Aloha Bread Lovers – Tomorrow we will be serving our tangy Shakshuka for breakfast. By now most of you know what this is (hint – egg in a rich tomato stew) but for the uninitiated please see below for a full description.
First of all, we apologize for not being able to open on Thursday. The power outage left us dead in the water. In the meantime, I (David) have been sidelined with a bout of pneumonia. If it was one of you who gave it to me, I won’t be mad, just own up to it. Fortunately, we have antibiotics. While the team at the bakery has been working hard in my absence, I had time to ponder the subject of antibiotics. Would you believe that ancient Egyptians documented the use of moldy bread and certain soils to put on wounds for their antibiotic properties? They even found evidence in the bones of ancient Nubians from the Nile Delta that they were widely using tetracycline (presumably not to fight acne) derived from a fermented beer. The big breakthrough came in 1928 when Alexander Fleming accidentally left out a culture plate of Staphylococcus bacteria which was then contaminated by a fungus Penicillium notatum. Since then, bacteria have become more resistant to our current arsenal of antibiotics, largely due to overuse. Alongside better awareness and stewardship of antibiotics, there is a major push to find new sources of bacteria-fighting drugs. In the meantime, it turns out that cranberries have a molecular structure that can assist antibiotics in their work by making it more difficult for bacteria to get rid of the antibiotics while also making their cell walls more permeable to the antibiotic. I will keep my eye out for a good cranberry beverage to add to Motek’s drink section.
Mahalo – David and Yael
P.S. A Joke – WARNING: SEXUAL CONTENT – CLICK AT YUR OWN PERIL: https://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/2022/01/12/mervin-blostein-playing-with-a-vibrator-599-13/
Shakshuka is a dish that came to Israel from N. Africa. It is made by slow-cooking tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil and Yael’s concoction of spices. When you order it, we crack an egg in it – or two, your choice – and pop it in the oven until the egg is cooked. It is served with some tahini sauce on the side a fluffy pita for mopping up and dipping in the tahini.