Food in Israel

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One of my favorite things in Israel is the food!
I LOVE food, and every country and culture has its own unique type of food. Israel is no exception!

In the Bible, God promised to bring the Israelites into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. The seven biblical fruits of Israel are:
  • Wheat
  • Barley
  • Grapes
  • Figs
  • Pomegranates
  • Olives
  • Dates
Although these 7 fruits are the 7 special fruits of Israel, but there are also lots of other delicious food in Israel! In this post, I will focus more on food in Israel, and I will talk about fruits in Israel in another post. There is too much delicious food in Israel than can be contained in 5 blog posts. For this reason, I will only include the favorite of our favorite foods in Israel.

Something Sweet

I enjoy sweets the most, so let's begin our food tour with something sweet!
Israel is very rich in milk and dairy products. It's truly a land flowing with milk and honey! Israel's cheese cake, called "עוגת גבינה"(Oo-gat G'vinah) in Hebrew, is very delicious. One Israeli friend told me that her favorite type of cake is cheese cake! I was blessed to be able to celebrate me birthday in Israel this year, and my birthday cake was cheese cake!
My birthday cake!

Holy Land Ice Cream

Something else I got to enjoy for my birthday in the Holy Land was ice cream. I love every type of ice cream, but I must tell you that ice cream in Israel is exceptionally delicious!





Chocolate

Another milk food in Israel is chocolate. I absolutely LOVE chocolate. We don't get to eat sweets often, but I did get to taste Israel's chocolate.

"Lechem"- Bread

One of the seven fruits in Israel is wheat, from which comes bread, lechem in Hebrew.
Bread is very common in Israel. It is the main staple food in Israel. The Israelites of Jesus' time were familiar with bread, too. In John 6, when Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life," He knew that the people were familiar with bread and would understand what He said, and they did! 
Unlike today, there was not always enough food in Bible times. Bread was the main source of food, so to survive, you must have bread. Bread sustained life. So when Jesus said "I am the Bread of Life," Jesus was saying that He was the source of life, the bread of life! He wasn't just saying that He was a source of life, like bread is a part of our diet, but He was the source  of life! (See John 6:33) 
It is also very interesting that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Beit-lechem, which means "House of Bread"!

There are many types of bread in Israel. We got to try them all, and they all tasted very good! Below, I am including pictures of our favorite types of bread.

This is pita bread. We loved pita bread so much that we ate it really often. Even though we got kind of sick of it, it still tasted really good!

At the Shuk, a bag of pita bread with 10 pieces of pita costs about 5 shekels (1.38 dollars).


Of the other types of bread, our favorite is this one:


 We eat it fresh and warm from the Shuk! It's very delicious - you can eat them just like that! They are very soft in the inside!

We also get to eat Couscous in Israel. There is another special kind of couscous made from flour. We cook it in soup or boil it to eat. It's hard to describe, but all I can say is that it tastes really good. :)


Beitzim in Israel

"Beitzim" means "eggs" in Hebrew. Israel's eggs taste really good, too. Eggs everywhere taste about the same, but Israel's just tastes different somehow. I think that God has really blessed His people with a land "flowing with milk and honey" and flowing with all other sorts of delicious food!


Vegetables

Our family eats lots of vegetables. We can easily go without meat for a week, but we must have vegetables every single day. Vegetables must have green leaves. Potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes don't count as vegetables. Broccoli and cabbage are only half-vegetables (they do not have green leaves). Vegetables must have green leaves. Thankfully, we found one green leaf vegetable in Israel! Yay!

The One and (so far) Only Leafy Green Vegetable of Israel!!!

 When there is only one green-leaf vegetable, cucumbers get promoted to the rank of half-vegetables. We eat cucumbers raw (like in salad), cooked, or pickled.
Stir-fried Cucumbers

 Below are pickled cucumbers. We don't eat them often, but we get to eat them once in a while.


We also eat cabbage here. There's not much special about it; it tastes just like American cabbage. But since it is the only other leafy (though not green) vegetable, we eat it almost every day! It still tastes pretty good though, with all the different spices in Israel.

We also get to eat onions in Israel! There are purple and brown onions, just like in the US and China



This dish is onion and sausage (100% beef!), stir-fried.

Location: Jerusalem, Israel

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