Cloudy with a chance of kosher meatballs

Something strange is happening here.  It's nearly 8am, and it's still cloudy.   I just don't know what to make of this phenomenon.  Still 81 degrees though. 

I visited Delek Motors yesterday.  What a nice facility!  I went out to drive Dan home, after returning one of the previous Rep's vehicles.  We drove home a lime green Fiesta for the night, to see whether it's the car I want for the next 3 years.  While I like how small it is (you can't appreciate this until the entrance to your garage is so narrow you can nearly reach across to both walls), it doesn't have much power.  I floored it multiple times on the highway and got nothing exciting.  The Focus on the other hand is nice and sporty, but bigger.  Yes, a Focus is actually BIG here, and that makes it difficult to turn corners (sometimes I can't pull right into the garage, I have to do a 3 point turn to make the 90 degree angle around the cars parked on either side of the street, and right up to the entrance.)  But I do love the lime green.  Oh, such difficult decisions!

On the way home we stopped at a "real" grocery store.  The name of it translates to "Half 1/2" for half price I suppose.  The prices here were more in line with US prices, at least on the items I could compare (in Tel Aviv everything is more expensive).  I think I'm going to buy an English-Hebrew dictionary so I can look up ingredients i english, then compare the hebrew print to the signs in the store to see if I've guessed correctly.  Shopping by pictures on the containers is an interesting experience.  So we walk in (the guard checked my hand bag), and the place was larger than any store either of has ever seen!  Past long aisles of shampoo and lotion, we found the dairy, gigantic freezer section of various partially prepared meals, section of prepared salads (eggplant salads, hummus, tahina, etc) that was longer than many grocery stores entire cooler section, a large meat, cheese and fresh salad deli counter with delicious looking cabbage salads, pesto, and more.  At this point we realized it was a kosher store (no deli hams) and were terribly disappointed.  We'll have to find the Russian stores for that.  Then on past a separate fresh meat counter, through a bakery (again, each of these sections was bigger than an entire side of an American grocery store!) and they had packaged tortillas!, and into the fresh olive and spice counters where you can buy by weight.  The middle of the store was filled with shelves of packaged goods, where I discovered that they do sell peanut and other nut butters, they have quinoa, and an organic/natural foods section.  I found granola here to go with our yogurts.  Oh, and they have shelves full of various chocolate spreads!  At this point, are you wondering where all the fresh produce is?  We were too.  We asked, and found out that you go through the registers at this point and pay, then the doors shoot you out through a small food court, and into a whole separate store with produce!  The variety of options was pretty impressive (I found cherries and even corn on the cob!) although they didn't have everything (no strawberries or apricots for instance, which may be seasonal).  The pomegranates should start showing up in stores in a month or so, I've heard.  Yummy!

Discovered an excellent place for dinner in a new area of town last night, east of our place about a 20 minute walk.  It's a spanish Tapas restaurant - Tapeo.  We had roasted garlic, a sea bream ceviche with mango and pineapple, a roast lamb on an almond sauce, and beef carpaccio with manchego cheese.  Oh, and sangria of course.  Delicious!