"I wish I could continue working in the kitchen during the sweaty summer and the terrible cold" - Leisa wrote panels for hundreds of thousands of her followers in honor of the last Rosh Hashanah.
"That my paws will chop, devour, polish more pots and more books and you will buy them and say, 'Wow, how delicious it turned out for me' and all the books will be full of stains and flour and sugar dust from having used them, and I will sit in my little kitten with my feet up and my head in the clouds and imagine that I am earning money and I I take care of my children and help them buy an apartment, and they all want to live in Israel and don't cry about the cost of living."
I think this is exactly what my mother means when she says that if a woman reveals to the world that she is in pain, she should do it with chic.
"Let them laugh with her, an atonement, and not cry over her. Life is hard for everyone, you have to know how to season the problems before you present them to people."
And Hagit Bilya - Leiza Panels for you - is a champion in seasoning and balancing flavors.
In the words she writes or in the food she prepares - for example, the salads she created in honor of our meeting, which at first glance seemed to me like a crazy casting from the plant, until I put them in my mouth and I remembered how Biliya once explained to me that she understood the psychology of vegetables, that living with a vegan mother taught her understand them in depth.
There were roasted peppers mixed with almonds, another plate was dedicated to playing with beets and another salad that included fennel, celery, cucumbers, kohlrabi, slices of tamarind brahi, that's the yellow one you always suspect is unripe, pumpkin seeds, and sorry if I forgot something, all dipped in olive oil, A splash of lemon and a touch of ginger which I was in favor of but Billia wasn't sure that its spiciness was in place.
I went crazy over this salad and the crisp drumming that accompanied our march down the Missing Avenue, as Bilia calls it.
Says that almost all Tel Avivites of our generation have such a boulevard where they walk, pointing at houses they could buy, but told themselves that it would be soon.
And the winter is bitter and the summer is over, and the god of real estate has turned his face, and questions like what will we leave for the children, or how can we make it a little easier for them, are now gnashing their teeth. Have the next creator in her, or keep her sons close to her.
A city without an economic horizon
Yehli, the eldest of Panlim's four children (55), has been cooking in Australia for years.
And there, at the end of the world, he put his heart in the hands of his mother, with whom he fathered Asa, her first grandchild.
"Yahli is a third generation in Tel Aviv and he can't live there. It has no financial horizons, not even in terms of rent," she says, "I used to live around me full of artists, now it's a neighborhood that's filled with people who know how to make money. It's not my talent. A job that's not scary Me. I'm a hardworking ant who didn't know how to plan ahead," she says, touching me where it hurts and scares me.
"I've been a lonely soldier for 3,000 years. I was 18 when my parents left for America and took my two brothers with them. But we Skype a lot. We have long conversations that are born when we're far away. Which happen less when the closeness is taken for granted," she says, taking a moment to breathe the thought and adds: "They've been here for a month now. And Yaheli was in Hai. So maybe after all. Not long ago, there was an article about Yaheli in some Australian newspaper,
And he said there that he misses the holiday table at his mother's house.
It was only when he became a foreigner in a distant continent that he realized how Jewish he was.
Through longing for the holiday table."
The table on either side of which we are sitting and its wings are folded, is suitable for a sober weekday morning chat of two women who believed for a century that food has the power to keep the children close to them.
"Cooking is the most important thing for a mother's bond with her child. To put the food on the table for him," she told me when we met for the first time.
"My children will always come home to me because of this. They will not come because of my face, because of my stories and not because I am some kind of genius. They will come to eat because they want mom for a moment."
It happened in April 2016, when Lisa's first book Panels came out.
Since then she has published three more, all published by Moden.
The fourth, "Liza panels - before, after and during", came out more than two months ago and is the first of the four in which the image of Biliya herself appears on the cover.
The camera of Guy Behar, her partner and who is responsible for most of the photographs in the book, looks at her from the side.
A beautiful and thin woman peeks into the pot, much hotter than Lisa Panellim, whom she gave birth to in 2011,
No trips in the morning
Until then, Biliya was a creative and development manager at Venus Communications, involved in development and consulting for series on Channel 8, the Children's Channel and Nickelodeon.
In the years when the prime-time programs had not yet turned into dinosaurs trampling the margins.
"At that time, with Eyal Shani and Shahar Segal, we did 'Food for Thought' which Shir Biliya, my sister, directed, and we did 'The Visitors' with Ronal Fischer and Ron Miberg, which was a master program. These are stars that can only grow through narrow channels."
That's how 15 years of a valued career passed, with a steady salary and a car that someone would take care of to wash or to the garage.
But then Nega Communications bought the Sports Channel and moved to Herzliya.
Biliya did not see herself traveling every day from Tel Aviv to Herzliya.
Guy, who was just then busy with the establishment of "Salona" - where bloggers began to gather - suggested that she start writing.
At first these were stories.
After that came the recipes and the blog, and that's how life settled down, without morning trips.
Just walks.
"When I say I'm going to the market, the bank or the health fund, I mean it."
Walks on the cross-Israel path or daily walks.
Walking in winter or in summer sweat and nothing deters her.
vice versa.
She loves it, the resistance in sweat, well aware of the power of meetings that walking down the street invites.
"Almost everyone I know has street friends - people who only meet on the street, but not for a meeting at the level of waving and 'ahlan ahlan', but for a meeting that gives rise to a new thought, a different point of view, an interesting anecdote or decent gossip. Following meetings with street friends, I changed my habits nutrition, I realized that I had to say goodbye to my workplace, I received recommendations for B&Bs, pediatricians, the Spirit Ashram and a safe mechanic."
She dedicated the book to her two brothers, Shir and Moti, who when she talks about them, especially about Shir, there is something maternal in the melody of the words.
"Even though she's two years younger than me, I'm a bit of her mother. She was 11 or 12 years old, I came back from a Girl Scout trip and saw her in the living room with chills, shaking with a cold. I told mom she wasn't well, and mom replied that she came back from Dr. Wilder, who said it was just the flu , that she is fine.
I started crying and screaming to take her to the hospital now.
In the end, they flew her to Rambam. She had a severe outbreak of the kissing disease. That's when I realized that I was responsible for the house."
I look at her beautiful face, which allows itself sadness even when the words are laughing, and as soon as you dwell on them, the little girl who grew up in her room comes out of it.
Looking at the palms, the kitchen dance inherent in them has become so familiar.
Long, strong palms that have something excited about them while they peel peppers or cut a salad, serve a piece of cake in the morning to the members of the experimental community she created for her in Gan Meir.
Cakes that come out of her kitchen oven go there for a first review, which she records and uploads straight to the story, and if you concentrate enough you can feel something of the smells and tastes of a lemon or yeast cake that came out of the oven in the home kitchen.
Most of the time you only hear it, not see it.
Sometimes, just by the voice, strangers recognize her.
Says it's enough.
that would not have stood for absolute stardom, like for example the one that her neighbor Aharoni Hava experienced.
Says she would only stand for it if it would allow her to buy a house.
Biliya, in the home kitchen. "Liza is old-fashioned, and I don't think old-fashioned is bad", photo: Itiel Zion
"You must be looking at others"
And in any case, television, for all the commercial limitations that growth has, doesn't really wink at it.
She likes watching "MasterChef," which "doesn't take itself too seriously. But the best food show is 'Come Eat With Me.' Pure, the cleanest and most exposed with all the contrasts that Dikla Kidar and Shai Avivi write."
And when she sees how the doubt turns into two wrinkles between my eyes, she hastens to add that she always gives a lot of credit to the narrator, because it is clear to her that he has a part in the writing.
A lot of bloggers and especially food bloggers have developed since the injury to Lisa Panelim.
"You must be looking at others," she answers when I ask.
"Looking, jealous, very much. On the other hand, I've grown up and I love it. I know that today you're relevant and tomorrow you're not. I remember being a young, brash and arrogant creative director, and someone from the educational school came and she looked terribly old to me. I think she was younger than me Today. Her ideas seemed outdated to me and she seemed so irrelevant to me. I'm sure a lot of people see me that way today. Outdated."
Lisa?
No way?
She is not obsolete in sailing.
"I think so and I don't think old is bad.
There is something about my Hebrew being beautiful," she says, and I think about the solid foundations rooted in her language, which allow for free writing. I remember the first time I gave her an opinion when I came across her story about her parents who went to live in America - the word my father used every time he told me about The Polish neighbors among whom he grew up in Buffalo, New York and Yiddish came out of their English.
Ten years of panel fame passed until she agreed to collaborations with commercial entities such as "Fox Home" and "Danuna Greek" by Strauss. She says that there was no one who saw eye to eye with her. "I I know that Rome was not built in a day, but I also want to build myself into something that is different from others, that has its own language, that doesn't do everything.
I turned down several offers along the way."
I'm saying something about it that it's better that way, because what's the word of a blogger who collaborates with the whole world worth?
But Biliya says that it is only because we are adults that we think like that.
"This thought passes by the younger generation. What's beautiful is that the young women do their thing 360 degrees. They don't criticize the other. They accept themselves. There is something very beautiful about it. If you were Hila, a 2022 model, you would understand this and you would make a lot of money from this".
The cover of the book "before, after and during".
lyse panels,
The beautiful children are hiding
She would like to reveal her family a little more, but apart from Haley (29) the other children, Royo (18), Daniel (16) and Daria (13), are not ready to cooperate with this matter.
Rarely do they peek out of some photograph and for a moment the breath stops.
How beautiful the children of the Biliya Behar house are.
The growth of children is still present in the recipes where she still sanctifies the efficiency and clarity that characterize her, but allows herself a little more complexity in flavors and processes.
Ones that do not exist in a house full of toddlers.
From the hospitality tips that open the book and through the introductions to the recipes, the message emerges that the main thing is not to be afraid at all.
"I really like to look at things and think about how to simplify them. 50 people come to eat? No problem. Tell me to raise ten children? No problem. To publish three books and at the same time edit a TV show? No problem. Until it comes to health. There I have anxieties about The children, about those closest to me. That's where I lose it. I think that somewhere I carry the fact that my mother, when she was 20 years old, lost her parents two months apart. When the children were born, I stopped smoking."
What yacht here and there?
"What the hell?! Cigarettes. If I were to touch the shafts, I would smoke from morning to night. I'm an addict. I stopped because I was afraid that if I continued smoking, the children wouldn't have a mother. I have a lot of thoughts. Sometimes of the scary kind that gnaw at me and scare me. Especially at night So I go to one of the children and worry about him terribly."
Sometimes the night also brings kitchen ideas, internet wanderings like the ones where she met the illustrator and writer Daniela London-Dekel.
It started with mutual likes and ended with the idea that she came up with a women's meeting together.
"I thought there were points of similarity between us, we are both Tel Avivians of the same age, work from home, raise children but want more things. I didn't know her before. Only from Facebook and her work. When my first book came out, Roni Moden suggested that Daniela London illustrate it for me, and I said To her, 'Are you crazy? She'll overshadow me.' . She told me 'No'. I said 'Why? At most we will fail'. She told me that she had never been on stage. That she could get a block. I told her that I would too. But as soon as we two lean on each other."
This is how the show "Lisa and Daniela do a panel" was born, which has been running for several months and is proving to be a great success.
"Daniela is wild and kind-hearted. When you're young you're drawn to evil, today I can't be with him. We're not friends, we don't see each other every day, but I love her," she says when I'm interested in how they're doing about the meat pot.
Because while Billia's house, like her books, encourages a limited consumption of animals and most of her recipes are meat-free, Daniela London-Dekel completely revived it and recently became a leading voice in the fight for veganism.
"I say that you don't make such changes all at once, but it burns in her," says Biliya, "It's not just the flesh, it's also the earth."
You can say we are doing a terrible job of keeping him safe.
"I think it's more the generation of our parents with the zip and the orangeade. We already have more awareness, and I believe there is always a fix."
And when I tried to remember the taste of Orangeda, she suddenly asked me what motivates me to do it.
what is the motivation
I told her that if I don't save, all the demons will rise up to devour me.
in the morning or at night.
And what is your motivation?
"My motivation is to prove that I am no less good than the other."
So in honor of Hagit Biliya and in honor of Leiza Panelim, two excellent women, one of the best I've ever known, in honor of thoughts that create action and in honor of the winter that has come, I bring you the recipe for cabbage fans from her new book.
before and after.
Cabbage stuffed with meat, photo: Guy Behar
A pot of stuffed cabbage fans
I'm on a crazy cabbage trip, each time falling into a relationship with a different vegetable, I just ended a perfect relationship with kohlrabi and immediately squinted at its charming round cousin, the cabbage.
Today I brought three handsome, crispy angels home with me, my soul has never known such happiness.
I made a salad from one, since I was playing with crispy dough.
And last but not least, he received a full board massage with two hands and loving eyes: cutting, filling, setting gems in a beautiful pot.
Those who like cabbage stuffed with ground meat, are going to fly over this pot, without too much fuss there is a huge pot!
A wide, flat pot with a diameter of 38 cm to the north. Stainless steel is preferred.
What do you need?
Beautiful green cabbage, purple onion cut into segments, 4-6 celery leaves.
For the filling:
300 grams of ground meat with a drop of fat, 1/3 cup of washed basmati rice (uncooked!), 1/3 cup of bread crumbs, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, 2-3 cloves of garlic, a small peeled onion, a cup of herbs: dill /Mint and parsley, a teaspoon of pomegranate concentrate, a teaspoon of bharte or cumin (optional, only those who like it), a teaspoon of honey, a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, 5 tablespoons of olive oil.
For the pot sauce:
3 ripe tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of pasta, 4 cloves of garlic, a teaspoon of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper, 4 cups of boiling water, 1/4 cup of olive oil.
How to prepare:
For the pot sauce:
put tomatoes, paste, garlic, sugar, salt, black pepper and 1/4 cup of olive oil in a processor.
Grind into a smooth sauce, set aside.
To fill:
In a blender, grind the tomato paste, garlic, onion, herbs, pomegranate concentrate, honey, salt, pepper and 5 tablespoons of olive oil into a paste.
In a bowl we will mix:
the tomato paste to fill the area with the ground meat, rice and bread crumbs.
Add another 1/2 teaspoon of salt and knead the mixture well.
For the cabbage:
we will take the cabbage, cut it in half and then into quarters including the stem (in no way will we remove the stem), between the lower leaves we will cradle a meatball and then also in the upper ones.
Only after filling, each quarter will be cut into two halves with the meat.
This is how we will fill all the quarters of the cabbage and then cut it into halves.
Arrangement of the pot:
Pour 1/4 cup of olive oil in a wide pot.
We will arrange our meat fans nicely, put them on the stove so that they get a nice sear (about 3 minutes), and only then pour the pot sauce mixed with 4 cups of water, sprinkled with celery leaves and red onion.
Bring to a boil, lower the heat and cover the pot for an hour.
Then put it in the oven at 180 degrees, uncovered pot for about 20 minutes.
I allow you:
add 1/2 teaspoon of caraway seeds to the pot sauce, add a teaspoon of paprika for those who like it.
Allowing you, all gluten-free, instead of breadcrumbs, another tablespoon of rice.
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