The Secret of the Challah!

I almost forgot to answer: what was the secret of the challah???

They were "schlissel challahs" - "key challahs" which we traditionally bake the first Shabbos after Pesach.

The key, I believe, is a symbol that the year will "open up" into a year of blessings, peace, and alle gute zachn (all that good stuff).

This year, I let Naomi into the secret - the challah on the left is hers, I believe. She was pretty giggly about hiding hers, and managed not to tell anybody.

So it was lots of fun when Ted almost broke the challah knife slicing into the keys. BOTH meals! He forgot, I think, before he cut into the smaller lunchtime one.

What are the keys for?

We always have so many spare keys lying around the house so I just grab a couple that don't look utterly greasy. I do wash them super-well, though, before sticking them in the dough.

A few years ago, I noticed a bakery selling schlissel challahs after Pesach, and I thought "what a cheat"!!!

The whole point, for me, is to get your act together enough to haul the food processor and all the flour out of storage merely minutes (okay, 3 hours) after Pesach ended - in the midst of holiday and post-holiday chaos and laundry - so your family can have warm, fresh mama-made challah not 24 hours later. It's not always 24 hours (it could be almost up to a week), but to me, the joy of providing fresh challah at times when it is difficult - right before or after having a baby, or right before or after Pesach, cannot be equalled on an ordinary Shabbos (when I have been known to cheat and enjoy bakery challahs on occasion...!).

Comments

לימודי קודש/Limudei Kodesh Copywork & Activity Printables

Welcome to my Limudei Kodesh / Jewish Studies copywork and activity printables page. As of June 2013, I am slowly but surely moving all my printables over to 4shared because Google Docs / Drive is just too flaky for me. What you’ll find here: Weekly Parsha Copywork More Parsha Activities More Chumash / Tanach Activities Yom Tov Copywork & Activities Tefillah Copywork Pirkei Avos / Pirkei Avot Jewish Preschool Resources Other printables! For General Studies printables and activities, including Hebrew-English science resources and more, click here . For Miscellaneous homeschool helps and printables, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi! If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you just want to say Thank You, here’s a

Hebrew/ עברית & English General Studies Printables

For Jewish Studies, including weekly parsha resources and copywork, click here . If you use any of my worksheets, activities or printables, please leave a comment or email me at Jay3fer “at” gmail “dot” com, to link to your blog, to tell me what you’re doing with it, or just to say hi! If you want to use them in a school, camp or co-op setting, please email me (remove the X’s) for rates. If you enjoy these resources, please consider buying my weekly parsha book, The Family Torah : the story of the Torah, written to be read aloud – or any of my other wonderful Jewish books for kids and families . English Worksheets & Printables: (For Hebrew, click here ) Science : Plants, Animals, Human Body Math Ambleside : Composers, Artists History Geography Language & Literature Science General Poems for Elemental Science . Original Poems written by ME, because the ones that came with Elemental Science were so awful. Three pages are included: one page with two po

Are Jews an "underrepresented community" in children’s publishing?

I applied for a writing award yesterday. I'm not going to get it, but that's not what I wanted to share with you. Here's what I wanted to share. This box: I stared at this box for a long, long time. And then I decided not to check it. Even though I believe people like me truly are underrepresented, we probably wouldn’t fit the definition in other people's minds. Why? Well, because we're European. Because we are white. Because as everybody knows, Jews control the media. (do we???) If anything, some people say, Jews are over -represented in publishing. And yet. Some definitions are careful not to include people like me. Like this random definition from the State of California which defines underrepresented for some very specific business purposes as: "an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self-identi

Adventures in Mama-Land

Search This Blog