The Grass is not always Greener... , Ilana Epstein

I need to tell you something about cooking from American cookbooks and magazines while shopping in Israel. To say it's challenging, is an understatement. First, you need to translate every item and then locate it. It took me five years to find cornmeal and ten to find buttermilk. Both had been on the shelves all along. That is nothing, however, when compared to the fact that some ingredients just don't exist. Sure you can get a Peppermint Pattie, and every variety of Pepperidge Farm cookies, but blood oranges, or limes? You would think that from the "land of the Jaffa orange", citrus fruit wouldn't be a big item for which to ask; and yet it is.

Not only do you need to translate and find the product, but you also have to convert the quantities. A kilo of flour and a pound of flour are two different things. Nowadays, I have my computer in the kitchen and as I bake, I go between recipe and calculator; first turning cups into ounces and then ounces into grams.

Secondly, shopping in an Israeli supermarket means reading Hebrew, and that's not just for the items themselves. I can't tell you how often I have missed a sale, because my brain shuts down every time it sees anything written in Hebrew.

Thirdly, you need to be on high alert. If you want that last bag of chocolate chips, it doesn't really matter that you got there first or that it's in your cart. The Israeli shopper has stealth-like abilities. While distracting you, they will grab the bag of chips out of your cart and you won't know it's gone until you unpack your groceries at home.

Then, there are the lines. It's not the length that bothers me; it's the cutting in. Even if you are in line, even if you have loaded your groceries on to the belt and even if the cashier is about to ring you up, it is never too late for someone to cut the queue and maneuver themselves, their three carts and their next-door neighbor in front of you.

And yet, yesterday, I had the most glorious shopping experience - well, I exaggerate - at least the fruit and vegetable section had me smiling. There was the most extraordinary array of vegetables, the type I'm sure can only be found in supermarkets in the States. There was cauliflower - in four colors; the usual white was outshone by its yellow, green and purple cousins. There were yellow and purple carrots, long thin radishes, thick- necked asparagus, purple artichokes, vine-ripened yellow tomatoes, baby sweet potatoes and rhubarb.

While the Israelis looked on in amazement, the Americans grabbed at the rhubarb. One lady asked me what it is that you do with rhubarb. As I explained that I made pie and compote with it, she walked away, shaking her head at the foolishness of someone who would make dessert out of something that looked like celery. I, though, knew exactly what I was doing, and how exciting it would be, after a decade of reading cookbooks and magazines from other countries. I would be able to follow recipes just as they had been written, using the ingredients that had been specified. I lugged my groceries home, excited to get my cutting board on the counter, and my knife sharpened.

As I started unpacking my bags, the kids came home from school. I have trained my children well. The first thing they ask as they walk through the door is not, "How was your day?" but rather it's "What's for dinner?" I couldn't wait to tell them. For once, the answer was colorful and varied. We would be having yellow carrot soup, followed by chicken breast stuffed with purple potato, with a side dish of roasted multicolored vegetables, and to end the meal we were having home made rhubarb cinnamon jell.

The crestfallen looks, the whispered "OK, mommy," were enough to tell me I had misjudged my audience, and that my treasures were fools' gold. My Israeli children didn't want foods from magazines, or the long lost foods of my youth. They wanted the food of their childhood and their youth.

It was easy for me to want what I didn't have, easy to imagine that life elsewhere was easier, more colorful, so much better, that even the produce was in "Technicolor." But upon receiving the bounty that had frustrated me for so long, I realized that it's so much harder to be grateful for what was in front of me all along. What I didn't know was that the purple kohlrabi, pepper, potato and cauliflower taste a lot like their more commonly colored counterparts.

Israel has been home for the last decade, and though things may look and sound different, they taste pretty much the same. I'm grateful for what I have and how far Israel has come, and that even though the country is in a crisis, there is still the time and the wherewithal to grow anything purple and perhaps, with time, it will develop a taste all its own.

Soup made with LOTS of different onions;

Adapted from Jamie Oliver's "Jamie at Home":

When we first got to Israel, the only onions you could buy were the dried yellow kind. With each passing year, new onions made their way to the grocery shelves. Today, you can get a huge array of onions: red, white, shallots, leeks, scallions and even pearl onions. The soup below is a celebration of the many varieties of onions available today to the Israeli consumer. This soup is dark, like French onion soup and it is sweet and full of flavor. Decide before you start, whether you are going to make the soup meaty or milky. Either way, it's a hit.

Multi-onion Soup adapted by Ilana Epstein

2 tablespoons butter (replace with olive oil for meaty)

2 tablespoons olive oil

One-quarter cup sage leaves loosely packed, chopped

6 cloves garlic, minced

5 red onions, peeled and sliced

3 yellow onions, peeled and sliced

3 shallots, peeled and sliced

2 large leeks cut lengthwise rinsed well, and sliced

Coarse Sea Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

8 cups chicken (for meaty) or vegetable stock (for milky)

Sourdough bread slices (for milky)

Sharp cheese such as cheddar or Gruyere to serve (only for milky version)

In a large soup pot, melt together the butter and olive oil (or if meaty, the total amount of olive oil should be 4 tablespoons).

Add the sage and sauté for about thirty seconds and add the garlic and all the onions, shallots and leeks. Season with salt and pepper and stir well. Lower the heat to medium-low, and cook with the lid on (but slightly open) for the next 40 minutes, stirring every once in a while to make sure nothing gets stuck at the bottom.

Now remove the lid and cook for a further 20 minutes.

Add the stock, bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer for the next 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning.

To serve, place the soup in individual, oven-safe soup bowls.

Toast the bread to make croutons, top croutons with cheese, and then place under the broiler until the cheese starts bubbling.

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