between one holiday and the next

I truly love the holiday season. And yet, it's a lot. After Rosh haShanah I thought that I had done a pretty good job of keeping up with all of the tablecloths and napkins that get used for holiday meals but by the time Yom Kippur was over I was drowning under a stack of ironing that needed to get done.

This was part of the stack that I tackled yesterday. The cloth with the pink cross stitched flowers also needed a fair amount of mending which I did by hand because I just couldn't manage the thought of taking out my sewing machine. The hand mending is essentially creating a bit of needle weaving. Sorry no photos taken of the mending but I no longer have two large matching constellations of holes on the left and right of the cloth.

There was a large stack of napkins that needed to be tended to as well.

There are probably more napkins hiding away only to be discovered in a few weeks or months.

Sukkot begins tonight, so a holiday meal tonight followed by another one tomorrow night and then of course it will then be Shabbat.

I am now delighted that I have been cooking like a crazy person. The only quantity my body seems to know at this time of year is LOTS. So I am able to pull most of our meals out of the freezer rather than starting every big dinner from scratch.

My husband is feeling a little tired of challah so these are our loaves for the first part of the holiday.

The design is formed by pushing a teacup into the center of a round loaf and then cutting the rays with a razor. I created the design so that despite these not being made out of rich challah dough they look festive. I may be able to post a photo of the finished loaves. The breads themselves have a fair amount of semolina flour and wheat berries in the dough. I used honey as the sweetner.

I offer this hopeful song as a prayer that all goes well in the next several days.

And a 17th century Yemenite prayer for the redemption of Jewish hostages.

Wishing all of us a holiday that is fully זמן שמחתינו, the season of our joy.

I can post the photo of breads but alas not the aroma.

חג שמח

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