Have some heart

Today we had some free time to visit the souk in Jerusalem. Several times already in the trip, one of our group leaders, Ben, had raved about his favorite food here. He called it by some incomprehensible Hebrew name, but said that we could just refer to it as "Jerusalem mix." He told us the story of the second time he visited the food stall that he got it from, and the proprietor remembered his face from his first visit, even though it had been several months prior.

So when we arrived at the souk around lunchtime, I knew who to follow. Clearly a seasoned souk-goer, Ben plunged into the crowd and was quickly making his way through the throngs of Israelis in the marketplace. Not wanting to lose sight of him in the crowd, I grabbed Stephen and we took off after him.

While I may have missed out by electing not to take quantum physics at Blair (sorry, mom), I did learn one valuable lesson from my years attending the school of 3,400 that was built for 2,600: navigating through crowds. So I raised my steer-clearing forearm and dove in after him.

A few minutes of dodging, ducking, sliding, stepping, and dodging later and we had reached our destination. Ben turned to his steadily growing flock of food-disciples and asked of us, "do you all like really meaty-tasting meats?" I have no idea what this question means, but I know the answer is obviously yes. "Then order the mixed grill, and don't ask me what's in it," he preaches to us. And so we did, and it was good.

One member in our group asked if it was worth cheating on her vegetarian lifestyle for, but Ben was hesitant to weigh in on what he felt was a fairly loaded question. I interjected and assured her that any meat was worth cheating on her vegetarian lifestyle for. I reinforced the point with a deliberation-stifling, "when in Jerusalem..." She was sold.

I went about employing another skill I had acquired as a by-product of my educational experience: identifying, hovering over, and vulturing a dining table before the previous occupants had finished chewing the last bites of their meal; a skill honed over the course of dozens of Friday happy hours at Monty's during my tenure at the University of Miami.  Stephen gave the tong-wielding food-preparers his simple yet no less brilliant go-to response when faced, in whatever country, with a smorgasbord of some known and some unidentifiable foreign pita-filling options and asked, while jabbing the tongs towards each bin in sequence, "you want dees?...you want dees?"

"Just make it however you like to eat it."

So our Jerusalem mix made of God-knows-what was thrown into our pitas along with a mishmash of toppings known only to our server and to YHWH, and smothered in an ample amount of Allah-only-knows-what sauce.

And it. Was. Awesome. Juicy, flavorful, and indeed quite meaty, we devoured our Jerusalem mix meals, and it was only partially due to the fact that we were eating for the first time in 6 hours. Once we were nearly done with our pitas, Ben told us that he would finally reveal the contents of the mix. Stephen volunteered that he had already identified some bits of liver in the meal. "Yes, that's part of it," replied Ben. "It's actually made of hearts, livers, and spleens," he clarified.

"Well, that's something that definitely was not on my bucket list, that I can go ahead and cross off anyway. And never eat again," responded one of our fellow diners. Based on his reaction, we realized that it was probably best if we didn't share that information with the vegetarian, who fortunately was not at the table for the big reveal.

Our hunger sated, and our culinary horizons sufficiently expanded for the day, we set off to explore the rest of the market.