In the olden days Air Canada had this great offer for students.  You could buy a special pass which allowed you to fly standby on domestic flights until you turned 22 years of age.  I took full advantage of this and visited Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto on a regular basis.  I imagined my self to be very “worldly”.  Well our 22 year old puts me to shame.  She has traveled across western Canada, to El Salvador, across all of South Africa, Nicaragua, Israel and Jordan.  As opposed to my style of young travel which was to shop and hit the tourist spots and clubs, she volunteers- performing humanitarian work when she leaves home.  After her most recent stint in Israel, volunteering with the wonderful organization entitled Save a Child’s Heart, (more about this later) she made us her favourite Israeli meal.

Sabich was brought to Israel by Mizrahi Jews who moved in the 1940s and 1950s. On the Sabbath, when no cooking is allowed, Mizrahi Jews ate a cold meal of precooked fried eggplant, cooked potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. In Israel, these ingredients were stuffed in a pita and sold as fast food. In the 1950s and 1960s, vendors began to sell the sandwich in open-air stalls.

This is where Daughter #2 fell in love with the taste of Sabich.  She said that the street sellers came to recognize her as a regular and knew her name.

She assembled all of these fresh, whole, simple ingredients and then instructed us as to how to assemble our Sabich.

She first showed us how to carefully open our pitas so that it would remain intact when stuffed.  Next, we placed a big smear of hummus on the floor of the pita and then placed slices of potatoes, hard cooked eggs and cubed eggplant inside.  All the other toppings of sliced banana peppers, parsley, kosher pickles, Israeli salad (like a pico de gallo), chopped and seasoned cabbage and hand-formed falafel were optional but she encouraged us to try them all and she was absolutely right, as each bite was just a little bit different but absolutely delectable.

She also demonstrated how to knead the falafel in the bottom of the pita to break it up and spread the crunchy, spicy concoction into the other ingredients.

Not everyone was successful in rolling the stuffed pita up but I was pretty impressed wth my own.  We washed everything down with lemonade which she made the old fashioned way-with lemons!  I can still smell the lemon groves in Israel from my own sojourn there.

Now that Daughter #2 is home, she is still raising money for Save a Child’s Heart.  This is the organization’s mandate:

Save a Child’s Heart (SACH) is an Israeli-based international humanitarian project, whose mission is to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries who suffer from heart  disease and to create centers of competence in these countries. SACH is totally dedicated to the idea that every child deserves the best medical treatment available, regardless of the child’s nationality, religion, color, gender or financial situation.

If you would be so inclined to contribute to her fund raising goal, you can do so with the link imbedded here: Give Your Heart Out this Valentine’s Day.  The link tells you more about how her heart was touched by the kids that she cared for there and how you can help.

Kath’s quote: “You can close your eyes to the things you do not want to see, but you cannot close your heart to the things you do not want to feel.” -Unknown

Love-that is all.

PS to B-I am humbled by the honour of being your Momma.

 

 

 

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