Go Big, Go Home

Tahini is starting to take over our soul food kitchen —- in a big way. Up until now, I’ve managed to buy in caseloads of 4 kilos. But the use is increasing, my need to constantly re-up at the Levinsky Market also on the rise, and the availability of the 4 kilo containers has gotten to be too undependable. Hence, the move up to the next size: 17 kilos of pure tahini paste. I don’t even want to think how quickly I’m going to blow through it.

It’s true that tahini has been playing a more dominant role in our menu of late, usually in consort with greek yoghurt, nigella seeds, cumin, lime, and any number of roasted and/or grilled vegetables. Peanut butter is obviously the other go-to ingredient, but, of late, Irit is eating up our cache of PB faster than I can keep it in stock. And, as I’ve written elsewhere, the culture here seems less inclined to one of my very favorite foods for some reason. So tahini it is.

But if we are laying bare our soul here — which we are — tahini is not the only thing I seem to be buying in obscene quantities. Add to the list: Heavy cream, butter (both sweet and salted), around 5 types of salt, flour, onions, garlic, peppers ranging from the mild (padron) to kickass (habanero), yams (OK it’s the Thanksgiving to Christmas season), blackstrap molasses, a variety of beans, the list could go on.

In fact, the heavy lifting (literally) I have been dong recently on my daily forays to the marketplace, resulted in something I had been scared of for some time now: The commercial-grade bike rack that holds my large shopping basket finally gave up the ghost today and snapped apart as I was lugging this 17 kilo bucket of tahini home.

Fortunately it all happened within a block of my go-to bike repair shop, and a new bike rack was quickly installed. Nitzan, my old budd who did the repairs, has suggested that the time has finally come to buy a bike trailer to do my hauling in. Hmmmm. Not quite there yet.