Page 12 - Holyland Magazine - 2022 Edition

Breaking Bread

Together Connecting with Israel through the history of food

By Uri Mayer-Chissick
y journey into the field of local beginning to end in two days and have been connection; it gives me a common language
food started far away in the United studying local nutrition ever since. with my friends from the neighboring
States. On a rainy day, twenty years Nazareth. We go together to the fields to
ago, I was roaming the streets of I returned to Israel and started studying, see the ripening of the chickpeas, the olive
MSan Diego looking for shelter. I investigating, and searching for ways to groves before the harvest, and to check
walked into a second-hand bookstore where connect to the land through its diet. I met the grinding of the sesame seeds in the
I suddenly saw a thick book called ‘Food in with people, collected stories, listened to folk local workshop (these are the necessary
History’. It fascinated me and so I bought it tales and most of the time – ate. ingredients for a tasty hummus spread). I
with the little money I had. What I took from recently found in an ancient Serian cookery
this book was the importance of learning Here, in our small cooking-pot, where book a recipe for hummus spread that is
about the history of our diet: Where did the people come from a diversity of countries, familiar to the one we know, yet also very
wheat come from? Why do we use white there are claims that hummus belongs to different. We eat hummus in a bowl, warm,
flour? Why is there hunger in the world? I their culture. I have therefore learned that with lemon and tahini, on pita, usually in the
realized that in order to understand our way food can separate us or connect us. morning. The Serian hummus recipe that I
of life, our relationships, the structure of found from the 13th century is also made of
society and the economy, I had to start at Chickpeas have been growing here, on chickpeas, but uses wine vinegar, pickled
the beginning; and the starting point is food. this land, for thousands of years, and were lemon, lemon juice, parsley, mint, nuts,
I could not stop reading. I read the book from used by its people. For me, hummus is a cinnamon, coriander seeds and caraway

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