Pesach in Karmiel – Not even a bean.

I was planning on blogging last Thursday night after my TWO HOUR trip round supersol in the Big, but instead I came home and collapsed in an exhausted heap on the sofa. TWO HOURS and over 1,000 shekel later and I still hadn’t found what I wanted!! I still came out minus ground almonds, spices and various other things. I thought pesach shopping in Israel would be dead easy, I means its all in special Kosher for Pesach aisles surely?? Nope. Instead Supersol had this sort of animal vegetable mineral system that made no sense whatsoever. They hadn’t even bothered to put all the K for P stuff together. There was a random section of it near the back but even that had mixed up the kitniyot and non-kitniyot. Then there was this weird labelling – some of it on the actual label, some of it printed on, some of it IN CODE [ok it was in shorthand but it was ten o’clok at night – who is awake enough to work that out??] then there was at least 3 ways of writing in ivrit whether or not it contained kitniyot, then there was some other pesach “thing” that I had to call my frum friend in Jersusalem to translate and explain [if you don’t know about it then pretend you never read this] and then there was a load of stuff not labelled kosher for pesach but is apparantly “fine” according to People In the Know. Oh and there was some symbol proclaiming that certain foods were kosher for “erev pesach” or some such claptrap. To top it all off there were women handing out free yoghurt samplings as per usual who didn’t actually know what kitniyot were, even if they had got up and bitten them on the bum.

After all this I had to shove my VERY HEAVY trolley out to the car [parked half a mile away, because the whole of Karmiel and its dog decided to do its pesach shopping last Thursday night] and after I had unpacked the thing and hoofed it back to the return point [every 5 shekel counts you know] I texted my Israeli friend to tell her how ridiculous it was only to be informed that there is apparantly a special shop in Tsfat that is kitniyot free…

For goodness sake.

At least in Flax’s in Bushey we never had to worry about this! In all the shops there was a pesach section and a non-pesach section and more recently a kitniyot section and that was that. No bother. If you want to avoid kitnoyot in the North of Israel you need a PhD in Judaism Through the Ages and you probably need a decoder and possibly logarithms.

The most ridiculous thing out of all of this is that a respected Rabbi has recently come along and told us all that we don’t have to bother. [well Husband and I said that years ago but nobody listened to us did they?? ;-)] so who knows maybe next year they will do away with the whole business.

The good news is that you can just shop as you usually do and not end up with a load of nasty pesach products that you would never use during the year. One major advantage of aliyah I would say.

One of my ethiopian neighbours recently informed me that her mum doesn’t bake on pesach coz she’s too scared of anything accidentally rising. It occured to me that the sight of a “pesach roll” would probably send her into a state of shock. I mean here we are, being so careful not to come into possible contact with the barge pole of a bean and yet we bake cakes and rolls without batting an eyelid. Which makes me think that we are perhaps more than a little crazy. I mean their way seems far more in the spirit of things but what do I know???

Happily I went to the local Mazon Yehuda today and managed to find a load of things, no trouble. Cost a bloody fortune though. I am sure they hike up the prices for no reason whatsoever.

In other news Jojo and Little Roni have taken to matza very well. Jojo in particular enjoys being arty with it, which seems to be a universal thing amongst children from what I have seen. I mean surely that forked design pattern is just asking for trouble? How can they possibly not play with it??! Roni, who often eats semi-naked understandably gets completely covered in crumbs and hence brings a whole new meaning to the term Matzo Balls. Anyway neither of them seem to notice the absence of bread or anything else so no need to go out and buy that nasty pesach pasta which seems to be the most horribly exploitative product I have seen since some bright spark invented baby rice.

For anyone who was deeply concerned about my Continually Crap Cleaners situation you will now be relieved to know that the move towards a Russian worked out very well. In fact I now have Magda from SITC working for me. (remember her? the one who arranged Mirandas condoms for her?) She is smashing, hardworking, efficient, was thank goodness born with a brain, full of initiative yet doesn’t tell me what to do and takes genuine pride in her work. I had all but given up til I met her. If it hadn’t been for Kristina my beauty lady I would never have found her. Never underestimate the importance of local knowledge.

The weather erev pesach here was blindingly hot, so much so that I imagine people living in flats must have had sky-rocketing air con bills just to get throught the cleaning & cooking. Luckily our house is still nice and cool but I am sure it must have been a sharav. Can’t be normal to have a tropical seder night. In fact I am sure we did not leave Egypt during a sharav because if we had I imagine 4 Mojitos would have been selected as the traditional seder night beverage.