A Picture is Worth a 1000 Words

This picture was from an Eco/Passover/Easter potluck dinner that the students had on campus a few days ago.  Besides being a fun activity where people cooked with each other and then came together for a meal filled with delicious food, I feel like it represented the culture here at the Arava Institute.

 

The Arava Institute and its students definitely care about the environment; in fact, the institute was rated one of the leading environmental think tanks of 2014.  This potluck was an activity planned by the Eco-Living Committee, of which I am a member.  Every two or three weeks the committee picks a theme that incorporates tips and activities for sustainable living.  This week’s theme was reducing waste, so the goal of the potluck was to cook something that did not produce a lot of waste.  Everyone collected their food and packaging waste that was created in the making of their dish and brought it to the dinner along with their dish.  We collected and separated the waste into recyclables, compost, and trash.  After the dinner, people were able to see how much waste our meal created.  

 

Most of the meal items that were brought were healthy dishes made of fresh veggies and herbs.  This is very representative of the food that I have been eating on the Kibbutz.  The food that was cooked for the dinner was a million times better than dining hall food, but the communal dining hall on the Kibbutz always has a salad bar filled with fresh veggies from gardens on the Kibbutz and the surrounding area.  The Kibbutz’s store even subsidizes fresh fruit and veggies making them super cheap.  Most of the students here also eat very healthily.  Everyone could go for an occasional chocolate bar or ice cream, but for the most part people eat meals made up of exotic looking salads and rice.  About a third of the student body is also some sort of vegetarian.  This culture was reflected in the meals that were made: tomatoes in balsamic vinegar and basil, roasted tomatoes and garlic, fruit salad with mint, chard salad, leafy green salad with nuts on top, lemonade with mint, guacamole, corn salad, etc.

 

One of my favorite parts of the meal -- and one of the best parts about the institute in general -- was that it was a mixing of cultures.  No where else in the Middle East can one find a Jordanian, Israeli, American, Mexican, and European sitting down and sharing a meal together peacefully.  The shared meal was to celebrate the upcoming holidays of Easter and Passover.  During the meal we sang parts of easter songs typically sang in churches on easter sunday and had a mock Seder.  Some of the dishes that people made came from their culture or were simply a family tradition: deviled eggs as an easter dish, meatballs from a family recipe, tomatoes roasted as they do in Jordan, mexican style guacamole, and middle eastern tomato, cucumber, onion salad.  The mixing of nationalities allowed students to try food from other cultures and experience a piece of the religious holidays of Easter and Passover.

 

On the surface, the potluck may have just looked like the sharing of delicious food, but it was much more.  This potluck represented the sustainable, healthy, and mixed nationalities culture of the Arava Institute.