What Makes the Vegetable Salad Irresistible???

Hi,

Today I decided to deviate from my blog subjects – Art and Jewelry,
 to write about

                                    “Food, Wonderful Food!”

 We, Israelis, are obsessive diners. We eat a lot! Big dishes and big meals!
(If the dish in a restaurant is poorly loaded, I mean – is stylishly arranged,
it is considered  as overcharging and  miserly…)

What is the first question a Jewish mother is asking any family member of hers?

“Have you eaten?”

I admit – I do it all the time, I cannot avoid it…Maybe it derives from
our collective memory of the hard life in the Diaspora...
(Well, it is my uneducated guess).

I am going to write about Making an Israeli Vegetable salad:

This is an exhausting  (yet rewording) process:

- Washing  and peeling the cucumber, and then – cutting it into cubes;
- Washing  and cleaning the tomato, and then – cutting it into cubes;
- Washing  and cleaning the the pepper (red/green/yellow),
   and then – cutting it into cubes;
- Cutting the lettuce into strips;
- Peeling and washing the onion and then – cutting it into cubes;
- Washing  and cleaning the raddishes, and then – cutting it into cubes;

 

Well, it is easier to write it by copy/paste, than making it literally.

And here comes the most annoying stage: making the dressing:

 

-Adding salt;

-Adding lemon juice;

-Adding olive oil;

- Adding  garlic;

Adding and adding and adding!!!

After about thousand  times of making salads  this way, I decided to make a shortcut: I prepare my divine  multi-purpose salad dressing   once a week,and here are my ingredients:(Do not ask me the amounts. A Jewish mother cooks with intuition!)

The relationship between the olive oil and the rest of the ingredients is
 2/3 oil and 1/3 the rest.

 

 

-  Smashed garlic (I use smashed frozen garlic);

-   Salt ( taste the dressing. It has to be really salty
as we put only a small amount of it in the salad);

-    Dried Oregano;

  -   Lemon juice;

  -   Balsamic vinegar  (Just a little for the color and the aroma); 

  -  Olive oil;  

 

 

 

Shake before using,  pour about one table spoon, blend the salad and

 

                                                       Bon Appetite!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

I use it also for frying a fish fillet and a chicken breast.
It is delicious, yummy!

 

P.S.

It is kosher for Passover.

Please try it, and comment below if you like it, and if it makes your life easier...

Vita

 

 

 

 



 

Where are the Leaves?

Last Saturday I trekked in the Carmel Mountains, near Haifa.
(I have being trekking with a group for the last 26 years, once a month.
See  the board of “My Treks” in Pinterest)

We walked through the burnt forest, which was destroyed two years ago,
in a fire that lasted for three days. The view was incredible.
If only 43 people were not burnt alive, it would be even more romantic…

 

It was like walking in an upside down  world :

The  grey-brown colors of the ground were placed up against the clear
blue sky, whereas the green of the usual tree-tops, was placed on the ground .

It reminded  me of  the Romantic  North- European Painting
at the end of the 19^th century.

Caspar David Friedrich, A Tree in Moonlight, ca. 1882

But in contrast to this somber painting, the view was full of joy and life
as the spring blossoming was in its peak.

 

The  annual  red wild flowers which  are  indigenous to Israel were in full bloom.
In fact, it is officially recognized worldwide that Israel has the most  red flowers of these kinds.    

                                    

          

                  But  where were the leaves???

                                   

I would like to introduce my leaves jewel collection,
 as a tribute to the dead trees of the Carmel  Mountain.

We all love trees. We adore their size, their shape, color, even their age
 but we hardly look at their leaves – their smallest component…
 The leaves in my jewelry are the theme.  They are collected from very common trees ,many of which we see along the sidewalks, and in public gardens .
After drying them, they are coated by Sterling Silver  in an electroforming  process which gives them their hardness and preserves their original texture.

In fact, I take the  leaves  out of their original context and from being
small and ignored elements,  I turn them into  autonomous object,
beautiful as they are for themselves - I give them another “life”.
Since they are so trivial, they even can be understood as a metaphor for other trivial and ignored things around us – that we can easily enjoy!!!... 

If you have an idea of a leaf   jewel , I will be more than glad to cooperate.

Leave your comment  below,

Thank you,
Vita

What the Hell is it?

(Knitted Sculpture)

 Today I want to share with you  my  profound  experience,
observing an art object of a young Israeli artist – Gil Yafman.

Gil Yafman, Tumtum, 2012, knitted installation.
Photo: Elad Sarig.

In his somewhat enigmatic object, Gil Yafman  deals with serious
sociological and psychological  topics, wrapped in a colorful,
eye-catching and humoristic cover.

The Hebrew  name of the object - “Tumtum”, is taken from the ancient
Jewish theological codex, the Mishnah, and refers to a human being with
implicit sex organs, which makes his gender identification impossible.

(This is not the case of Hermaphrodite or Androgynous, who has  both
female and male  organs)

Gil is playing with words, because his work deals also with  another word,
linguistically related to “Tumtum”, which is “Timtum”, and the meaning is mental opaqueness,  denial of any unknown or new ideas.

Although the work deals with the social intolerance towards gender variations,
(with which the Artist is personally involved), it refers also to general human
intolerance towards the  exceptional.

Artistically speaking,
 what the hell is this wonderful assemblage of sex organs?

 

Gil Yafman, Tumtum, 2012, knitted installation, detail.
Photo: Elad Sarig. 

As we, the ordinary people, need definitions and labels, in order to decode
the chaos around us, (and in spite of the Artist, who opposes them…)
we cannot avoid asking this question…

Yafman, breaks through several artistic conventions:

The medium of the object is knitting.

The material is  wool and the technique is  basic one-needle knitting.
Both are far from being  traditional sculpture…
Not to mention knitting as a typical feminine handcraft…

Gil Yafman sees in the knitted wool  the softness, the flexibility and
 the warmth of a human skin. The monotonous and routine work of  knitting
 has a therapeutic and relaxing effect (I did experienced it, knitting in the past…)

The outcome - a soft sculpture -  is far beyond a conventional sculpture
and beyond  the usual knitted product!
Even far beyond this “knitted “ bus...

Gil Yafman’s Tumtum is “high” Conceptual Art, implemented by
“low” materials and  low images  which are accompanied by  vulgar and
embarrassing human  biological  sounds…

It is challenging  and astonishing and that  is its attraction!

                    -------------               -------------               -------------

Speaking of knitting, I have found some wonderful works in Etsy shops:

 http://www.etsy.com/listing/65970260
http://www.etsy.com/listing/91239213
http://www.etsy.com/listing/61795801

http://www.etsy.com/listing/78289229
http://www.etsy.com/listing/124668123

http://www.etsy.com/listing/85402943

http://www.etsy.com/listing/99438163
http://www.etsy.com/listing/115359011
http://www.etsy.com/listing/120920591

 

 

Do you like Yafman's Tumtum?

Please write your opinion in a comment below.

Thank you,

Vita