Food! Meals and food in Israel are definitely different than back at home.

Firstly, the largest meal of the day is the noon meal – not the evening meal. This means of course, that people are at work for the main meal. And that’s not all. Just as North Americans negotiate for vacation time or fitness perks for the job, Israelis negotiate for meals. Almost all companies in Israel offer a per diem for eating (somewhere in the range of USD $15-25 per day). At sometime around noon, everyone logs on individually to a website and orders a meal from 1 of 30 restaurants. The meals are then delivered to the company and everyone eats together in the “meal room”. It’s not an opt-in thing. Everyone does it. If you choose to go out, you have a special credit card that allows the daily rate and almost every restaurant accepts it. You have to figure on at least an hour break …

Wait. There’s more. And this one I can’t get used to. People don’t eat breakfast at home. When they get in to work, they head for the kitchen where not only can you find every possible kind of cereal and milk, but fruit and bread and cake and snacks and … While I eat at home every morning with Heidi and Jake, I still find it strange when people pop their head in my office and ask, “Did you eat breakfast yet?” Isn’t breakfast a family meal?

That takes us to the portions. HUGE! I’m guessing that the average size of the portions here is double what it is in America. While I’m used to large portions from Friday’s or the Cheesecake Factory, they pale in comparison. When you order the schnitzel (schnitzel and falafel seem to be very Israeli dishes), you get a plate double the size of the one you’re used to, covered entirely with rice, and then covered again with schnitzel. Wait, you forgot the soup that already came, the basket of rolls and the salad that also came with it. I can’t come close to finishing it. When you order lunch online? It’s never less than four or five separate containers the size of a large cereal bowl. Even at McDonald’s the size of the burger is about 70% larger than the same in North America. Heidi was able to eat about half the burger …

But don’t let that stop the locals. One of the people here at work told me that our portions were so “small” in America. Quote: “I had to eat 4-5 quarter pounders in America to fill up.” I’m not kidding. They wolf it all down, but still are not overweight. I don’t get it. They all laugh at my inability to finish my meal. “Only Americans ask for a container to bring food home.”

Then there is kosher food. I now know what and why we have kosher pickles and kosher food. The basic rule is this, “No dairy with meat, no pork, and no seafood.” For the McDonald’s eaters, that means no cheese on burgers, no cheese in soup. You also have kosher wine (made by the Orthodox and boiled) and other kosher foods but it would take me forever to explain it. If you do happen to have dairy or meat, there is a certain period of time you need to wait before eating the other. Strange. Burgers without cheese are like tuna sandwiches without pickle – they just don’t work as well.

You might think that eating breakfast at work and then eating the most massive mid-day meal mostly on Mondays 🙂 would fill them up, but every hour or so you get people stopping by your office with trays of cookies, cakes and snacks as well as coffee, mochas and cappuccino. Coffee anyone?

It’s enough to fill you up. 🙂