I recently answered the question about how we’re adapting to the differences in availability of certain foods since we arrived in Israel from a philosophical perspective. Today I’ll answer the nitty gritty details. 😛
>>How are you finding the price differences in food?<<
Food prices are for the most part higher here on just about everything but fruits and vegetables. When you take into account that the average Israeli salary isn’t as high as in the US, food costs make up for a much higher percentage of income here.
But even in the US, I wasn’t buying food at retail prices; I had discounted sources or bought on sale for just about everything. Therefore, I was able to feed our family of 11 a high quality diet on $650 a month. Our budget hasn’t drastically changed – we’re budgeting 2000 shekels a month for food ($555) and so far this is working out very nicely for our family and the guests we have almost every week – but we’ve had some shifts in what we’re eating. I’m including prices of some basics since I was asked about that in the comments section of a previous post.
If I mention a price and you’d like to figure out what it would be in dollars, the conversion rate is currently 3.6 shekels to the dollar; 2.2 pounds equals a kilogram, and 4 liters is about a gallon. (Yes, I stand there in front of the display shelves in the supermarket doing these calculations in my head to figure out if things are a good buy! I fortunately have to do this less and less as time goes on, though.)
Dairy – We used to use lots of butter, raw milk, homemade yogurt (from raw milk), kefir, organic cottage cheese and sour cream, and small amounts of hard cheese. Now, we’ll occasionally have some butter or pasteurized milk, or maybe a yogurt or two, but dairy is no longer a staple in our home. I can’t stand that soy fillers are added to ground meat and cheeses here to make them cheaper (this was a surprise to me the first time I looked at a package of frozen chopped meat that was on sale), so you have to really, really read the labels to be sure you’re getting what you think you are.
On a related note: I was invited to a party last week at which I was the only English speaker, and when I looked at the so-called natural juice on the table, I saw it had artificial stabilizers added. I chose to drink water instead, but the woman next to me asked me why I put the juice down. I told her, and since everyone else at the table was listening, they showed me the ‘no artificial colors or preservatives” claim on the front, and then one of them turned the bottle around to show me where it said it in English (in case I didn’t get the point!). I turned the bottle to the ingredients and showed them – in Hebrew – the problematic ingredients. They couldn’t believe it. Lesson – you must read labels carefully!
Back to dairy. The least expensive cheese that doesn’t have soy fillers in it is about 42 shekels a kilo when bought at the counter (ie not prepackaged, so it’s the cheaper way to buy). Milk is between 4.50 – 5 shekels a liter. Butter is about 7.50 shekels for 200 grams. An individual unsweetened yogurt (150 – 200 grams) is about 1.20 – 2.35 shekels, depending on the fat content (sour cream is on the higher end of this price). Cottage cheese is 5 shekels a container on sale; I don’t remember how many grams this is, maybe 250 (I haven’t yet bought it) but it’s about a cup. These prices aren’t for organic or raw dairy products.
I’ve been unable to find raw cow’s milk, and the raw goat’s milk I’ve found is quite a drive from here. I had a discussion with someone who raises goats and sells raw milk, but she was very adamant that it should be pasteurized before drinking. She had some good points, basically about the importance of knowing not only the person who raises the goats, but each goat itself to see how it’s feeling that day to determine if there might be any infection that would transfer to the milk. In any case, I don’t have a vehicle and renting a car to get milk once in a while would be a big expense. (The cost of the raw goats milk was 7.5 shekels a liter.) So due to cost and quality concerns, I’ve chosen to drastically minimize dairy, to the point of just about eliminating it.
Eggs – I used to buy pastured eggs directly from the farmer for an amazingly low price and used them very freely – it was common to go through two dozen eggs just at breakfast. Here for non-pastured eggs I’m paying 27.50 shekels for 2.5 dozen non pastured eggs. Organic eggs are much, much more. We still use plenty of eggs, but closer to thirty dozen a month instead of sixty dozen.
Chicken/meat – Though we’ve cut down on the eggs and dairy, we’ve switched to more poultry. This is an area where I think we are able to compensate a lot for the nutrients we used to get in milk and eggs. I buy a lot of chicken giblets, a very nutritious organ meat, and use it almost daily for lunch (purchased on sale for 7 – 8 shekels a kilo). We usually have chicken on Shabbos (the price of chicken varies drastically by kosher certification, ranging around 10 – 28 shekels a kilo for a whole chicken).
A lot of the beef in Israel is raised in Argentina, where the vast majority of animals are pastured. I buy this once a week for Shabbos (when I can get it on sale for 3 kilos for 100 shekels).
Liver – I wrote a while back about my experience kashering liver. After undertaking to kasher 20 pounds of beef liver, I was so burnt out that I didn’t reattempt it once we used up that huge batch. However, in light of the lack of raw milk and high quality eggs, liver is again reentering the picture in our home. 🙂
Dd17 bought a two handled rectangular grill thingy that I can kasher the liver with on our stovetop when she was in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago – there was nowhere in our city that they’re sold and I was really happy she was able to find it! (Liver is very bloody and since Jews are forbidden to eat even a drop of blood, liver has to be roasted in a special way to ensure no blood is left in it before eating – this is called kashering.) We kashered the first one kilo batch of chicken livers a few days ago, and it went pretty quickly, so last week dh picked up another four kilos. By purchasing these on sale, I pay between 18 – 20 shekels a kilo. (If you buy them kashered, the price goes up to around 100 shekels a kilo.) This isn’t something that we need to eat lots of since nutritionally a little goes a long way; I’m planning to use about a kilo of liver a week for our family.
Broth – We are able to buy chicken bones for 4 shekels a kilo on sale, and usually have a pot of broth in use in some way. We use this as a basis for soup, grains, and of course, with dh being on GAPS for over 1.5 years, broth is a staple for him. In the winter I particularly enjoy drinking it instead of hot tea.
Fats – This was the thing that took me the longest to come up with some good choices after we moved and caused me the most frustration. In the beginning had to use regular oil (soy and canola) from the store. That was the worst since we haven’t had things like that in our house for five or six years and I think they’re nutritionally damaging, versus less than ideal. We used a lot more extra virgin olive oil during this time than usual. Fortunately, we now have palm shortening for most baking and cooking (9 shekels a kilo).
I bought beef fat for 13 shekels a kilo last week (the butcher discounted it down from 25 shekels a kilo for us – here the fat sells for almost as much as the meat!) and rendered it. We use extra virgin olive oil for salads or to add to hot foods after they’ve been cooked. None of these are cheap options but this is an area where I’m willing to spend more. I also try to regularly buy avocados, which range from about 6 – 8 shekels a kilo.
Produce – We still have lots of fruits and vegetables, and this is an area where we spend less in Israel than we did in the US. I used to limit myself to produce that was under $1 a pound. Here I’ve been limiting myself to produce under 4 shekels a kilo (this has gotten a little harder with the cold weather approaching and I might have to bump this up to 5 or 6 shekels a kilo at some point), though I occasionally go over for something like avocados, and can still find a good selection to choose from.
Beans – Legumes are famously known as budget stretchers, and of course we continue to incorporate these into our diet. They average between 5 – 8 shekels a kilo when purchased unpackaged in the bulk section (prepacked is more like 8 – 11). We soak and sprout all legumes to mazimize the nutritional value and to increase digestibility.
Nuts – Since I believe that grains are best in limited quantities, I spent a lot of time a couple of years ago experimenting with nut flour recipes to minimize our grain usage – pie crusts, pizza crusts, muffins, desserts of all sorts – I got very good at this! I was able to buy nut flours in bulk (50 lb sacks) for up to $4 lb. Here, nuts are very expensive. In my recent bulk order, I got 50 lb of sunflower seeds, the cheapest option, which is still not exactly cheap (17.20 a kilo plus 16% tax – sorry, I know that’s annoying but that’s how it’s itemized).
Sesame paste (tahini) is the only other affordable nut/seed option that I can think of. Sesame seeds are about 10 or 11 shekels a kilo; tahini is about 20 shekels a kilo. We make a batch of techina every week and use it as a dip for veggies.
Grains – I brought my grain grinder along, but thanks to someone’s recommendation, didn’t buy an adapter in the US for it (they said it was a waste of luggage weight and something we could easily buy here). This was a big mistake. When we got here, we learned that the transformer we need in order for it to work on the 220 electrical currents here was ridiculously expensive, over 600 shekels. I’m planning to buy one from the US and ask my mother to bring it to me when she comes for our upcoming bar mitzva, but until then, I have to lay low with our usual grain grinding.
For the last few years I’ve been using primarily freshly ground hard white wheat or spelt when baking. Without my grinder available to use, I’ve been using white flour, something that I haven’t used in many, many years. Unless grain is freshly ground (due to the high phytase content), there’s a lot of controversy about if whole wheat or white flour are less damaging due to the phytic acid issues. I’m not convinced that whole grain flours that have been sitting on the shelves of the store for weeks (at best) are a great source of nutrients, and there are definitely digestibility issues. I’m not going to idealize white flour, believe me, but I’ve chosen to do this although I could get whole wheat flour for about the same price as white. It’s a question of what’s the lesser of two evils and I’m not really happy with either choice. I’ll be thrilled to be back to grinding our grains in the near future. Using white flour keeps me very conscious to use it minimally and keeps me from falling into the thinking that as long as its freshly ground flour, then it’s healthy. (I don’t think flour is ideal even when freshly ground and sprouted, but I do believe that those things make flour as ideal as it can be.)
Sweeteners – My staples in the past were organic sucanat (used for all baking), real maple syrup, honey, and xylitol. I brought some xylitol and one 12 pound container of honey with me; the xylitol because it’s not available for purchase here and I use it for toothbrushing; the honey because I had already spent the money on it, and was able to use it to weigh down a suitcase of clothes that was full but under the allowed weight. I was really glad to have brought it since honey is so expensive here but that’s finished now – we went through it much more quickly than we generally do since since organic sucanat isn’t available in Israel, and I used more honey.
But I also have bought – gasp! – white sugar. I don’t believe that brown sugar, demerara, rapadura, or any other of the supposedly healthy forms of sugar are actually of much value, and definitely not worth spending extra money on. (I did all this research about three years ago when learning about sucanat.) I’ve shifted my cooking to lots of savory foods rather than sweet in order to minimize the use of sweeteners that are either nutritionally empty or very expensive – there doesn’t seem to be anything in the middle. I don’t make the healthy muffins and quick breads that I used to serve many mornings for breakfasts, since with the ingredients I have now they wouldn’t be healthy enough for me to consider it nourishing food. I’ve mentioned before that I cut the amount of sweetener that recipes call for in half, and this generally brings it down to the level of sweetness that our family is comfortable with. Flour and sugar are now mostly saved for Shabbos challah and desserts, which I’m basically okay with since it’s so limited.
Our food remains unprocessed and everything is made from scratch, which is also a big factor in our food budget remaining so low even while here in Israel. I hesitated about sharing how much we spend monthly because I’ve noticed two tendencies people have when seeing this information: a) to gloat because they spend less, or b) to be discouraged because they spend more. I hope that everyone realizes that this is just our budget, and that this isn’t the place to compete or compare. If someone wants to cut their budget, I’ve shared extensively over the years about how to cut costs in this area (look in the frugality section), and this has helped many, many people get their food costs down significantly. If someone thinks we spend too much, well, this is what we’re comfortable with, and we’re not looking to get down to the bare bones. We enjoy having guests, and we enjoy having nice meals – you can see from what I’ve shared above that there are things we could cut out if we were looking for the cheapest possible food.
Okay, I’ve spent ages writing this up! Is this helpful or interesting information for you? Is there something you would have liked to know about that I didn’t mention? Have you ever had to shift your diet to accomodate local availability, and how do you feel about it?
Avivah
(This post is part of Real Food Wednesday.)
FYI, not sure if it is relevant to you but we get pastured eggs from Itamar (one of the settlements) and I recently started buying nuts and dried fruits from a supplier in Jerusalem. Also, I am getting freshly ground, pre sifted Whole Wheat flour from Bat Ayin (near Efrat). Again, not sure if this would work for you given the distance–but I know the nut supplier discounts based on quantity. I only bought a 25 kilo of almonds and it was 28 shekel a kilo including delivery.
Good luck!
WHat is the contact info for the supplier of nuts?
I get my nuts and dried fruit from a wholesale warehouse in Givat Shaul that primarily sells to bakeries and businesses. Their name is Mizrachi. Their number is 02-651-2332. I believe they will sell to anyone (not just businesses) but they will only deliver if you order a certain amount. Also, they don’t sell small quantities and scale the price according to how much you buy. I recently bought 25 kilo of dates for 20 shekels a kilo (they had cheaper and more expensive but these are the kind I use) and 25 kilo of almonds for 30 shekel a kilo. They have many varieties so you have to know what you want. They have shredded coconut, all dried fruits, nuts, etc. I went to the warehouse so I could see what I was getting but next time will order over the phone now that I know what they have. Hope that helps,
Can you email me the contact info for where you get the pastured eggs and the flour? adina.kopinsky@gmail.com. Thanks!
I get eggs and flour delivered from a lovely couple who live in Nachlaot and run a natural foods coop that delivers. Contact Amnon at 052-306-1869.
Date honey (silan) is much cheaper (less than 1/2 price) of bee honey. It’s runnier, but easy to substitute and readily available.
Out of curiousity, what non-white flours would you recommend to someone who cannot use nut flours (allergies)? And how much of what you do do you think is realistic for someone with different work/family situations? I’m always looking for ways to cut back, though I think we’re doing OK, but some of the grinding and doing absolutely everything from scratch sounds like it would take more hours than I have in a day.
Are you talking about real silan or the one mixed with sugar? The 100% date silan is cheaper than honey, but not drastically so…. I f you have a good address, I’m all ears!
Hi, Marion,
I haven’t found silan that doesn’t have sugar added, but I haven’t looked extensively.
Regarding flours, most of them are about the same in value unless you have a gluten sensitivity, in which case the gluten free are obviously best.
I really can’t answer the last question without knowing your specifics. The grain grinding sounds a lot more labor intensive than it is – I just put the wheat or whatever in the electric grain grinder, and while it grinds, I do something else. A lot of the things I do are a little here, a little there, in between things, but things like cooking everything from scratch takes up most of my time in the kitchen. But I try to minimize that because I like to have a life outside of cooking and cleaning. 🙂
Fascinating! Thank you so much for sharing this info with us.
Very interesting! Thanks for taking the time to write all that.
Is sucanat safe for diabetics?
No, it’s just like sugar in the body. Look into xylitol, which the body doesn’t recognize as sugar – it might be a good option.
Thanks for your answer, Aviva! I appreciate it!
Can I ask you- what is the difference between rapadura and sucanat?
As a suggestion for sweetener- if you use pure apple juice concentrate (unsweetened) you usually can get 1.2 liters for between 18 and 30 shekel, and it works terrifically as a sweetener in place of honey.
Silan is also cheaper than honey, but more expensive than apple juice concentrate.
I am able to buy date paste (seeded mashed dates) for 11 shekel for 500 grams, and dates are pretty much pure sugar. I use them to make homemade larabars and in smoothies. I took that date paste and boiled it with water until it was liquidier, then blended it all up and strained out any solids that remained, and then boiled out the liquid (I know, sounds like a lot of work), but now I have a date sweetener, cheaper than silan, and easier to use in baked goods.
Here’s my recipe for homemade larabars that might interest you, as its relatively low cost (I also bought the sunflower seeds and coconut flakes in bulk from poliva) and it uses date paste, which it seems is the cheapest non white sugar sweetener out there.
http://www.pennilessparenting.com/2011/10/homemade-larabars-recipe.html
I am also using brown bananas (which I buy from the reduced rack) as sweeteners in recipes.
What is your take on (non freshly ground) millet flour in terms of healthwise, in comparison to white flour, whole wheat flour, or other things? Because I am gluten free now, so I anyhow use it in baking, but if based on your research it actually is healthier, you can buy 25 kilos of millet flour from poliva for 6.8 shekel per kilo or something like that, which isn’t that different from the price of whole wheat flour.
No difference between rapadura and sucanat; it’s different names for the same thing.
I’ve used dates and fruit juice concentrates in the past for sweeteners (it’s been a long while since I wrote about the dates, but I used to buy them in bulk and whiz them up to use in desserts – you’ll see it mentioned in passing in posts if you go back far enough). I don’t like using fruit juice concentrates, but do like using dried fruit – I was considering buying raisins in bulk on my recent order, but since I don’t have a blender, decided against it.
Thanks for sharing your recipe for larabars – it looks similar in basic principle to the my grain free larabars I shared a recipe for a couple of years ago – http://oceansofjoy.wordpress.com/2009/12/02/mock-larabars-grain-free/. I like that your ingredients are local – it looks like something we’d enjoy trying out!
I haven’t yet found overripe bananas on sale, and have bought about five bananas since moving here since they’re over my price point!
If you’re gluten free, then millet in a good choice for you, but for me it’s not something I’d use. Thank you for the suggestion!
Is there a health problem with fruit juice concentrates? If so, what is it?
I can understand it may not be as ideal as some others, but it would seem to be better than white sugar, no?
I’m glad you like the larabar recipe. 😀
I can’t find overripe bananas every time I shop, but here and there I can get for a shekel a kilo. Lately bananas here have been 3 something per kilo.
Do you get your fruits and veggies from a chain grocery store or a smaller fruit and veggies store? I haven’t been to Karmiel ever, so I don’t know the shopping options there, but are there cheaper fruits and veggies places or places that have fruit and veggie sales? Both our local makolet (part of a chain- kimat chinam) and the nearest supermarket- Rami levi- have fruits and veggies sales where I can get things for a shekel or two shekel per kilo. Is there anything like that in Karmiel?
One more thing about fats- I use sunflower oil. Its cheaper than coconut oil and palm oil and olive oil, but more expensive than soy and canola oil. I figure its a healthy option and I can buy it at my local grocery store. Is there a problem with sunflower oil, or would you say its a relatively healthy oil?
Thanks for posting all that Avivah. You really seem to have improvised and come up with good solutions. As usual, you always give me lots to think about.
A couple of comments and questions from another WAPF-friendly new Olah:
– I find that the pure Silan (not the half-sugar variety) is about half the price of the raw honey in the health food stores. Still more expensive than sugar, though.
– The raw goat’s milk I buy from a woman in Bat Ayin is 15 shekels a liter — 7.5 sounds wonderful!
– I had no idea there were stabilizers in the ground meat and the dairy! And I’ve been reading ingredients consistently, but the language gap hampers my understanding…We’ve been cutting down significantly on cheese as well because the price of the real stuff is so high. Will you consider making your own cheese again?
– I buy freshly ground flour from a farmer for around 10 shekels a kilo. I have never heard of whole wheat being nutritionally questionable — can you elaborate on this issue?
– What do you do with your liver? Grind it up and then add little bits of it to other meat dishes? I just bought my first 1/2 kilo of liver and am a little flummoxed about what to do with it.
As usual, a fascinating post! I’m enjoying making aliyah alongside you 🙂
Maybe real silan is only half the price of raw honey… but real silan here is 30 shekel for a kilo, recently i’ve been getting non raw honey for 25 shekel for 900 grams. So honey is cheaper.
Ground meat is filled with stabilizers and stretchers- if something says “חלבון מן הצומח” like “עם תוספת חלבון מן הצומח” then you should know that it has TVP (soy flakes) in it. Which is why I never buy store bought ground meat or ground chicken unless its freshly ground and I watch them do it. Cheese would have “חלבון צמחי” written in the ingredients.
Adina, I don’t shop in health food stores if I can avoid it – their prices are frightening! I don’t buy raw honey, so for me it sounds like silan would be comparable in price to regular honey.
The fillers in the food are more than annoying – I’ve asked people about what they cook, and one person who for allergy reasons makes her own food told me she makes meatballs/loaf regularly. But I said, that’s really expensive for a daily meal, and she said she gets the frozen packages, which are the ones with additives. Get the freshly ground meat from your butcher and you’ll be okay.
No plans to make cheese here; it’s easier to just eliminate dairy, which for me has side benefits. I love raw milk but because of my adrenal fatigue and metabolic issues (caused by my misplaced belief in low fat eating years ago), I gain weight easily and lose it with great difficulty, and I’m one of those people who can’t lose weight when eating dairy. Eliminating it has always been a hard thing for me to do since it was such a staple, but maybe I’ll see some shifts in this area with dairy out of our diets.
The whole wheat issue is a big topic, and I have to think about if I really have time to write about it. Basically, the issues that concern me are high phytic acid levels, rancidity of the oil in the wheat when it sits, and being hybridized versions of the wheat people ate many generations ago not being easily used by the body. There are those in the real food movement who have made a case for white flour being better than whole wheat for this reason. A couple of years ago I made a big effort to cut our grains very, very significantly, but it’s not easy to do on a budget.
I like the idea of grinding liver but I don’t have a way to grind it. For better or worse, it gets eaten very quickly – when I’m roasting it, kids constantly come over and ask for the freshly roasted pieces (it’s the best then!). I had a container in the fridge and was planning to slice it up this week, and saute it with onions, garlic, and make a coconut sauce – but the container was empty when I pulled it out! It had gotten noshed away.
Would you say that it is better to shift over to spelt flour or avoid grains entirely? Thanks!
Thank you for this most informative post. You somehow came up with great solutions.
Adina, I have two answers to this.
The first is, I’m not a purist. Health is about doing what you can with what you have. That being said, my personal health preference is for a primal diet, but economically I’m unable to adhere to it to the degree I’d like (since it eliminates all grains and beans). So from that position, I’d say to stay away from grains as much as possible.
I’ve used spelt extensively until getting here, but I don’t think spelt avoids the issues that wheat has; structurally they’re very similar, and the rancidity and phytic acid issues will be the same. But people seem to think spelt is much healthier. Unless you have a specific issue with wheat that will be resolved by switching to spelt (and some people do), I don’t think it really makes a difference which you use.
Thanks for a very impressive and informative post. I share your great frustration with the soy filler situations, it’s quite maddening. As far as raw milk, someone in RBSA has organized a delivery from a farm near Petach Tikva I believe. I can give you the contact info if you email me. I have made butter out of that cream and hopefully will try to make yogurt at some point as well. I know also a while back someone around Beit Shemesh was either organizing or trying to, to bring in and sell organic eggs, yogurts, etc from Yesha farms. I think all these things are available, one just has to know where to find them and see if they make sense economically. There are many organic or semi-organic farms around those parts. I am not familiar at all with what’s available up north. Another thing I wanted to mention was organic or semi-organic chicken farms where for a price of a store bought chicken one can get a much healthier and tastier bird plus the liver and all the other parts you might want as long as you get someone to shecht for you and they often also provide kashering facilities on premises as well which makes life simpler. So this is another option to explore in pursuit of healthier food, which seems to be such a challenge today because of all the food processing issues.