Yay! It worked!

If at first... right?! Challah - it worked! I have to give many thanks to my children, who enoyed the challah I made two Shabboses ago to insist(politely and respectfully) that I try it again. So I did, this time using a cool Israeli product, Shimrit, which is granulated fresh yeast, and you can buy it in a dual pack with dough conditioner. I sort of had to guess at what I was doing, but it came out great! Here are the unbaked loaves,

and here they are after a vacation in the oven:I will openly admit that they are not the epitome of beauty - not what I would envision, but frankly, they were delicious and beautifully textured, and they just made us all very happy. I guess now I can say I do bake challah...

I also can say that I make soup - kubbeh soup, to be exact. After thinking about it for a while, and doing a bunch of research (there are lots of varieties of kubbeh, not to mention kubbeh soups), I decided to make a variation of red kubbeh soup. This recipe included beets, carrots, celery, onions, sweet potatoes, zucchini, lemon juice, and a tomato base,with, of course frozen kubbeh, which, lucky for me, were on sale in the supermarket. Having never tasted the real thing, the soup was probably a ridiculously American-Ashkenazi-fied version, but we all loved it. The picture is not pretty, and the bowl is messy, but we did not care.

Next post, I will fill you in on last week's baking exploits - lots of cookies were baked, lots of sugar consumed.

Dvora