First Cholent as Israelis

As Matt was carefully roasting his coffee beans this morning (more on that later), POOF, our gas went out.  We knew this day would come, but we had no idea when and it caught us completely off guard.  In Israel most homes and apartment buildings are not equipped with gas lines, but rather gas "balloons" or containers that sit outside and are connected to your kitchen.  Generally each apartment has its own set of 2 gas balloons.  This means that when one runs out, you switch to the second and order a replacement for the first.  This way you're never stuck without any gas at all.  Sadly for us, both our gas balloons are empty.  When we moved into the apartment there was still gas left from the previous tenants.  We had no idea how much, but we didn't really investigate the situation.  Then today, it finally happened: the gas is gone... and of course it happened on a Friday, when people generally do the most cooking and the gas company is closed.  "...תמיד ביום שישי" "Always on Friday..." our neighbors told us.  And that's how it goes in Israel.

With the lack of stove, we spent the morning reflecting on our culinary improvements since making aliyah 5 months ago.  We have come a long way since our dinners in the temporary apartment of instant couscous and/or ramen noodles (מנה חמה) and Israeli salad.    Now, we cook real food every night, I have been regularly baking challah on Friday mornings and Matt is even roasting his own coffee, although that is more of a fluke than anything.  When I went to pick up some coffee beans for Matt the other day, the coffee guy packaged the beans in the back room, so I didn't know they were green coffee beans until Matt opened the bag at home.  Instead of bringing them back to the store, we decided to look up how to roast them ourselves.  Thanks to YouTube, we watched a tutorial and felt confidant heading into the kitchen.  After the first batch, however, the flame was out.  It could take up to 7 days for new gas balloons, so hopefully the beans that got roasted will be enough to hold Matt over until then.   

Since we can't cook on the stove we figured it would be a good week to make our first cholent as Israelis.  Cholent or Hamin, for those who are unfamiliar, is a meat stew with potatoes and beans that is cooked over night.  This quintessentially Jewish food was born out of the desire to have hot food on Shabbat day when you can't actively cook so you start your stew before Shabbat and then just let it sit and cook all night.  Today, many people do this in a crock pot, which until this morning, we did not own.  Our awesome down-the-street neighbors were already letting us borrow their car to run some other errands, so we figured it would be a good time to pick up a crock-pot too.  (Side-note: having a car is awesome and it was fun driving around the city.  It was also good practice as we will hopefully be taking our drivers license conversion tests in the near future).  Our "road-trip" also took us to Haifa shuk which is always colorful and full of life, especially on Fridays.  I spend a lot of time there, but this was actually Matt's first trip to the shuk and I was happy to show him around and introduce him to my egg-guy (aka the guy who sells eggs). Here are some fun pictures from the morning including green onions being sold out a trunk of a car, the fried beans I buy at the shuk for my daily snack and the challahs I just baked.   

Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekend!

Stef and Matt