Foraging for kosher food

The worst moment of every day when traveling outside of Israel in areas not exactly overrun with Jews, is that moment when you realize that it's time to feed your kids. It's sort of like a modern day foraging experience. You can always eat fruits and vegetables, but let's be honest here. How many times in the course of a day do your children beg for cucumbers or bananas? Exactly.

And after the 20th bag of cut carrots, even they start to lose their je ne sais quoi.

When traveling in the UK there is the comfort of knowing that you can eat Cadbury products until you puke. But as delicious as all those variations on chocolate are, you can't honestly create a serious diet on Cadbury alone. Two days of nothing but Cadbury and you will start to feel like a bag of sugar dirt. (I know that there is no such thing as sugar dirt, but you know what I mean.)

Eventually the average person needs some protein. And that's where smoked salmon comes into the picture. I love smoked salmon. The problem is that after eating it pretty much daily for two weeks, it starts to grow off you. Add to that the fact that you have to eat it with really crappy mass produced bread -- the only brand of bread that is kosher in England -- and the smoke salmon starts to lose its taste. And add to that that you might have to eat it on a cheap plastic plate with cheap plastic cutlery, at a picnic table in the middle of nowhere, and the whole culinary experience has gone down the drain.

When I was a kid, smoked salmon was a treat. I grew up on the edge of the ocean (no, not literally) where someone was always smoking a salmon. I never expected to eat it 24/7 and now I know why. A treat is no longer a treat if it becomes part of your daily routine.

Paris was only slightly better because it's hard to beat a fresh bagette or butter croissant. But man cannot live on bagettes and buttered croissants alone unless man wants to gain a ton of weight and clog his arteries.

Which brings me to my grocery store in Ra'anana. Living in Israel for the past seven years, I have long since forgotten what is involved in being kosher outside of Israel. I have 20 aisles of kosher food at my finger tips in my small grocery store alone. I don't have to check the labels; I don't have to look for the kosher symbols; I don't need a degree in food chemistry just to buy a food item. In fact, I would actually have to go out of my way to find non-kosher food.

I once wandered into what I thought was a regular grocery store, only to pick up a can of lobster bisque near the entrance. My stupid first reaction was: "wow, how did they find a way to make a kosher lobster bisque?" It took me a good 30 seconds to figure out that I was in the only non-kosher grocery store in Ra'anana. So much for my temporary lobster thrill.

But the reality is not bad at all. When there is no unkosher food around, you don't even think about it. And after seven years of having more than enough choice, I have lost my creative foraging skills and I have learned to expect to eat at a real table.