| Ranch Dressing on Your Falafel? |
|
| Written by Megan Brown | |||||
| Monday, 20 February 2006 | |||||
|
A Rumination Sometimes, my memories of Israel are hazy. I cannot remember what the Jerusalem hotel in which we stayed looked like. I forget the faces of the IDF soldiers I found so handsome. Other times, my memories are clear. I remember the woman at the Western Wall who told my mother I would die unless she tied a red string (only one dollar) around my wrist. And I remember choosing what ingredients should go in my falafel sandwich. Last month, I went with two friends – one who went on a birthright trip in December and one a gentile from Wisconsin – to Pita Pete’s, a chain that boasts healthful, moderately priced pita sandwiches roughly the size of a deflated soccer ball. The charm of Pita Pete’s is that they let you choose your own pita ingredients. Some of the ingredients brought me back to the Israeli joints where I devoured falafel. Some ingredients, like the selection of meats that could be added to the pita, were distinctly un-Israeli. My Wisconsin friend went ahead as the girl who went on birthright and I stared at the menu and into the cases, trying to pick out what had been available in Israel. Finally, I was ready. One scoop of hummus, a couple smashed up falafels, some pickles, lettuce and tomatoes, and a squirt of tahini from a squeeze-bottle later and my pita sandwich was wrapped in foil and ready. Then I overheard my friend’s order: “Keep going with the hot sauce. They eat it so spicy in Israel.” Really? I thought. My G-d, I’ve forgotten. It was bad enough that I already felt unsure if a pita needed both hummus and tahini. Bad enough that I was not sure if I really had lettuce and tomato in my Israeli pita. Bad enough that I questioned the ratio of pickle to falafel. I forgot hot sauce. Was my memory of falafel as faded as the faces of soldiers on the streets of Tel Aviv? I lamely asked my server to add some more and trudged to our table, defeated. What did my gentile friend choose? I asked her. Ranch dressing, among other things. This, I was fairly sure, I never had in Israel. And I felt better already.
Powered by !JoomlaComment 3.12 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved. |
|||||