Adventures in Food

So, I've kind of been waiting until I had a few good, funny food stories to post.  I think I now have a few.  I'll start with the most recent...

Yesterday, I bought some chocolate at the grocery store.  It was 3 bars for 7 NIS, so I bought three.  Two were easy to identify - one milk chocolate with hazelnuts and one was dark chocolate with hazelnuts.  The packages did identify the type of chocolate on the size in English, followed by the words "assorted fillings", which I figured out based on the pictures on the front.  Then there was a third chocolate bar.  The package looked like this

I had to buy a candy bar with fireworks on it!  I knew that שוקולד חלב was milk chocolate and that עם meant with, but the last part I did not realize (סוכריות קופצות) meant "popping candy".  It was quite the popping explosion in my mouth.  Not quite sure how I feel about this stuff, but people had a lot of very strong opinions about how much they loved it, when I posted this topic to Facebook.

Secondly, a few weeks ago, actually it may have been two months ago at this point, I was at the butchers buying chicken (oaf - עופ) and I wanted to buy ground chicken.  The butcher, who for the most part speaks English at this store, kept trying to tell me that the ground chicken was "from India" (hodu - הודו).  I could read the word in Hebrew, I knew it was "from India", I was really confused as to why and how kosher chicken was imported from India, but I bought my meat, took it home and didn't think much about it until I went to cook it a few nights later.  I had my Israeli friend, Michal, over and I was remarking how incredibly lean the chicken I was cooking was.  I also was telling her about how the butcher made a big deal that it was "from India".  This is the point where Michal taught me a very important lesson. Hodu (הודו) has more than one meaning.  Yes it is the name of the country of India in Hebrew, but it is also the word for turkey!  This is what the butcher was trying to explain to me.  Apparently after his 10 year stay in Canada as a butcher, this word slipped his mind...or maybe there's no turkey in Canada!  ( Clearly that's a joke...)

So those are my two adventures in food so far in Israel.  Luckily people had warned me about the yogurt cheese and the sour yogurt, so I didn't make those mistakes.  At least now I can buy non-US brands of yogurt because I can read the labels and know which ones are yogurt, cheese and the sour ones.

I hope this gives you all a good laugh!