Turkey Day, Oy Vey

So Thanksgiving in Israel was a major success! Five couples were there for the occasion and our friends Beth and David were kind enough to host the affair at their apartment. Cooking a Thanksgiving spread in a tiny Israeli kitchen = seriously challenging. But we were not deterred by a mere square foot or two of counter space and proceeded to churn out quite the Thanksgiving Day spread. On the menu was a nice 13 pound Kosher turkey affectionately nicknamed George W., a salmon fillet (for the vegetarians and turkey haters--Boooooo!!!), stuffing with apples, walnuts and sage, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, faux cranberry sauce made from the only frozen mixed berry concoction that actually contained cranberries (fresh were nowhere to be found), one can of lovely jellied molded like the can cranberries that someone was lucky enough to find randomly at the store a few months prior, homemade buttermilk rolls (the 2nd of the two batches, batch number 1 was a total and complete disaster), pumpkin pie and flourless chocolate cake complete with exploding whipped cream. Dammit. Now I'm hungry again. We stuffed ourselves silly and even the non-Americans and non-Thanksgiving food lovers of the group enjoyed the meal. And it was nice to celebrate the holiday with new and hopefully long lasting friends. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's 25,000 words or so....

Now let me elaborate briefly on our actual Thanksgiving Day, if you will. Our celebration was actually on Saturday, but Phil and I spent Thursday together since he had the day off. I condensed the details of that day in the last post 'cuz hey, I was sure tired of writing by that point so I was sure that you all were tired of reading by then too. But something amusing actually happened that day which will give you a little insight into what one may (okay, we) find so hilarious/frustrating about Israeli culture. So we were headed up to Herzliya (just about 30 min North) to get our hair cut and had planned to stop for lunch before hand. We had heard about a good sushi restaurant there that offers a nice Business Lunch. Almost all restaurants here offer a Business Lunch during the week which is usually a combo with your choice of appetizer or salad, entree and drink for a slightly reduced menu price. To give you the abbreviated version of the lead into the story, we ended up walking out of the sushi place because the business lunch offered absolutely no choices for your type of sushi. Chef's choice only. Which meant that who knows what in the hell you might get. (Now I like sushi a lot, but I'm not that adventurous.) Plus, their prices were outrageous. When you're paying almost fifty dollars for lunch, one expects to at least be given a choice as to what one is paying for. (This is my foreshadowing. You see what I am getting at yet? Key word=choice. Or lack thereof.)

So after we walked out and calmed down, we settled on another restaurant across the street (mostly because by this point we were already going to be late for our appointment) and also because we had heard from several people that it was a great spot for a hamburger. So we headed into Moses. Yes, that's the name of the restaurant. And their icon is a cat. Or was it a dog? I don't get it either. We perused their menu and had decided on our Business Lunch options when the waitress came over. I ordered my healthy, hippie chicken/tofu/mushroom burger concoction (which actually turned out to be super tasty and was served with an absolute mountain of fried onion strings thus totally negating the healthy claim) and Phil ordered the burger recommended by the waitress (a mixture of beef, lamb and veal). Then he asked if they could put cheese on it. (And, no it wasn't a Kosher place. We wouldn't dare ask that in a Kosher restaurant.) The answer was of course, no. Actually, I think her exact word was "impossible". Now this is a word you hear quite often here. Everything here is impossible. (Like the other day when I asked the lady to slice my bacon thin and she said it was impossible to slice it thin because it would fall apart. When just last week (yes, I know I shouldn't eat so much bacon) someone else had sliced it super thin for me without me even asking. In Israel, impossible means no, I don't want to.) So why is it impossible we asked? "It's the chef's creation and he doesn't want to change it. But you can order this other burger (a 100% beef burger) with cheese instead." I'm paraphrasing of course, but it was something equally as lame. So we can have this burger with cheese because it's written on the menu but I can't have you add cheese to this other burger because that's not how you want to serve it? I see....makes total sense. The real kicker though? When the check came they had actually charged us extra for the cheese even though it was on the menu description! Can I get an Oy Vey!?!?!

Now seriously, this is not the first time something ridiculous like this has happened to us. It happens all the time. It's virtually impossible to make a change to a dish in a restaurant or to make any substitutions. Quite different from the US where they will virtually change the whole dish and serve you a pasta dish sans pasta with extra veggies because you are on a stupid lo-carb DIE(t). (Why in the hell are you at the Olive Garden may I ask?) So I don't know why, but we keep trying to make changes to our orders. It never fails though. We ask, and we always get denied. Every damn time. When Phil's cousin Dan was here and we had lunch together we tried to have the side item to our sandwich substituted. Dan, after only being here for two weeks, was like "Why in the hell are you even trying? You know it's so not going to happen." And of course, it didn't. We wanted to get fries with our sandwich instead of a salad. Turns out you can have a salad instead of fries but not fries instead of a salad. (We had to get the manager out to explain this bit of wisdom to us.) And the explanation for why one but not the other? Because vegetables are cheap in Israel. Um, okay.....yeah, true but so are potatoes!!!! Dirt cheap. And a few weeks ago I was out with my friend and her Mom for breakfast. Her Mom and I both ordered a dish with Hollandaise sauce and while she could have her sauce on the side I wasn't allowed because according to the waitress the dish was perfect like it was and the chef wouldn't change it even for the sake of pleasing the customer. Seriously? Oy vey.

Alright, well that's my rant for the day. Well that and I went to the bank today because I got a letter (which I had to have translated for me) that said my bank card had been canceled. Turns out when I picked up my card, oh, say, six months ago they forgot to document it. So they canceled my card because in their system it said I had never picked it up even though I had actually used it in those six months. So they cut it up and I have to pick up a new one on Monday. Seriously. Life here is never boring! And with that I leave you with one more.....Oy Vey!