Reading Response: FOOD

I love food. I really, really love food. I love reading about it, I love taking pictures of it, I love making it, I love sharing it, and I love eating it. I come from a family where food is everything: I've been helping aunts and uncles since I was five, I am well versed in the names of a wide variety of foods in several languages, and at reunions, the person you're looking for is always in the kitchen-- cooking, eating, or, most likely, both.

Israeli and Palestinian food, however, are not cuisines about which I was previously very well informed. I eat hummus practically everyday but that's about the limit of my knowledge, so I have been glued to the Jerusalem cookbook that Noura lent me over the weekend. Much of the food resonates with what I love best about any dish: fresh, simple ingredients with lots of fruits and vegetables. I have already spent many hours kneading, chopping, and simmering, and I am excited to share my final project in a few weeks.

As for this week's reading/watching assignments, much of the same rings true. Learning about food makes me happy (and itching to try it!), and the articles with their vibrant pictures inspired me all the more. One video link seems to have been taken down, but the one I did watch, "Beyond Falafel", frustrated me. While it did an excellent job celebrating the diversity of Jewish cuisine in Israel, discussion of the discrimination against both Mizrahi and Palestinians was entirely absent. To be fair, the video is about food, not racial stereotypes. Still, I felt as though it was inappropriate to mention these groups (although Palestinians were simply referred to as 'Arabs' without specifying) and give the impression that there is no tension with the Ashkenazic population. To use these conflicts as examples of the bridges that are being built from the love of food would have been a welcome addition.

Questions:
What food-- Israeli, Palestinian, or both-- would you like to try most?
Do you agree with me about the absence of mention about problems in Israel? What was your opinion of the video?