went up on her blog, so come and find out a little more about me here.

Spent the entire day at Ichilov Hospital, Tel Aviv, accompanying a friend who underwent brain surgery. She’s recovering and doing well, thank G-d, but I came home sort of wound up. To empty my mind and let the tension go, I clicked on some links on my own blogroll, and re-discovered this quirky, eclectic, Yiddishist blog  – In Mol Aran.

The Chocolate Lady doesn’t post often, but her Pesach Survival Guide is wonderful. If you like humorous, useful foody prose laced with Yiddishisms – go there, gentle reader, go there.

We met at the Mazzarine café on tree-lined Montefiori Street. It’s a Parisian-style patisserie, decorated in a style that recalls the settings of novels by Colette.

The private room we  reserved had a gorgeous crystal chandelier, big, comfortable, cushioned chairs and an ample wooden table. The food (kosher dairy) is fresh and appetizing. The usual quiches, salads, and pasta were on the menu, the difference being that they were obviously hand-made, with care,  each with its little innovative twist.  The pastries looked rich and amazingly decadent. A good setting for six foodies getting to know each other.

The participants were:

Yaelian, of the Finnish Oranges and Honey blog

Irene Sharon Hodes

Liz Steinberg of Café Liz

Sarah Melamed of Foodbridge

Michelle Kemp-Nordell of Baroness Tapuzina

…and myself.

Several other bloggers who had hoped to come couldn’t make it, but we hope to see them at the next meeting, in early March.

We became comfortable with each other quickly, and conversation, irrigated by Dalton Fumé Blanc wine,  flowed uninterrupted till when our orders arrived. Then we fell silent, concentrating on the flavors of the dishes set down before us.

I had gnocchi with artichokes and grilled cherry tomatoes.

Liz had Caesar Salad.

Irène had seared tuna with a scallion pancake and Jasmine rice.

Baroness Tapuzina had consommé with chunks of grilled tuna and strips of pasta.

Yaelian’s quiche and Sarah’s order, which I don’t remember, didn’t photograph well (my little Cannon A750 doesn’t do well at night). I’m hoping that the other bloggers will have better photos.

But we did have a hilarious time photographing each other taking pictures of the food. Well, it was a foodie meeting, what can you do?

The management was amused and intrigued by the flock of noisy women and the bursts of laughter coming from our reserved table. Over the evening, they kindly sent over  a dish new on their menu, gnocchi stuffed with prune preserve and covered in a techinah-based sauce. That dish wasn’t the best of what we tasted: I personally found that the flavors jarred. But my gnocchi with artichokes was very good.

Then the chef, Sharon Artzi, came over to introduce himself and explain the dishes we had ordered.

At dessert time, the management gifted our table with a little extra:

Myself, I had an eclair split open and stuffed with strawberries and cream. An elegant variation on strawberry shortcake.

As much as the lovely setting and delicious food, we enjoyed the exchange of ideas, stimulation, and mutual support. It was a fun, fun evening. I look forward to the next event, and hope you Israeli food bloggers out there join us.

Sarah Melamed of Foodbridge and I will be leading a nature walk through the rocky hillsides close to Kfar Uriyah and the forest near Tarum – on Friday morning, January 8th.  Sarah is a plant biologist with a lifelong passion for nature and I have studied edible and medicinal plants for the past 15 years.

We will meet at 9:300 AM at Nachshon Junction, the intersection of road 44 and 3, about 10 minutes south of Ramla Please bring sensible walking shoes, a field guide if you own one, and plenty of water. The walk will take 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

We hope to show you where the wild things grow. Things like

za’atar

cyclamens

and

flowering almond trees.

Most of these wild edibles and medicinals are protected by law, so it won’t be a foraging expedition but rather an Exploration. Like Winnie the Pooh’s Expedition to the North Pole, only here in Israel.

If you’d like to join us (and you don’t have to be a blogger for this, just a nature lover), email me – my green contact tag floats along the side of the blog on the left. Or email Sarah at Sarah.Melamedatgmaildotcom.

Pareve, meaning a food that’s neither milk-based nor meat, is a useful Kitchen Yiddishism to express something mild or neutral: “Last night’s date? He was nice, but not all that interesting…sort of pareve.” Or: “She’s incredibly misinformed and opinionated – but she’s the boss, so when she talks, I just murmur something pareve and keep my opinion to myself.”
To hock something is to chop it up. As in ge-hockteh herrink, chopped herring. If a person’s troubles are many, you say that they have ge-hockteh tsuris – problems chopped fine. Of course, you know what tsuris are – who doesn’t?
The basic concepts of kosher and treif (non-kosher) are easily applied to people, books, movies, life. A PG-rated movie can be kosher for a mature sort of kid, and not so kosher for a kid less so. A really graphic movie is treif!
Glatt meat undergoes the strictest kashrut supervision. You can describe people’s behavior as glatt too: “I’ll do business with Joe anytime – he’s honest and his company records are glatt – open to anyone.”
Now this an idiom I use but don’t know where it came from. To hock a chynick – teapot. As in: “Again with the trip to Europe? We can’t afford it! Stop hocking me a chynick!”

Certain Yidddish expressions just naturally sit pop into the mind when I’m not even thinking. In my hot chocolate post below, instructions included a shlook of brandy. Yes: a shlook is a dollop, but it’s also a gulp. Like, shlooking Coke right out of the bottle.  Or everyone gathered in the kitchen, cooking together and sneaking an occasional shlook of the cooking wine.

Another juicy Yiddishism is koch-leffel. That’s a soup ladle, but also means a gossipping busybody – someone who’s always stirring up trouble.

Tsimmis. That’s carrots, sweet potatoes, and sometimes beef, all stewed together with honey and dried fruit. It also means a complication, a situation that escalated. Like, “Everybody had a different opinion, and they were all shouting – oy, what a tsimmis!”

There’s shmaltz, of course. Chicken fat rendered with onions. Delicious to cook with, heavenly to spread lightly on a matzah – and so high in cholesterol that it’ll get you to heaven early if you don’t watch it. But apply the word to anything sentimental – that weepy old song, a three-hanky movie. Ever hear Jimmy Durante’s recording of “As Time Goes By?” Shmaltzy – but I love it!

I’ll post more Kitchen Yiddish as it occurs to me. Meantime…

Ah Gut Shabbos!