This one may be the definitive recipe for my family's homemade pizzas from now on a la tonight's experience. All I did was mix one cup of self-raising flour (even skipping the baking powder and cornmeal part of the recipe) with 3/4 cup of Greek yogurt, and voila--not even needing to refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes according to a previously easy yeast-free recipe that I have now misplaced anyway. While the dough was spread out and being pre-baked on top of a coconut oiled cookie sheet, I chopped up tomatoes and garlic, salted and sugared the mixture, and made tomato sauce. After 10 minutes in the oven, I spread the dough surface with a layer of cheese, then the sauce, then another layer of cheese, then chopped up ham slices, pineapple chunks, and orange pepper bits. Bake for another 10 minutes and so, and even the pickiest eater in the center of the world (Declan) ate a whole slice while saying every now and then between bites, "Mmm, good. Mama made it." Hawaiian pizza is surprisingly hard to find everywhere I've been, even in the States, so it's great to be able to make it at home and with all fresh ingredients to boot.
If it seems that I am over-the-top proud of this pizza, a simple Italian peasant food, it's because it's really a culmination--a symbol!--of how far I've come in finally furrowing a cost-efficient, organic, good-quality, non-kosher containing path into the puzzling realm that had been grocery shopping in Israel. For a time, I was a weekly customer of an organic CSA farm that delivers a week's worth of produce right up to my door. This had been an invaluable help when I was living on the third apartment level sans elevator in the middle of the cruel Middle Eastern summer, heavily pregnant with Petra. Vegetables in the supermarkets are notoriously high in pesticide level due to some ridiculous kashrut logic, are for the most part under- or over-ripe, and are extremely overpriced compared with their counterparts at the shuk. However, the shuk is two bus rides away, and given our circumstances, not a sustainable source for my mental welfare.
The benefit of the CSA, then, was that good-quality organic ingredients basically comes to my doorstep for the fairly low cost of 130 shekels per week. The downside is that the delivery is often filled with produce that I don't really know how to cook with or even like to eat. It's great that the box got me into the habit of Israeli salad-eating, but that's mainly due to my cluelessness on how else to get rid of such an influx of tomatoes, cucumbers, and parsley every damn week. These three things, you would find, are Israeli staples the way ginger/garlic, soy sauce, and green onions are expected in Chinese cooking. And rendering my American-raised husband and toddler son de facto vegetarians seem a bit mean. I personally started craving bacon and pork just because being told I can't have something makes it oh so desirable.
After about 11 months of making do, I finally took advantage of the facts that (1) Declan being in gan means I don't need to herd an at-times uncooperative and motion-sickness prone toddler with me on bus rides and (2) Petra is still fairly content to be just looking around as I wear her about town to explore the rumors of cheaper organic produce and markets that sell pork and seafood that goes beyond just salmon and tuna. I got lost several times, made more money errors, was cowed by less-than-friendly vendors who clearly scorn non-Hebrew/Russian/Arabic speakers... and survived!
You have no idea how happy I am to be roasting some bacon in Israel
It's really nice that, in Israel, organic produce cost about the same as conventionally farmed produce. So why not eat organic? Especially when one has young children whose bodies are even more sensitive to chemicals, not to mention the effects on soil and water quality, etc. The problem has been that conventional farmed produce is still more commonly sold here, but now that I know where I can go, it's worth the needing to ride on various buses and scheduling shopping on separate days of the week. In the end, I also save a lot more money. Cost of living here is, whew, so high.
No wonder when, as a tourist four years ago, I asked Daniel's childhood friend, Mark, what he misses most about the US since he made aliyah three (at that time) years ago, he said, "Places like Target and Costco...being able to get what I need just by going to ONE place." At the time, I thought that sentiment was "so American", since Taiwan has a similar culture as what tourist-me had observed in Israel--lots of little shops and open-air/narrow-alleyed marketplaces. Then again, even in Taiwan, I wasn't the one providing for the day-to-day needs of the family while trying to make our income stretch for as far as it can go. One of those things one must live to understand.
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