you know it's windy out when you can't see jordan across the street

Kibbutz Ketura is kind of like a mini Noah’s Ark in itself with so many animals running around: we’ve got cows, goats, rabbits, horses, camels (wild!), cats (gross!), scorpions, and, get this, donkeys. While the presence of most of these brutes is pretty self explanatory (income and/or decoration, I can only assume), you may be surprised to learn why Ketura is home to a herd of donkeys.
You see, one of our main exports here on the commune is dates, which are located in perfectly symmetrical rows of date palms just across the highway from the residential part of the kibbutz. The orchard lies adjacent to the Jordanian border, which is literally a five-minute walk from my apartment (trust me on this one). In order to preserve the uniformity of the date tree matrices, we’ve employed a number of donkeys to eat the fallen fruit and prevent offshoots from growing, and, despite this being a religious kibbutz, you’d better believe that these day laborers have to work on Shabbat.
It got me thinking. If I were a donkey whose sole purpose in life was to eat one item which would constitute my entire diet, what kind of food would that be? While dates are definitely delicious and a good choice for some, I’m deterred by their high caloric content and excessively sweet overtone. Indeed, I relish snacking on dates ripened and candied, but only in small quantities. That leaves me with quite a few other choices for my ideal diet:
1. Persimmon. (Or, as the Israelis say, Affarsimone.) My initial thought was that I would be in absolute heaven if I were a persimmon-eating donkey; however, I assure you from personal experience that devouring too many persimmons has a crippling effect on the stomach. There was a time when I would consume two, three, even four persimmons every day. Just thinking about their subtly sweet taste and firm yet juicy texture makes my mouth water. But there came a day when even one bite of a persimmon would send me into agonizingly painful stomach convulsions, causing me to cower on my bed in the fetal position for two hours at a time until the cramps subsided. I had to swear off the forbidden fruit for about a month until I felt that my intestines could once again handle the apparently toxic outer skin, and since then I’ve been unable to eat more than one fruit per day. In conclusion: Persimmon donkey? I don’t think so.
2. Pomello. Mmm, pomello. They’re these giant citrus fruits that are kind of sweet, kind of tart, but not overbearing in either of these areas, with a perfectly pulpy consistency that makes feasting on these oversized grapefruits both pleasurable and satisfying. However, I’ve been told that too many pomellos can cause violent shilshul (diarrhea), which will ruin anyone’s day.
3. Dragonfruit, also known as pitaya in Hebrew. Dude, we grow those too! I always thought dragonfruit was one of those made up flavors, like blue raspberry or sour apple. However, I promise you that it is indeed real as I used to literally eat them for breakfast during the 3-week dragonfruit season last fall. The exterior is spiky and purple, which peals off to reveal what looks like an oversized, radioactive, majenta kiwi. The fruity taste is somewhat understated and hard to describe, but I had some pitaya sorbet on Yom HaAtzma’ut (Israeli 4th of July) and it pretty much resembled frozen heaven. But I’m pretty sure that if my entire diet consisted of dragonfruit, I’d probably turn purple, or at least my teeth would be permanently stained and then nobody would want to kiss me.
4. Falafel. Nah, too greasy. Plus, nothing compares to Falafel HaGesher (the sketchy stand across the parking lot from my merkaz klitah in Be’er Sheva) so as a falafel-eating donkey, I would be forced to compromise my standards. Next.
5. Mixin. A lot of people think falafel is the definitive Israeli food, but alas, you poor American fools, there exists another type of fare often overlooked in Middle Eastern cuisine. And that, my friends is Mixins.
When you order a Mixin, you have your choice of an assortment of frozen fruits, including mango, passion fruit, kiwi, litchi, sabra, pineapple, and more, plus pecans, chocolate, and halva, also known as sesame bark. (Israelis love their sesame bark.) You pick out whatever ingredients you want, and then it all gets thrown into a machine to mix in (ha ha, get it?) with a block of low-calorie vanilla frozen yogurt. And while my stomach is completely intolerant of most dairy substances, for some reason I can easily digest this treat with the help of a lactase pill, basically proof that there really is a g-d.
Oh lord, I have an insatiable appetite for Mixins, which is unfortunate because Mixin stores are somewhat difficult to track down outside of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. But as a Mixin-eating donkey, that wouldn’t be a problem; I would be perfectly content spending my days waiting for paper cups of awesomeness to fall off the tree.