Aloha Bread Lovers – this Sunday (tomorrow), assuming that there will be no power outages at the bakery from the storm (so far so good) we will be serving our tangy shakshuka for breakfast. For those who may not be familiar, shakshuka is tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil and plenty of spices that slow cooks overnight. When you order it we crack an egg – or two – in it, bake it all together in the oven and serve with a fluffy roll to mop it up. As for music – its still not clear yet if the weather will permit but I would say the odds are good.
We would like to thank all who came out for our falafel dinner last week. We were faced with some significant technical challenges as one of our electric stove tops slowly began to take an early retirement, gradually shutting down. We were wondering why it was taking so long to fry up falafel balls but the result was that we were working at half capacity. Thank you for all who showed patience and understanding. Yael is determined to do it again, this time with a proper deep fryer which should streamline things quite a bit.
This week was Yom Kippur - a big day in the Jewish calendar. For observant Jews it is a day of fasting and soul searching as we make our final pleas for mercy and forgiveness just as God decides who shall be inscribed in the Book of Life and live to see another Yom Kippur. The holiday opens with a special prayer Kol Nidrei which literally means “all vows”. The prayer essentially says that all vows between God and the individual are null and void. It also states that it is now permissible to pray in the company of transgressors. There is a view that this prayer gained special significance for the Jews in Spain and Portugal during the Spanish Inquisition when the Jews were forced to either convert to Christianity or be burned at the stake. This led to a massive number of conversos or annusim – Jews who were forced to convert but who secretly continued to practice Judaism. When they gathered to secretively pray on Yom Kippur they were especially eager to make it known to God that even though they may have taken a vow to follow a different faith and in so doing transgressed, they are asking to be released from those vows and to be allowed to pray and be forgiven. Five days after Yom Kippur kicks off the week-long celebration of Sukkot – a holiday celebrating the harvest when it is customary to build a sukkah (a booth out of palm fronds) under the stars, where you host friends and family for meals. Had we built one at Motek it would surely have been blown away by Hurricane Nolo whose outer bands are drenching us and gusting up quite a bit here in North Kohala.
Finally, one of our customers is a very nice French woman named Isabelle. She is always happy to find others with whom to converse in French and has also been known to tutor those who want to learn French. She is inviting those who would like to speak French to join her over a cup of coffee at Motek on Thursday at 10:00am, just to chat. This is appropriate as Thursday is also the day that we bake baguette. Merci beaucoup Isabelle.
Mahalo – David and Yael
P.S A Joke – WARNING – CLICK AT YOUR OWN PERIL: https://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/2018/11/28/bill-reyer-jacques-cousteaus-discovery-421
