Dept. of Falafel: No means ... Maybe?

After sporadic calls and occasional email dispatches, a solid technological communications link was finally established between Eugene, Or and Beersheba, Israel - effectively tethered between two pearly white early-model Apple iBooks, half a world apart.

Special Middle East Foreign Correspondent Jessica L. Mauer spent more than an hour on iChat Audio describing her experiences thus far in Israel. Continued...

Mauer has found Israelis to be exceedingly friendly, almost to fault. She said they rarely seem capable of just calling it quits.

"This is an entire country built on the presumption that 'no' means 'maybe' and 'maybe' means 'yes,'" she said.

She also reports that she is single-handedly producing 75 percent of the country's ENTIRE supply of ice cubes in her freezer (which, incidentally is one of the those crappy icebox models that consumes your entire refrigerator with a steadily growing frost). Iced beverages and ice water are reportedly very hard to come by outside of her apartment.

Mauer said she has also noticed some other culinary shortfalls.

"There is, like, no ethnic or cultural foods here at all. You go to the mall and every single booth is falafel and schwarma," Mauer said. "Zero diversity. No mexican food, no pasta, no Thai, no Indian. It's getting freaking crazy."

Jeramie Bloom, Mauer's roommate piped in on the conference call.

"Yeah," Bloom said. "I am dying for a burrito."

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The New iPod "Impossibly small"

Apple dropped 'da other bomb today. The Nano (see right) has replaced the popular candy-colored Mini, and after months of speculation the iTunes/Motorola "Rokr" phone was suddenly official. The Nano, which seems to have stolen Rokr's fire, measures 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27-inch and will be available in 500 song/2GB and 1,000 song/4GB capacities, a 1.5-inch color display. The headphone jack is on the bottom (weird), and it presently comes in solid black or white, but it's got a lot of nice new features and it's just SO DAMN small! Continued...

Priced at $199 for the 500-song model and $249 for the 1000-song version, it's got a click wheel, "Up to 14 hours of battery life," and uses USB instead of the standard Firewire.

Apple also announced a new version of iTunes with new capabilities, but I'm still drooling over the Nano too much to care.

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Foodie Fridays: Breakfast Brulee

I had an amazing breakfast dish on Sunday. So simple one could easily whip up servings for 10 in a half hour, and yet so flexibly elegant it would not be out of place at a semi-formal brunch or for a cold Saturday morning with the significant other.

Spokane has an extremely small, but deviously devoted foodie community and with no Trader Joe's in sight (Seriously, the closest is four hours away in Seattle. Don't even. I know. Sigh.) the gastronomic faithful turn to Huckleberry's* Natural Market. The store is very Whole Foods-ish, but it's actually owned by the smaller more conventional supermarket chain Rosauers (pronounced rose-ours' - not like dinosaurs) and it has an inexpensive, yet delicious cafe which makes this mystery breakfast dish. Continued ...

The 9th Street Bistro makes something called "Brulee" (noticeably sans accent) which basically amounts to glorified oatmeal, but the sum of the parts is oh-so-much better than oatmeal:

Brulee - $4.99
Rolled oats, dried apples, apricots, figs, and walnuts, and a caramelized sugar top. Served with Maple syrup and cream.

While this doesn't exactly need a recipe, there are a lot of things a cook can tinker with; the fresh-to-dried fruit ratio, the types of fruit, the types of nuts, the cut of the oatmeal, etc. The key to this dish was that the oatmeal was actually rather firm and not overcooked - al dente. The fruit and nuts were mixed-in, sugar was sprinkled on top and quickly bruleed leaving the dish a very satisfying crunchy contrast. Another nice touch was the small glass that was half maple syrup and half milk (with the milk floated on top of the syrup). Unfortunately no cameras were present and I was too hungry to wait, so no pictures of the dish survive.

*"Huckleberry's" is not a reference to the famous Twain character, but actually to a real berry. Yes, I too thought the huckleberry was a myth - merely a blueberry by different nomenclature, but friends I can now tell you a blueberry tastes as much like a huckleberry as a strawberry tastes like a snozberry.

Er, all jokes aside, huckleberries are a regional specialty which have never been successfully domesticated and are EXTREMELY fragile. They barely make it from the woods to local markets before they collapse into a bag of juice, which explains why it costs 12 dollars for a half a pint. All this being said, they make excellent pies and jams and have a slightly medicinal woodsy flavor. Sweet but very raw.

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Guerre des sexes

I took some time today to sit in the coffee-shop downtown and read the New York Times online, sip a cappuccino from a non-paper cup (a real saucer!) and, in sitting next to a group of women around my age, I realized that the sexes are two completely different animals in every possible manner.

They spoke so completely different then a group of men - they even spoke completely different from how they speak to men. Until today, I did not think it was possible for one to have a "craving for something" for "over a month without really knowing" what one is craving. Let alone, I did not realize that was a problem of a significance requiring a 20-minute conversation. Continued ...

To say that women's conversation is frivolous is sexist, and I am not saying anything of the sort, my observations are much more benign in nature. I was simply surprised by just how utterly alien the topics that three women might discuss seemed to me.

I'm in the final stretch here in Spokane. I started packing this morning and the plan is to leave a week from today. In the words of a bygone era: my arms are yearning for the touch of my fair femme du Portland.

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