What’s Cookin’ With The Food Guy

Tonight on the Food Guy’s menu will be chicken breast, which has been marinated in honey mustard since last night. I plan to cook it in the oven and then finish it off in this grill pan that my Mom gave me. On the side, there will be grilled onions and peppers and I haven’t decided on what will accompany the chicken and grilled veggies. Any Suggestions?

Quick thing

I just realized that sometimes I use the hebrew terms for unit, platoon or whatever so I’m going to do my best to tell you what is what right now.

Sevet: Unit or squad

Mach-la-kah: Platoon- consists of roughly 15-50 soldiers

Pluga: Company- typically consists of 3-5 platoons.

I’m pretty sure that is more or less what everything is…

Jerusalem: Day 1

My pluga spent Wednesday and Thursday in Jerusalem. The bus ride took about three hours or so and was nice as I got to spend that time sleeping. We arrived in Jerusalem around 10:45 in the morning. Our first stop was Mt. Herzl, which is a cemetery/memorial soldiers and important Israeli figures. Yitzhak Rabin, Gold Meir, Levi Eshkol are buried there among others as well. My commander brought us around and told us about everything. It was hard to follow everything that he was saying. Our last stop at Mt. Herzl was the cemetery where all the fallen soldiers are buried.

One of the soldiers buried there is Michael Levin, who the Lone Soldier Center is dedicated to. He was an American who died in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. From what I’ve heard he was in vacation when the war broke out and left vacation early to fight with his unit. The army supposedly told him to stay on vacation, but he came back anyway and was driven to the Lebanon border. He died a few days or a week later. There were pictures of himself at his grave, his dog tags, and a beret for his unit, para-trooping. Seeing all of the soldiers’ graves and seeing how young they are, really makes you think. You see young men, such as Michael Levin and the rest of them, who are in my opinion heroes, and how young they were. It makes you realize that there is no glory in war. There’s nothing glorious about it at all. Yes, you may die a hero and for a purpose, but in the end, your dead. Your family no longer has you. You’re life is simply over.  Someone who enlists in the military thinking that they’re going to ride off into the sunset and come back a hero and be enshrined, well, they’re simply wrong. It’s sad to see all the young men who are no longer with us.

After Mt. Herzl, we spent the rest of the day at the Kotel or Wailing Wall. We walked around that area for a while and learned about the history. We got to write messages to put in the Wailing Wall, which is done by numerous people when they visit. I wrote a few notes and was sure to put my Army I.D. number on one of the notes, just in case “The Big Guy” decides to help me out with my profile.

Following The Kotel, we all got on the buses and went to a base just on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It’s a small base. When we got there we had dinner. It was pasta with tomato sauce and eggplant. it actually wasn’t terrible. After dinner, my Mach-la-kah (platoon) was told that we would have shmira (guard duty) that night. It would only be for an hour though. We had to be in bed by 9 p.m., and I found out that my shmira was at 1 a.m. I wasn’t thrilled because everyone had to be up and outside by 5:20 that morning, so I wasn’t going to get much sleep that night.

I woke up around 12:30 at night and had shmira with Jay. I had to guard the entrance of the base, while he was on patrol. It was pretty boring. i had to open the gate for a few people and ask for their Army I.D., but other than that it was pretty uneventful. However, I had to stay on guard an extra 20 minutes because the two guys taking over for myself and Jay overslept. Well actually, one of them couldn’t read his name in hebrew on the list, so he had no clue. After that I tried to sleep for a few hours.