By Karin Kloosterman

(Above picture: Karin’s kitchen in Jaffa, Israel. Today she is going to show you how a Canadian girl has changed her diet to resemble the average Israeli. Well almost. She still hasn’t lapped up the last of the Canadian maple syrup!)

You are what you eat. Was it Health Canada or my Scottish mom who said that to me while growing up? No matter. What people are eating says something about who they are and where they come from. I had an Indian friend at U of T, who taught me how to make yogurt with a culture she’d brought to Canada all the way from India. I had girlfriends from China, who introduced me to hot sauces, and vegetarian friends who taught me the importance of food miles, eating locally, and organic produce.

My uncle from the Caribbean taught my mom how to love the old slave food pickled feet, while her best recipe of cabbage rolls, became the family favourite, along with my Dutch dad’s recipe for blue cabbage.

Canada, like Israel where I now live, is a smorgasbord of food.

Normally, though, when I’m in Canada, I fall back on my old faithfuls: an addiction to soft tortillas, and green salsa. Not very Canadian, I guess, my favourite being Mexican food. But besides Canada’s poutine, off limits to my kosher diet, and maple syrup, Canada’s food is as diverse as its population.

The same is true in Israel, where I now live. If tortillas, green salsa, cheddar cheese, potatoes and hearty soups were my staples in Canada, salad, fresh pita and soft cheese is what goes in Israel. Today I want to introduce Canada’s Israel readers to my fridge. It’s not a new concept, and is something covered by numerous green websites, and even the more mainstream BBC.

Besides letting you know how tidy I am (confession: I took the pictures just after Passover cleaning!), you can see what I am eating to extrapolate a bit about the local culture. Call it Fridge Voyeurism, or what you will.

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Now for the tour:

CONTENTS: (from top to bottom, left to right) organic lentil sprouts, organic goat’s cheese, chessick fruit, soft regular white cheese 5%, organic red cabbage part of a weekly CSA veggie box delivery; more cheese including a Rockfort goat’s cheese, Syrian dates, spicy lettuces, cabbage, parsley, green onions, carrots, leaks, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, and spinach.

SOURCE: Vegetables come from an organic farm, which delivers a box of whatever’s in season, once a week. Some of the cheese is from Eden Teva market, a health food store in Bnei Brak; some cheese is from Arab supermarket on the corner nearby my house. Reducing food miles is important to me from an environmental perspective. I try to eat locally produced food, and things which are in season. The food box costs about $25 Canadian a week, including delivery.

CONTENTS: It being Passover in Israel means that a lot of the bread products you might see here other times of the year have been cleaned out, eaten or burned, as per Jewish custom. Moving on, there is some sort of white fish, hamburger organic and regular, rice (stored in freezer to keep the bugs out), and a strange kind of sheep tail fat (bottom right) for making a Bukharian food known as Osh Pollo. It is wrapped like that because someone (on their request) was supposed to “smuggle” it to the US where no such sheep tail fat can be found. It stays frozen in the meantime.

SOURCE: The frozen products come from Eden Teva Market, a health food store, a regular grocery store, and the sheep tail fat, a local market. Normally you won’t find so much meat in the freezer, as I am slowly transitioning to becoming vegetarian again. I have no idea how much meat costs per kilo, because I buy it so rarely. The organic hamburger, enough to feed 4, cost about $25 for the box, times 2 what you see above.

Moving on to the side door:

CONTENTS: Bio eggs, butter, organic strawberry jam, milk, mustard, sundried tomatoes, pomegranate concentrate, goat’s milk yogurt, V8, tehina, capers, guava juice, orange juice, batteries (not for eating!), coconut juice, goat’s yogurt, and the old Canadian maple syrup (thanks Mom!).

SOURCE: There are a number of imported items here like the V8 from North America and the juice from Egypt. The jam is from the United States. Phoeey on me, but it looked so good. And the pomegranate concentrate, I think is from Turkey, while syrup is from Canada. All the milk products are produced locally and bought at Eden Teva market or local non-organic shops. Milk costs about $2 a liter in Israel (non-organic), the organic yogurt about $4 a bottle. Sales tax is included in all food items in Israel, and dollar prices are in Canadian.

Now that you’ve looked inside my fridge, you know a little bit more about me. What do you say? Have I made the transition from Canada to the Israeli way of eating well? (I didn’t show you my secret hiding place for chocolate).

Want to see inside someone else’s fridge? How about a fridge in Jerusalem? Go to Fridge Watcher (www.fridgewatcher.com) to enjoy the pleasure of looking inside people’s fridges from all over the world. Take a look at Julie’s well-stocked fridge here. She’s from Cambelleville, Ontario. If you look closely you’ll see the same maple syrup in her fridge, proving to me that you can take the girl out of Canada, but you can’t take the Canada out of the girl! Click here for a whole showing of what’s inside Canada’s fridges.