Machne Yehuda Market, Jerusalem: Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

Sometimes, you see a giant cracker that looks like a three foot tongue in the baker's window, and you think 'I must have that'. It happens to me, anyway. Honestly, if I really understood what that thing looked like, I might have had second thoughts about that picture (but posed for it anyway).

Savory, probably pita dough, with a sprinking of sesame seeds and spread single layer thin. The ends cracked like crostini, and the middle had some chew. The first move (pity) was to fold it into my backpack, so I wouldn't injure fellow shoppers. I worked this over slowly, wandering markets and alleys, for two days.

Arab Market Near Akbara, Israel

Field trip with my brother in law around the Galilee, swinging by an Arab market for road snacks, middle east style: salted and fried fava beans instead of chips. And a selection of pastries for the folks back home, scraped off the tray with putty knives. Several kinds of baklava were filled with nuts, others with sweetened goat cheese, and all soaked with a sugar and cinnamon syrup sweet enough to freeze your teeth, which didn't stop me from eating them out of hand. The orange pastries on the tray are filled with goat cheese, and colored with beta carotene.

Kfar Saba, Israel: Orthodox Juice

There's a park adjacent to the farmland behind my mother in law's house in Kfar Saba, Israel. It's got beautiful cactus, aloe, and trees, plus a medium size citrus orchard, with lots of grapefruit, plus oranges and some kind of tangerine. The heart of the park has been saved, but part of the perimeter, like much of Israel, is rapidly becoming a cluster of high rises (I call them hives for humans). During this time, the grapefruit orchard has simultaneously been prolific and totally neglected. Fruit clustered in the trees, and in various states of freshness and rot on the ground. So, since I can't read the signs that probably say 'no trespassing' or 'don't pick this fruit', and since it's pretty clear no one cares, I made several trips and came back with a found grocery bag with half a dozen or so grapefruit. Sliced to ruby flesh that bled copiously, and juiced like a sponge full of water, the quickest way to get the most value from grapefruit. As Wonka swore by mixing chocolate with a waterfall, they say nothing softens citrus like a good juggle.

Skillet Apple Pie

I *love* apple pie, and it's the season. Intuitive ingredients and equipment: apple, lemon juice, cinnamon, sugar, corn starch, butter, ready made crust, and a cast iron skillet. Peel and dice apples. In a big bowl, mix with sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice to taste. Add maybe a teaspoon of cornstarch (wet first in a separate container) to thicken. Line cast iron skillet with bottom crust, fill, pinch, vent, and stick in a 350 oven until it says 'uncle'. That's pretty much when the top crust is done. Heat transfer is proportional to mass; common sense says that when the part heated by air is done, the part heated by a couple pounds of iron is done, too. This did have a perfectly OK crust. Perfectly OK, not perfect, but it was all eaten. By me. In 24 hours.

Artichokes and Edamame

Has a nice rhythm, that. Say it: Artichokes and Edamame. Nice vegetarian dinner, too. Two layers of my bamboo steamer, set over a shallow pan of water with artichokes in the bottom, edamame, mushrooms, and ginger on the top

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Diced Brownies

This is was an attempt to thwart my child's teacher last year, who had some snack guidelines I suspect had more to do with her convenience than a concern for nutrition. Anyway, a half a brownie and some pretzels was not allowed. Putting a whole brownie at the bottom of the pretzels would have been obvious to the point of insulting. But this seemed to do the trick.

PYO Crabs: The Other Summer Blues

Snorkeling for Blue Crabs in a marsh on Southern Cape Cod. These are vicious bastards and fierce fighters. I got pinched good a bunch of times, and one even drew blood through my gloves. Nine great, big, plier-clawed monsters, 8 male and one female, hiding in the rocks at a popular children's beach.

This was a high adrenaline snorkel, because the tidal bore here was pretty strong, great for covering turf -- all you have to do is drift -- but trying to stay in one place in the current and track a crab with claws this wide, that will rip your face off in self defense, well, that requires finesse. Good density, too... I hit a crab about every three or four minutes, until I had nine -- three for each of us.

Now what I don't get is, I got these beautiful Blue Crabs at a popular beach, in three or four feet of water. Anybody and his dog could have had them. Are Blues just not really a New England thing, or am I the only one to think of looking there? This is the northern edge of their range, but blue crabs on the southern Cape are nothing new.

Friends David and Deborah and I went into these with heavy spoons and a bottle of Sri Racha. Here's going at one with the back of a cleaver, and the money shot, a perfectly split claw...

These were about the biggest, sweetest, crabs any of us remembered, and David's been eating them in Maryland since back in the day. I hadn't enjoyed crustaceans and company so much in a long time. A shout out here to my buddies from C.L.A.W., who also would have appreciated this.