The Seasons They Are A Changin'

Two observations about this time of year.

It's back to school in Israel. All of the kids are back out in the street on the way to school. It was really cool on my first day of school to be passing students headed off the same way. Back in Minnesota, there is an issue with starting this early. It has to do with a holdover from agricultural times. Minnesota schools don't start until after Labor Day. From what I gather, this is not the norm in the rest of the USA. Israel is about the same. It's just that time of year, back to the books!

With all of the kids being back in school, tourism season is also over here. This means that when I went the shuk yesterday to get veggies for salad, it was pretty empty for a Friday at mid-day. It also means that the foods available are changing too. Yeah, I know that 8 NIS for a Kilo of cucumbers is still about a dollar per pound, but that's way up from 3 NIS. It also means that the apples have dropped from 15 NIS to 10 and under depending on your vendor. Pomegranates are cheap now too!

Even though I spent years working in the produce department at Byerly's, I never noticed just how crazy it is when you don't have complete access to vegetables across the world. We would deal with seasonal products and price changes. But being a large grocer it was possible to always get fresh produce from somewhere in the world.

I like this idea of only buying seasonally though. It really makes you think about the process it takes to produce what we eat.

One last thing that goes along with the change in season. The weather here has actually been pleasant. Although my fan is always running in my room (I'm trying to dry out the wet wall still, it's a slow process), I don't need it to be comfortable while I sleep. I actually didn't break into a dripping sweat on the way to school on Thursday. Wow!