Love from Palestine: Rhoda's Real-Food Care Package

 It's a bittersweet sort of day - a cool, rainy, gray Friday, when it should be a brilliant and run-and-jump-and-play time of year.  And, today, for the last time, we gathered up my daughter's preschool bag from the little hook with her name printed over it.  Good bye, good bye, friends, we said.  Good bye.   I lingered at the door, even while my daughter bounded through it.  Today, it doesn't quite feel like we are saying hello to summer.

But I said hello to the mail carrier who pounded urgently on my door this afternoon.  He had a surprise to deliver - a box postmarked from Jerusalem.  Imagine my delight when I opened up this: 

 

Inside the box, there were bags full of spice mixtures, labeled "fish" and "curry" and "shawarma" and "mansaf;" two juice bottles filled with fresh spicy olive oil, this year's batch; a bottle of pomegranate molasses (I told you this was our favorite ingredient!) and (gasp) a large jar of jibneh baidah, or white cheese, which is a semi-soft farmers cheese made from raw goat milk.  In case you are worying, this cultured cheese can go some time without refrigeration. 

 

Is there any doubt that when you give food, you give love? 

 

And that when you give real food, you are nourishing the body along with the heart? 

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you.  With a smile on our faces, we will find some more beauty in the rest of this day. 

 

What do you like to put (or get) in your care packages?  If you could get one box from home, what food would you want to get?

 

 

 

 

Shared at Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Thank Your Body Thursday, Tasty Traditions, Fight Back Friday, Fat Tuesday, Traditional Tuesday.