My life in an Arab-Israeli Kitchen, Part 21

Since I didn't actually have to work in the kitchen this last weekend, I suppose this is a good week to catch up on some things I meant to post on, but never got around to.  (That was a lot of misused prepositions.  Oh well.)

Ready for some random and unrelated stories?  (It's okay, in this kitchen, random is the norm.)

One of the joys of the kitchen is our gas stove.  And by "joys", I really mean "terrors."  Those of us who work there regularly have more or less figured out decent methods to light the stove without getting hair singed off various body parts, but others are not always so adept.

Oh.  I should specify.  These gas burners have no pilot lights or automatic lighters built into them.  No. The only way to light them is to turn them on fully and add a lighted match (by whatever method you deem safest).  And for some of these burners, "fully on" means flames a foot or two high.  It's not for the faint of heart.

Ok, really, it's not that bad.  Though I admit, sometimes some less experienced help with various things in the kitchen...and I cringe when I see them trying to figure out a way to light the stove.  It's a bit nerve-wracking.

Anyway, the real fun of lighting the burners is found in the matches:

I'm not quite sure WHY, but for some reason someone always seems to find that the best place for used matches is BACK IN THE BOX.  I mean, I suppose it's logical.  One thinks to oneself, "Hmm...I have a small stick that was recently on fire.  What to do with it?  Ahh!  I know, I'll put it in this flammable box with other small sticks that can easily start on fire!  That way, if it's still secretly smoldering, I'll know, because the whole small box will go up in flames!  And if it is really fully extinguished, I'll be sure to grab it next time I go looking for an unlit match.  It will ensure that I have to spend a few extra moments searching for a usable match, thus perfectly contributing to the general inefficiency of the kitchen."

Okay, I admit, it doesn't really seem logical to me either, but it is one more thing to laugh at. :)

In addition to the working burner in our stove area (only about half of them actually work, of course) we have this small grill.  It's a perfectly good grill, and is shown here being used for tortillas on a day when I had fewer people and more time.  It's just funny in that it's about 1/4-1/3 of the size of ONE of the grills we have at camp...and I'm pretty sure it's never been thoroughly cleaned in its life.  Any crewboys want to volunteer to come help in my kitchen here?  I could sure use you.

One of the fun things about Israel is all the different fruits and vegetables that are readily available here.  Two of the fruits below you will all no doubt easily recognize.  Yes, those are apples (probably golden apples) and oranges.  Any guesses on what the other fruit is?  :)  It LOOKS like an orange, but it's quite different.

One thing that I both love and hate about working in the kitchen here is...well...how to say it...the randomness of the ingredients and situations that you'll have to work with.  While I can make requests for items, I have very little control or knowledge of what will be available week to week.  Necessity is indeed the mother of invention...but it can also be the mother of the little children called "Stress" and "Panic."

Still, after the day is over and Stress and Panic have been dealt with and are off in a corner behaving, it can be kind of fun to look back on what necessity has lead to.

One week we were out of flour.  And white sugar.  It wasn't an insurmountable problem, but it was limiting.  Especially for breakfast.  But also for dinner - because I do try to make the students feel at home and happy, and that generally includes some sort of dessert.

At any rate, the lack of flour made me decide (don't ask me to explain the reasoning...just trust me that there was some) to experiment with making ricotta cheese.  It turns out it's pretty simple - and tasty - and much cheaper and better than buying ricotta (at least in Israel), and I've done it a couple times since.  It requires:

Milk (which comes in a box here) and pot and a stove,

 Warm the milk and add acid, in this case vinegar:

 Here you see the curds beginning to form.

Drain it gently, and here's the end result:

 (If you want a more specific recipe, many can be found on the web.  Most of them are pretty similar.)

It was a fun experiment - the scientist in me approved.  And the kitchen is always good for encouraging such creativity.

Of course, my lack of control in the kitchen can also lead to some fun finds.  Like this year we apparently started getting some pork products from Beit Jala.  (No, our kitchen is not kosher.)  How fun to open the freezer and find bacon and ham!  While the bacon is not quite like bacon back home, it's still bacon!  And this bacon made these baked beans for our Easter BBQ a little more special and home-like:

 And this "star sausage" is close enough to pepperoni for us pizza-hut-missing Americans:

It's the little things like that: discovering new ways of making food and the appreciation of people that miss American food, that make work in the kitchen fun and worth it.

Wandering Turkey

I've been physically home in Montana for nearly a week now, but a part of my mind seems to still be wandering around Turkey, because every morning when I wake up, I realize that's where my dreams have taken me: wandering Turkey, in search of...something.  Sometimes food, sometimes confused dream searches, but always wandering Turkey.

It really isn't that surprising when you consider that the last 22 days  (or so) of my life previous to arriving home were spent doing just that: wandering around Turkey in search of...something.  (And an additional week was spent wandering Greece in search of similar things).  

More often than not we were in search of food.  Cheap food.  Sometimes we would wander for hours, up one street and down the next, pausing occasionally to check prices on a menu.

"Not bad,"  one might say.  "Wanna stop here?"

"Mmm, whatever," the other might reply.  "I'm not starving yet.  Why don't we walk down this street a little further and if we don't find something better we can come back."

"Okay."

Eventually we would get so hungry we would have to pick a place. 

Sometimes we would wander in search of a specific type of food.  One time we wandered down toward the Galata Bridge area, in search of fish sandwiches (balik ekmek).  We must have walked past every booth that sold those sandwiches before we finally went back and got one at one of the first places we passed.

Other times we would search for a specific grocery store or restaurant.  Our first day in Istanbul, wandering mostly aimlessly, we happened upon a grocery store which had peanut butter, a substance which apparently doesn't exist in Greece and barely exists in Turkey.  Our rejoicing was great.  However, it took us several tries and more than one hour of wandering to find that market again on a different day.

When I finally found it again, I took pictures to make sure I would recognize it.

It was not uncommon for us to go in search of a specific place: a bus station, a hostel, or a museum or other tourist site.  Many of these places were actually labeled on maps, which didn't always decrease our wandering time.  I was usually the navigator on these expeditions (by virtue of being the only one who paid attention to where we were going) and using a combination of maps and GPS, I usually managed to make our wandering last at least an hour longer than necessary.  Not that it was entirely my fault.  Some places were mislabeled on the maps and other places had enough windy streets that you could be close to your destination and totally miss it as your little street wound in the opposite direction.  Eventually, though, we always managed to get to the right place.  

We passed some interesting areas as we wandered in search of the Spice Market (having missed the right street),

but eventually we found it:

Sometimes we wandered just for fun, seeing what there was to see,

in the city, 

A house in Istanbul - with the laundry out to dry

in the country, 

A more rural place in Cappadocia

and even in historical cities.  

Ruins in Hieropolis

Other ruins in Olympos

Sometimes we would pause to watch the sunsets,

In Istanbul

and Goreme

or the bird circling the mosque after dark,

Sometime we'd stop to laugh about the things we found, like the "Underpants Street of Istanbul,"

or a water park with two small slides and a hose,

We'd often pause to admire the view

...or to admire the view while trying to find the trail we were looking for,

or to eat ice cream

or watch the moon rise.

In Antalya

and in Olympos

Sometimes we would wander around in the wilderness, hiking, exploring,

Pigeon Valley near Goreme

Part of the Lycian Way near Olympos

even stopping to play with the occasional tortoise.  

Sometimes we even wandered around shopping areas (though we did very little actual purchasing), always searching for a slightly better deal on the few items we wanted.

All in all, I guess it's a good thing I like wandering.  

Photographing Wildlife

Animals, wild and domestic, abound in and around this town nestled in the Rocky Mountains.  As one would expect, then, wildlife photography is a vital pass-time in the area.  Some wildlife are more amenable to having their pictures taken than others.  

It seems, though, that animal sightings are not plentiful enough for the inhabitants.  Or perhaps they just love the animals so much that they can't bear to go one day without seeing them?  Whatever the reasons, the town also abounds with animals that are not now, nor have ever been, alive.  No.  In reality, most of them are more 'mineral' than 'animal.'  

Banks seems to be one of the main perpetrators of this curious trend.  There is the "Elk Bank,"

the "Deer Bank,"

and the "Antelope (pronghorn) Bank."

Subdivisions, especially newly-started-and-now-mostly-abandoned subdivisions, seem to offer a good market for these statues as well.   The bull with cows motif works for both subdivisions below.  The small adjustment in species helps keep the idea fresh.  

One subdivision prefers the use of a mother bear and her cubs, though.  

There do seem to be some species that are more commonly displayed than others.

Joining the bank and subdivision in the Elk's Club (not the one on Babcock) is a sporting goods store with this bugling elk:

(It does seem, oddly, that bull elk are generally more popular to display than cows, and they are always portrayed as they appear during the fall and winter seasons.  I think a successful discrimination suit could probably be filed here.)

The bovine club seems to have a popular following too.  The sighting of elk is rare enough to make the desire to display fake elk slightly more understandable, but I fail to understand the attraction of fake cows.  I suppose they don't smell as funny as real ones, but that's hardly seems to be enough of an attraction to justify their prevalence in the valley.  Nevertheless, they do prevail.  These three appear to be ice skating around a large barn.

This particular cow is eternally visiting the library.  One does have to give his creator kudos for creativity in the use of the varied gears and such.

These two concrete oxen appear to be plowing up someone's front yard with a concrete pioneer woman.

A cow can even be found painted on the side of a building.  

Bears are also quite common and, again, not just found at failed subdivisions.  Here two cubs appear to be successful in their quest for honey.

Metal bears, while not uncommon, are no match for the wooden bears that can be found all over the state.  This one ensures the success of the restaurant he advertises.  After all, who wouldn't want to buy food and ice cream from such an adorable bear?  While it must be admitted that wooden bears are not nearly as good at actually living as real bears, they are far more successful in the advertisement business.  

The local airport also sports a bear...

...along with various geese trying to show the airplanes the proper way to fly, a large cat of some sort leaping from a fake rock ledge, another large cat guarding the baggage claim...

...and a T-Rex skull.  

Nor is this the only place where such long-extinct animals find a second life.  Another monster of ancient times presides at the Museum of the Rockies...where he occasionally makes an attempt to eat the flag.  

The museum also has a horse, which is also a fairly common animal to form out of bronze and display.

Here a horse and his rider plod through the snow in a local park.  

Some horses (made of unknown materials) are also quite successful in the advertisement business, acting as mascots for stores in the area.

Though elk, cows, bears, and horses are among the most popular animals to display, they are by no means the only ones.  Some of the other sculptures fit into the general motif of Montanan animals like this moose in someones yard

 and these fish at the library.

Some even include humans engaged in Montanan activities like fly-fishing.

(I think he's probably after the library fish, or possibly their cousins.)

Others wander into the bizarre and eclectic like this primate on a motorized bike

or this Einstein dancing with a crane.  

There are even a few sculptures that imitate members of the plant kingdom:

Of course, the wonder of all these sculptures doesn't take anything away from the joy of actually seeing living, breathing animals.  Unbothered by their imitations, they still wander the area, making us hold our breath and walk quietly in wonder and awe whenever we see them.