In my son’s new preschool class, the children empty out the contents of their lunch boxes onto plates, and eat in little assigned groups. One day this week, my son’s teacher photographed every child’s lunch and sent the photos to the parents. (Yes, it is indeed a class of 35 children.)

Aside from the cheerfully colored plates, I found the relative uniformity to be striking. True, the school asks that parents send children with a sandwich, a vegetable and a fruit every day, but parents have been known make their own decisions, whether due to a child’s tastes or a parent’s limitations.

And yet, in this class every child had a little sandwich. The most common filling seems to be white cheese, although a few children also have egg, deli meat or tuna. True, there’s a lot of white bread, some of it conspicuously missing the crust. Most children also had chopped raw vegetables, generally cucumber, but sometimes peppers or cherry tomatoes. A few had an omelet or a hard-boiled egg alongside. And a few lucky kids had something unusual, such as corn on the cob, pancakes or even strawberries (which have been out of season for months now). The packed lunches are eaten around 10 a.m., with a hot meal served at 2 p.m. for children who stay through the afternoon.

Visibly absent are prepackaged foods and sweets. Plenty of parents complain about the junk their children are given at school, but I think these meals are pretty representational of what children take for lunch in Israel. Any junk food would come alongside the sandwich, fruit and vegetable, not in place of it.

Other observations: Nothing is overly fancy. No animal-shaped sandwiches or vegetables cut into flowers. It doesn’t seem like there’s any one-upmanship going on. Which is nice.

The children are also sent with a water bottle every day, and encouraged to drink throughout the day.

As for my son, he gets a brown pita with peanut butter or hummus, sliced cucumber or carrot, and a sliced apple (that’s his on an orange plate, with his bright turquoise lunchbox lid in the corner of the photo). If he doesn’t eat it at school, he’ll usually finish it at home afterward. Although one day he claimed a robot took his sandwich. The teacher counters that he ate it.

School lunches around the world are a popular subject online. In the general scheme of things, I think we’re doing pretty well.

Once so often we rent a car and leave the city. The festival of Shavuot a month ago was one of those times. We headed up north into the Galilee, one of my favorite places to visit. There, we spent a day in Beit Lehem Haglilit (literally Bethlehem of the Galilee), splitting our time between the pick-your-own farm Ktofoti (“Pick Me”) and the neighboring Havat Derech Hatavlinim (“Spice Route Farm”), which was hosting a wheat festival for Shavuot.

We started out picking vegetables – a smart move, since apparently all the visitors pick the fields clean by early afternoon. Admission is 40 shekels per person, plus another 25 shekels per basket, and you get to fill each basket as much as you possibly can.

We went straight for the corn, our favorite. We ate sweet raw corn standing in the field, straight off the cobs. Afterward, we looked at how root vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, onions and beets grow, collected a few, checked out the eggplant plants (not many eggplants were left), collected a solitary strawberry or two (not many strawberries were left), and then headed for a break in the shade.

While the kids ate Druze pita alongside vegetable sticks we’d packed from home (ha), I collected immature zucchinis with flowers still attached – a delicacy you won’t find at most stores in Israel. This, after all, is the advantage of being able to pick your own food straight from the plant.

After resting, we walked a few hundred meters to Havat Derech Hatavlinim for the wheat festival – one of the annual festivals the farm/store hosts to mark various holidays. The complex, which includes a massive store, had half a dozen activities for children hosted on site – basket weaving, labaneh ball rolling, making art with spices.

My son wove a small wall decoration out of wheat, and then we took a tractor ride out into the fields, where children were given scissors to harvest their own bouquet of wheat stalks.

As families returned to the tractor with bountiful bouquets, we realized my son was empty-handed. He’d had a blast cutting things, but didn’t bother to collect them, and dropped every single stalk he picked.

We spent the following weak feasting on cheese-stuffed fried zucchini flowers, and more corn than you could possibly imagine.

Ktofoti – pick-your-own farm in Beit Lehem Haglilit. Open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays.

Derech Hatavlinim – spice farm and store in Beit Lehem Haglilit. Hosts festivals at the farm throughout the year, and also has branches of its stores around the country.

Making ice cream in an ice cream maker is incredibly easy. All you need is a creamy, sweetened liquid in the flavor of your choice, and you’re one step away from having ice cream. I’m enjoying the combination of mangoes and limes, both newly in season, with coconut cream as a base.

Ice cream making is a great activity for children, and appealing to parents as well – it’s not fussy, the steps are easy to understand and watching the spinning ice cream bowl provides an easy 20 minutes of entertainment.

For about a half-liter of sorbet:

1 can coconut cream (500 milliliters), chilled in the refrigerator
2 limes, with zest
1 medium-sized mango
1/2 cup sugar

Slice the flesh off the mango. The easiest way to do this is to make two slices parallel to the flat sides of the mango, to slice most of the flesh off the flat pit. Then score a checkerboard pattern into each slice, without slicing through the skin. Turn each mango half inside out, so the flesh pops up into cubes. (See a picture of a sliced mango here.) It is important to slice the mango into small pieces, because otherwise long fibrous strings will remain in the ice cream.

Mix the coconut cream, the limes, the lime zest, the mango flesh and the sugar in a large glass measuring cup, and blend with a stick blender.

Prepare the ice cream maker, and turn on. Pour the liquid into the ice cream maker bowl, and freeze until the consistence of milkshake, about 20 minutes, or according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer the semi-frozen ice cream to a container in the freezer to harden for a few hours.

Homemade ice cream/sorbet is best if consumed within a few days, before it can become icy ad hard.

Wilted cabbage salad is nearly ubiquitous at Israeli street food joints and in mezze spreads, and my 4-year-old son is a cabbage salad addict. You should see him greedily shoving bowlful after bowlful of tart, oily cabbage into his mouth at the neighborhood falafel and shwarma joints. Quite a few falafel stand owners have taken notice and sent us home with an extra container of cabbage salad.

But being an experienced toddler, he knows inconsistency is key, and gives off squeals of disproval should I dare serve a similar wilted cabbage salad at home. Sometimes I manage to remind him that he likes the stuff. When that works, that cabbage salad is a goner.

This super-simple salad is a riff on the wilted cabbage salad that’s nearly ubiquitous at Israeli street food joints and mezze spreads. It takes an extra sweet-savory twist from the preserved lemon and jaggery.

Plus, my toddler eats it. Some days.

For about 2 liters of cabbage salad:

1 small-medium cabbage
4-6 carrots
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
heaping 2 tablespoons preserved lemon
3 tablespoons raw sugar cane (jaggery)
1 tablespoon sea salt

Thinly slice the cabbage, and grate the carrots. Remove the seeds from the lemon, and finely chop. Finely chop the jaggery if it’s solid, so that you have a sprinkling consistency.

Mix all the ingredients together in a container, and let sit for at least an hour, mixing occasionally. I put everything into a plastic container with a lid, and shake every once so often.

This salad improves over the course of a day in the fridge as the flavors mix and the cabbage continues to wilt.

You could consider adding other thinly sliced root vegetables to this, such as kohlrabi.

It’s been exactly a year since my last post. Over the past year, I have occasionally thought about my poor, neglected blog. Here’s what I’ve been up to, and why I haven’t been writing here.

I was about to start this post with a long introspection about the state of food blogging in 2016, but let’s cut to the chase (and go back to that later). Put simply, I’ve been focusing – surprise surprise – on other things.

That means family – my two lovely children, including my 4-year-old, who is a good eater compared to his classmates but (what can you do?) prefers his food unseasoned. Different types of food must not touch each other. And other home matters – we moved apartments for the second time in a year. Sigh.

And last but not least, work. Two employers, multiple jobs. For the past year, I’ve had the honor of serving as the first-ever English-language food editor at Haaretz, my longtime employer. Along with covering all sorts of fun things, I’ve had the fun of making a series of viral recipe videos, some of which you all have undoubtedly seen. That shakshuka video – 1.5 million people have seen my hands. And my measuring cups. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. (You can find the rest of the videos by following that link.)

Needless to say, I haven’t been finding it too easy to maintain a food blog. Frankly, from the perspective of editing a professional, budgeted publication, I’m not sure anyone does nowadays. When I started this blog in 2008, food blogging was a rising medium. In the years that followed, tens of thousands of food blogs launched, covering every conceivable topic. But since then, the field has been consolidating – probably due to the simple reason that food blogs are expensive to maintain. Recipe development, site upkeep, kitchen and camera equipment – they all take time and money. And despite the impression that the presence of ads creates, all but the very top food bloggers won’t ever see a dime for their efforts – for most people, blogging is ultimately about personal satisfaction (the ads generate a few peanuts, or enable the blogger to use a free blogging-related service). The majority of my blogging friends have since shut their blogs – either because they found professional writing jobs, or because they left the field entirely.

And that still doesn’t account for changing user tastes. The big medium nowadays is video, as everyone has undoubtedly noticed. Witness the astounding success of Tasty, BuzzFeed’s short recipe videos. Each 1-minute food video I made was the product of hours of shooting and a full day’s work for four professionals. That’s beyond the expertise and reach of most bloggers.

Ultimately, the internet is flooded with recipes, many of them from reliable sources, many of them supplemented with high-quality videos, and many of them free.

Is there still a place for recipe-driven food blogs? I have my doubts (and I’m not the first to say so). That said, there are still a few recipes I’d like to post here and there, and I hope to see them go up sometime soon.

Readers who made it to the end of the post – what are your thoughts on the state of food blogging?

This granola is scented of almonds – full of crunch sliced almonds, and flavored with a big splash of amaretto to boot. When I developed it, I had in my mind a crunchy but chewy almond-scented granola, and indeed, it delivers. I’ve been making a whole lot of it – the whole family loves it.

The basic concept comes from Ariella, my granola expert, but with ingredients pared down and adjusted to deliver an almond-flavored experience, delightful on its own but even better as a sweet topping to tart yogurt.

Whether you buy it or make it, granola isn’t the cheapest of foods due to all the nuts, so if you’re interested in stretching the quantity at minimum cost, you could add more oats and a bit extra liquid if needed. Or don’t, and just enjoy the rich nuttiness that you don’t find in most commercial granolas.

For 2 liters granola:

2 to 2 1/2 cups oatmeal
1 cup sliced almonds
1/2 cup pecans
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup dessicated shredded coconut
1/2 cup flour – whole wheat, or another flour of your choice
2 tablespoons amaretto
1 tablespoon vanilla
1/4 cup coconut oil, heated until liquid
1/2-3/4 cup honey, depending how sweet you want it

Heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).

Mix together the dry ingredients in a big bowl. Mix together the wet ingredients, and pour over the dry ingredients. Mix until everything is thoroughly incorporated and no more flour is visible.

Spread as thinly as possible on a cookie sheet, and stick into the oven. When the top begins to turn a light golden brown, after 15 minutes or so, stir and break up clumps, and return to the oven. Repeat as needed until the granola is a relatively uniform light golden brown, about 45-50 minutes total.

Let cool and store in a sealed glass jar. The granola will keep for weeks.

This simple chickpea salad is super convenient – it comes together quickly and makes a nice, filling addition to lunch. Plus, it requires no seasonal ingredients so can be made year round. (Is celery seasonal? Probably, but it’s sold year-round at my herb stand.) I like to keep cooked chickpeas measured in 1-cup portions in the freezer, in little bags for instant use. All that’s left to do is chop some vegetables and season.

This recipe makes a very mild salad, but if you want you could make it a bit spicy with with black pepper or a small crushed garlic clove.

For 2 to 2 1/2 cups of salad:

1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas
2 stalks celery, leaves removed (one heaping 1/2 cup once finely chopped)
1 carrot (one heaping 1/2 cup once grated)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
approximately 1/8 teaspoon salt, or to taste
freshly chopped parsley for garnish and serving
optional: black pepper, or a small crushed garlic clove (to add some spice – the salad is otherwise very mild)

Finely chop the celery, and grate the carrot.

Mix together all ingredients, saving some or all of the parsley to go on top when serving.

Desiccated donkey dung. How’s that for a description of food? Does it make you want to taste it? Eat it? I have to say, when I first heard that description – in reference to the truffles that grow in sands around the Middle East, including Israel’s Negev desert, it caught my attention and made me laugh, and I haven’t forgotten it since. That was years ago.

If you’re not familiar with Middle Eastern desert truffles, then these probably aren’t the truffles you’re thinking of.

They’re not the exquisite Italian and French truffles that can fetch $14,000 a kilogram. No, these are a different member of the truffle family, known as terfez in Morocco, selling for a more modest 150-300 shekels a kilogram (about $38-$75) in Israel’s markets right now. Is it worth the price? We’ll get to that question later.

Israel’s truffles are generally foraged in the desert, popping up after a particularly good rainy season. (A few years ago, some friends and I had been hoping to go hunting, and we even had a expert forager lined up to guide us, but that fell through due to, well, life.) In Israel, these truffles aren’t particularly well known among the masses, and are mostly the provence of the Bedouin who live in the Negev, and Moroccan Jews.

Superstition holds that desert truffles appear where lightening strikes the ground, as the round truffles tend to create little hills of cracked earth above them as they swell and grow. These mushrooms are mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, where rabbis concluded that they appear spontaneously in the soil overnight. Traditional preparations include roasting them in a fire, and frying them with scrambled eggs. (source)

The tail end of the season is around now, which means that for some Moroccan Jewish families, these truffles are a Passover specialty, often served in luscious stews with good cuts of meat. (Here, chefs with Moroccan roots describe family dishes, in Hebrew.) One chef, Avi Biton of Adora, recounts family visits to Gaza – back when such a thing was possible – to buy imported, canned terfesh, mainly to be eaten on holidays.

Shopping in Gaza may not be an option given the current geopolitical situation, but these truffles are available in Israel’s markets in time for the Passover holiday. Mine came from Carmella in the Carmel Market, for a very reasonable 150 shekels a kilo (there they are, next to the zucchini in the top photo), while friends and acquaintances have been encountering them at markets around the country – and inevitably confusing them for the more expensive, “real” truffles.

So, are they worth the cost? They may be a member of the truffle family, but 150 shekels a kilo is pretty steep for what’s ultimately an elegant-tasting root vegetable. The taste is somewhere between a mushroom and a potato, with a hint of Jerusalem artichoke, but nowhere near strong enough to give a truffle essence from a mere shaving, as is done with classic European truffles.

That said, if you happen to find them at a reasonable price – or if you’re in the mood to splurge – these could be an unusual star on your Passover table. I cooked mine into a rich root vegetable stew. The quantity of truffles was limited by my budget – I spent 22 shekels on 3 medium-sized truffles. You could use a larger ratio of truffles to other vegetables if you’d like.

For a side dish serving four:

• olive oil
• 2 bay leaves (plus extra to garnish)
• 3 fresh thyme sprigs (plus extra to garnish)
• 3 truffles (about 150 grams), washed of all sand (crucial!), peeled, and thinly sliced
• 1 onion, sliced into rings
• 2 medium potatoes, sliced into chunks
• 1 small butternut squash, or 1/2 a large one, sliced into chunks
• 1/4 cup wine
• 1 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
• pinch pepper

Put a thick-bottomed pot onto a medium flame, and pour enough olive oil into the pot to cover the bottom. Add the onions, truffles, bay leaves and thyme, and let simmer until lightly browned.

Add the potatoes and squash, and let brown slightly as well, stirring to keep from sticking. Add the wine, salt, pepper and 1/4 cup water, and cover the pot. Let simmer on a low flame until the vegetables are cooked through, stirring as needed to prevent sticking.

Serve with extra sprigs of thyme and bay leaves.

Another possible serving suggestion would be to pan-fry the truffles separately and serve them on top of the potatoes and squash, to make them the true star of the show.

So, where have I been? We’ve simply been overwhelmed with life – least of all because my daughter was born late last year. And then a few weeks later, we moved to a new apartment. So it’s been hectic, to say the least.

In late January, I attended Sommelier 2015, one of Israel’s main wine expos for the food industry and one of my favorite events. The expo is an opportunity for several dozen wineries, from small, commercial boutique wineries to the country’s largest, to show off their wares and attract buyers – as well as press attention – for their latest products. Without fail, every year I’ve discovered new wines and other products I really, really like.

Not surprisingly, showing up with a 1-month-old baby is a really good way to get attention at a wine expo. (OK, it’s a good way to get attention pretty much anywhere. Photo courtesy of the lovely folks at Tura winery) Lots of predictable jokes about what the baby’s drinking. Everyone is in a good mood, because hey, it’s a wine expo.

My favorite new discovery from this year’s expo was Eyal Boutique Winery (top photo), a relatively small winery at Givat Nili, near Binyamina about 45 minutes north of Tel Aviv. Owner Eyal Ochayon describes the winery as a hobby – albeit one that produces 15,000 bottles a year from the winery’s very own vineyards. Ochayon says his winery has been commercial since 2006, and kosher since 2009. Since then, Ochayon’s wines have won several awards at the international Terra Vino competition. Notable wines I tried included the Blanco 2012, a white blend of chardonnay and emerald riesling with a lightly sweet, woody scent and a mild spicy, oaky finish. Bottles retail for around 75 shekels. My personal favorite was probably the Shani 2012, another blend, this one red – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Shiraz, a dry wine with scents of wood, vanilla and fruit. Bottles retail for about 85 shekels.

Another wine that stood out was Chillag’s Bambino Cabernet Sauvignon 2011. Chillag, another award-winning boutique winery, in Yehud in central Israel, has the distinction of being one of Israel’s few wineries run by a woman (and also earned a mention in my roundup of wines last year). Part of what I like about this deep purple wine is that it’s part of the winery’s more “basic” series – making it more accessible in terms of price – yet it still offers a mouthful of complex flavors – rich, fruity and oaky, with mild sweetness. Bottles are not sold in stores, only in restaurants, but are available at the winery itself, for 55 shekels. The grapes come from the Ben Zimra vineyard in the Galilee.

Also notable was Heartland 2012 from Tura, a winery in Rahelim, near Har Bracha, that produces 50,000 bottles a year. This blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc and 20% Shiraz is purplish red, with a well-rounded flavor including vanilla, oak and warm fruits. Bottles retail for 89 shekels. (Plus – they sent me this photo of my daughter and me.)

Beyond specific wines, one project that caught my attention was iMed. OK, the name is a bit of a cliche, but the idea is interesting. The project, by the Arza winery, founded in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1847, seeks to bring different Mediterranean style grapes and winemaking styles to Israel. Many wineries here have been branching out over the past few years beyond the most common grape varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay and and a few others), but Arza is offering some varieties I haven’t seen at too many other local wineries, if at all. iMed’s wines include varieties made from Argaman, Granache and Mourverdre grapes, all of which are rare in Israel. The winery also has a Tempranillo wine. The wines are being sold through food establishments, not in stores.

So, Passover is coming – what are you planning to drink? Will you be trying any of these wines?

*Note – intrepid readers may note that the dates and production figures for the various wineries mentioned above are different from those listed in other places, including the wineries’ own brochures. The above figures were given to me directly by winery representatives, and presumably are the most up-to-date.

If it looks like we’ve been making lots of sweets around here, well, that would be about right. I have no problem letting my son eat vegetable sticks dipped in peanut butter or tahini at least one meal a day. Baking cookies, however, falls into the general category of “toddler entertainment,” not necessarily cooking per se.

In this case, I made the dough circles and he made the thumbprints. Squoosh. Squoosh.

This recipe is adapted from a Linzer cookie recipe from the “More from Magnolia” cookbook, my (old) new favorite dessert cookbook. It’s full of unfussy, American-style baked goods that have never let me down. The original recipe makes, well, Linzer cookies and not thumbprints, and also makes lots, lots more of them. I’ve also made a few adaptations to the actual ingredient list and the ratios.

This nutty dough goes well with all sorts of potential fillings. We chose a mix of cranberry orange jam – a.k.a. cranberry sauce, left over after we were invited to two Thanksgiving dinners here in Israel – and dark chocolate. You could also use raspberry jam, as the original recipe calls for, or all sorts of other fruit flavors.

For 24 thumbprint cookies:

1/2 cup hazelnuts
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup flour (I used cake flour)

Filling of your choice – chocolate disks, jam, or otherwise

On a baking sheet, toast the hazelnuts until lightly browned. I put them in my toaster for 10 minutes, stirring once in the middle.

Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer on medium speed (this generally means 2-3 minutes until it looks pale and fluffy). Add the vanilla and mix well. Mix in the salt and baking powder.

Chop the toasted hazelnuts – the papery peels will add dark flecks to your dough – and mix into the batter. Mix in the flour. The dough will be somewhat crumbly at this point. Pack it together with your hands, cover in plastic and put in the fridge to rest for a few minutes.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit).

Pinch off lumps of dough about twice the size of your thumb. Shape into little discs, and make an indent in the center to hold filling (toddler thumbs are perfect for this). Repeat with all the dough.

Fill the indentations with filling of your choice – a disc or two of chocolate melts nicely in the oven, and jam also bakes well, as it thickens somewhat.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. The cookies should be still pale on top, but lightly golden underneath. Remove from the oven to cool.

Orange cranberry sauce (or jam, if you prefer)

Cranberries aren’t exactly the most common fruit here in Israel, but if you spend long enough looking, you generally can find them frozen at stores catering to the Russian community. Frozen currants tend to be sold under the same name (“hamutziyot” in Hebrew) so double-check what you’re buying.

For a little more than 1 liter:

600 grams cranberries (mine were frozen, due to necessity)
zest and flesh of 2 oranges (toss out the white pith)
1 1/4 cup sugar

Roughly chop the oranges, and add the oranges, zest and cranberries to a pot. Cover with water and bring to a simmer until soft, adding more water as necessary.

Add the sugar and simmer until it begins to thicken and gel, stirring occasionally. Once you’ve added the sugar you’ll need to keep a closer eye on the sauce, as it is more prone to burning.