Sunday’s a good day to remember what we’ve been grateful for over the past week, don’t you think? I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition.
– Being bathed in the angelic voices of a professional children’s choir!
– Lying on the living room rug at my parents’ house, wrapped in a blanket, watching them decorate their Christmas tree. I wish I’d felt well enough to help, but it felt homey and comforting just to be there.
– Challah bread! What a special, delicious treat to have around.
– Hubby making the most incredible pot of spaghetti sauce, and how amazing it made our house smell!
– Seeing glowing Christmas trees in other peoples’ windows.
– Candles in our bedroom.
– Having a wonderful day with my mom on her birthday. The stars aligned and it ended up being one of those rare days where I almost forgot I was sick; I felt really good, and we had such a nice day together, and then when my dad got home from work, we went and had a wonderful dinner out at our favorite French restaurant. And she really loved the framed mandala I made for her! I was happy with how it turned out. That’s a picture of it at the top of this post.
– Getting a Christmas tree! And decorating it together with F.
– Meeting my sweet Hubby for lunch twice this week. Fun!!
– A squeaky clean kitchen floor, cabinets, fridge front, and stove! I got roped into cleaning after accidentally spilling 4 ounces of castile soap on the floor! Gah! On the upside, it’s great to have those surfaces nice and clean.
– Speaking of the fridge, we have a light in there again. It went out last week, and a fridge is surprisingly dark and depressing without a light! It’s so nice to have light there again! Hah!
– Smelling the Christmas tree as I go about my day.
– Hot bath!
– Watching Radio Days with F. last night. I love that movie~
– Sitting by the Christmas tree in the quiet of the night before bed, writing my gratitude list by the glow of the lights.
– That dusk falls early during this quiet, cozy, inward season. To tell you the truth, it feels like a relief.
– Looking forward to snow tomorrow!!
– Feeling pretty good for several days this week; near-normal energy, and getting lots done.
– And then when I began feeling quite bad again, being reminded by my mom that “everything happens exactly as it should.”
– Being with my Hubby… just hanging out together. Laughing together! What an incredibly lucky girl I am.
We’ve got the lovliest little Christmas tree in our apartment!
F. and I decorated it together Thursday night. My favorite trees are the sparse and spindly Charlie Brown type, and I think this one is just perfect. I love it!
Last year I made ornaments out of sea shells from my stash. I’m really glad I did that, because we don’t have enough windowsill space to display them. So instead of them sitting in a box in the closet, they get to be beautifully displayed on the tree each Christmas. And that way they become even more special because I don’t see them every day, so they aren’t just becoming part of the scenery.
My two favorites are the miniature abalone (‘paua’) shell, and the giant scallop shell. Both I found in New Zealand; they hold special memories!~
And this year we have a beautiful pink flamingo at the top of our tree. Hubby put it there and I love it! I also decorated my little Norfolk Island pine, and you can see it has its own little flamingo too.
Mmmm, challah bread! The perfect holiday treat for your own family, or a friend! Challah is a traditional Jewish bread eaten on the Sabbath and on holidays, and is usually parve (made without milk or meat); this recipe isn’t parve (okay with me since I’m not Jewish), but if you’d like it to be, just substitute oil for the butter.
Here’s the challah recipe that I’ve used for many years (plus my tips for success), as well as video instructions on how to do a pretty 6-braid loaf.
Before we start, know that this bread requires two risings. Keep your eye on the dough — once it has doubled each time, move onto the next step promptly. I wouldn’t recommend leaving to go shopping and letting it over-rise and sit around too long, because the yeast will consume more sugar than you want, and the resulting bread will be more yeasty and not as subtly sweet; if this happens, the bread will still be good, but not asgood.
Ok, let’s get started!
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Challah Bread
7/8 cup water, at 100° – 110°
2 tsp active dry yeast
1/4 cup honey
2 eggs at room temperature
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 tsp salt
4 cups flour (I like using half white, half whole wheat…all white is yummy but not as healthy…or you could also use all whole wheat)
For the egg wash: 1 whole egg + 1 Tbsp water
***
Proof the yeast by stirring it into the water and letting it sit until it’s bubbly and foamy on top, about 5 or 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, melt the butter and warm the honey if needed so that it’s free flowing.
Stir the salt into the flour in a large bowl, and add all the other ingredients (yeast water, honey, the 2 eggs, and butter).
If you have an electric stand mixer, now would be the time to use it, allowing the dough hook to knead the dough for several minutes.
If, like me, you don’t own a stand mixer, no problem! — with a wooden spoon, stir until a dough forms. With the same wooden spoon, pretend that you are the stand mixer. Knead the dough as best you can for several minutes, until smooth, using the spoon — digging into the center of the dough, twisting, lifting, dropping. I’ve made this bread many times and discovered that you want to add a bare minimum of extra flour, or else the resulting bread will be too dry. When kneading with a wooden spoon in the bowl, you won’t be tempted to add flour since the dough won’t be sticking to your counter, to your hands, etc., while you knead. (You can also knead with your hand inside the bowl! Either way works just fine.)
Now, with the dough in the bowl, cover the bowl completely with a lid, plate, or plastic wrap.
Set aside to rise until doubled in size. To speed the process, I like to turn the oven on for a minute or two, then turn it off (test with your hand to be sure it’s only just warm) to create a slightly warmer environment than the ambient temperature in my kitchen… then put the bowl into the warm oven.
Once it’s doubled in size, punch it down and gather the dough into a loaf shape, cutting it into six pieces of equal size. Feel each piece with your hand, re-distributing dough from piece to piece until they all feel about the same.
On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of dough into a rope as long as you like; mine usually end up about 18″ long.
Lay your ropes onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper (you can, instead, grease a cookie sheet generously, but I find that parchment is really a good tool in this situation, otherwise the egg wash tends to glue the edges of the bread to the sheet, making it a little hard to get off. You can certainly do it that way… but if you have parchment, use it here.) 😉
At one end, pinch the ropes together, and now you’re ready to braid! Watch the video below for instructions on how to do a 6-braid loaf (it’s not hard, and the end result looks very impressive!).
Once you’ve braided your loaf, it needs to rise until doubled in size. I’ve tried covering the loaf with wax paper, plastic wrap, a damp tea towel, and they always stick to the loaf no matter what. My favorite method, therefore, is this: turn on your oven for a minute or two until it’s slightly warm, and then turn it off. You don’t want it too warm! Meanwhile, boil some water. When the water boils, pour it into a couple of mugs, and place those in your warm oven. Put the uncovered braid into the warm oven, and close the door. (I like to turn on the oven light to add a little more warmth too.) This way, your braid can rise without anything covering it, and because of the high humidity, it won’t dry out while rising. Because of the warmth and humidity, this step may go fairly quickly, so keep tabs on the braid.
Once your braid is doubled in size, take it out of the oven. Preheat the oven to 375°. While the oven’s heating, make an egg wash by combining 1 whole egg and 1 Tbsp of water in a small jar and shaking vigorously. Using a pastry brush, paint the egg wash onto the braid.
When the oven is hot, put your braid onto the middle rack and bake for about 15-20 minutes, until the top is golden and the underside is lightly golden, but not overdone. Try not to over bake, as that will also dry out the bread. You want the top to be golden, but not too dark.
A nicely done underside will look like this. See how it’s golden also, but not too dark?
Let the bread cool, and enjoy! It’s delicious fresh, but also keeps nicely on the counter; seal it inside a bag to keep it from drying out.
So how do you transport — on a bike — an 18-inch loaf of fragile and delicious 6-braid challah bread? Funny you should ask, since I just did that last week…
You take the bottom of the box that your new canning jars came in. You fold it in thirds and tape one end shut. You wrap your challah like a mummy, lay it in its box, and keep everything together with a couple rubber bands.
Stick it in your backpack, taking care to tie your zippers together with a couple of twisties twisted together to make an extra-long twistie…lest the zippers unzip and the challah fall out.
And voila! It will arrive perfectly intact after its ride across town:
*****
And join me a little later this week when we’ll bake challah together and I’ll show you (in a video) how to do a 6-braid loaf.
Sunday’s a good day to remember what we’ve been grateful for over the past week, don’t you think? I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition.
– Getting a lot accomplished this week — moneymaking work and otherwise. A couple days were a bit frazzling and kind of stressful, but then I laughed when I compared it to the stress at my former job! HAH. It’s good to remember that and keep things in perspective.
– Fraudulent charge taken care of fairly painlessly. Despite my very prudent online purchasing habits, someone stole my credit card number, name, and address, and purchased a giftwrapped Harry Potter book set from barnesandnoble.com. What an idiot! Thankfully I use my credit card (rather than my debit card tied to my checking account) for online purchases, and thankfully it was just one charge, and thankfully I got my card cancelled before any more charges could be made, and thankfully Barnes & Noble was really nice and reversed the charge when I called them and told them the situation. I’m thankful that the whole thing was a minor inconvenience rather than a disaster!
– Turning off the computer early and lighting candles instead. What a difference in atmosphere!
– Coming back to center one day after feeling groundless, defeated, uncertain, needy, lonely, and afraid. Realizing how much my physical state affects my mental state… and acknowledging that. Sometimes just recognizing and acknowledging something is enough to lessen the weight of it.
– Getting moneymaking work done early so that it didn’t hang over me all week long. That felt so great!
– Homegrown potatoes. They taste SO good.
– Homegrown green tomatoes continuing to ripen! It feels incredibly good to still be ‘eating out of the garden.’
– One morning having a delicious breakfast of miso soup made with pastured bone broth, half an avocado, and my all-time favorite snack of cucumbers in cider vinegar with salt & pepper. I have such a new appreciation for food! All of that tasted so, so good.
– Morning sunshine flooding in the windows — and even better, not having to leave it and rush off to work.
– Making amazing Christmas decorations out of fresh greenery with my mom this week. Gosh that was neat!
– Getting whiffs of fresh pine and juniper as I pass my swag in the hallway!
– Our neighbors in the house to the south of us have moved out! This is such fantastic news! With luck, the new neighbors will be a little quieter.
– A dark morning of freezing fog. Oh how I love those cloudy mornings… always hoping it’ll stay cloudy, though it rarely does. I lit candles, turned on soft music, cooked my oatmeal, and revelled in the quietude and coziness. Cloudy days usually feel like a relief as sometimes the sun feels too energizing and blaring and harsh. And then when the sun did come out, the light reflected off all the frozen fog particles and the air was full of sparkly glitter! What a sight!
– Getting lots of errands completed yesterday, and then coming home to our cozy, homey apartment.
-Meeting up serendipitously with Hubby yesterday at the health food store! He’d gone on a bike ride, I’d gone to do errands on my bike. My last stop was the health food store, and when I pulled up to the bike rack, there he was, locking up his bike! The timing was incredible — we couldn’t have done that if we’d tried!
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