I love my crock pot, I just rarely use it. I'll go through phases where
I'll use it to make meatloaf or chicken and vegetables for dinner for a couple
of weeks in a row. Every time I use it, I marvel at the wonder that is the crock
pot. It's so easy to use; if you use an insert then cleanup takes less than
three seconds and the food always comes out delicious. And then for some reason,
I'll forget to use it the next week and before I know it, it's been months since
I made dinner in the crock pot.

Last week, while cooking for Rosh Hashana and trying to cram three days
worth of food into one cooking session, I ran out of burners on the stove and I
still wanted to make chicken soup. I love chicken soup, and so do most of the
people in my house. But it's kind of a pain to make - not so much in the prep
time, which takes about five minutes, but in the sacrifice of a stove burner.
Chicken soup can cook for hours, the longer the better, so making chicken soup
precludes making many other things.

I figured I'd prep the soup, put all the ingredients into the pot and leave
it in the fridge until the next morning when I'd pull it out and let it do it's
thing on an emptier stove top. But when I bent down to get the soup pot out of
the bottom cabinet, I saw the crock pot just sitting there. I'd never made soup
in it before, but there has to be a first time for everything.

Just this past weekend, I had seen a recipe for a crock pot vegetable soup
- I believe in Jewish Action magazine but I can't swear to it and I also can't
find the magazine to check -  and if I can make vegetable soup, why not chicken
soup - or, why not both together? I really like vegetable soup but no else here
does, but what if I just gave them the soup and chicken part and I kept the
vegetables part for myself? Yum.

And so this Chicken-Vegetable Crock Pot Soup recipe was born. I'm pretty
sure you can use whatever vegetables you have around, especially the ones that
will probably be headed for the garbage by the end of the day. Your pot won't
know if a vegetable is slightly mushy, so no offense there. And besides, all
vegetables cooked in soup become mushy so a win for everyone.

This is what I did and what you will need:
1 onion, sliced into rings
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed*
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
2-3 red potatoes, washed and cubed
2 zucchinis, washed, unpeeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
15 baby carrots, cut in half
soup chicken (as much or as little as you like)

Heat some oil in a pot large enough to brown all your chicken. (Yeah, I
realize that I said all my burners were in use. I waited 'till something was
done, browned my chicken and then used that burner to keep going down my list of
recipes waiting to be cooked.) Add the onions to the pot, and let them saute for
a minute and then add the chicken, skin side down. Brown the chicken for five
minutes or until the skin is slightly crispy. Remove the chicken, let it cool
and remove the skin and discard it.

Spray the crock pot with cooking spray so nothing sticks to the side and
add the browned chicken and sauteed onions to the bottom of the crock pot. Add
the rest of the vegetables on top, and add 8-10 cups of water to the crock pot -
or however much will fit, based on your crock pot's size.

Cook on high for five hours hours.

Once the soup was done, I removed the chicken, allowed it to cool, shredded it and put it back in the pot. Once the rest of the soup cooled off slightly, I transferred the whole
thing to a regular pot and stored it in the fridge. Add a few matzah balls (from a mix, don't get excited) and you're done.

I was actually a little concerned that no one would touch the soup after I saw that the finished color was much darker than a regular chicken soup. I chalked it up to the browning of the chicken and the sauteeing of the onions, both of which are not normally done when making chicken soup. The butternut squash, also a darker color, didn't help things, but it turned out fine. The soup was awesome and no one said a word about the weirdo color. Phew.

*Just a little something I learned the other day, also, I think from Jewish
Action magazine but I can't say for sure for sure - to peel and cut up a
butternut squash and keep all your fingers whole in the process, lay the squash
on a paper plate and poke several holes all around the squash with a sharp
knife. Cover the squash with a paper towel and microwave the squash for about
five minutes. Let the squash cool off, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds,
stand the squash up and using a vegetable peeler, peel the outside of the
squash. All you'll be left with is the actual squash that you'll want to use in
your recipe.

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Unlike yesterday, today we made challah at home. I find
that I am generally unsuccessful when making round challahs. I know
what to do, but it doesn't seem to translate into normal looking round challahs.
I usually roll out the dough into a long snake-like shape. Then I just roll it up in a
spiral and put it on the baking sheet, and yet, every time, without fail, the
challahs come out of the oven in a round blob shape, with no definition at all.

So today I tried something different. It's a little hard to see because
unfortunately, my counter top is the same color as the dough, but look
carefully and you shall see.

Instead of rolling each piece of dough into one long thin line, I rolled three
pieces of dough into long thin lines, about 18" long each.

Then I braided the pieces together, which had the whole thing looking something
like the old kind of havdallah candle.

And then I rolled the dough up into a spiral. 

And it worked out so well. The braids kept their shape in the oven and I
was rewarded with a bunch of round challas that don't look like I just threw the
dough onto a tray and hoped for the best. A new round challah idea for a new
year! Hooray!

This is the recipe I used, straight from my cousin Chani in Israel. I've
shared it before, but it's really good and worth sharing again.

2 packets of yeast
2 cups warm water*
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 tbsp salt
7 cups flour

This recipe, unlike many challah recipes is so easy that a small child can
make it because all you do is dump** it all into the bowl of a mixer, turn it on
for 5-7 minutes and walk away. Or watch the mixer go round and round like my
kids do. Hey, it's an activity. Either way, after those 5-7 minutes, you're
done. Cover the bowl with a damp towel and set a timer for two hours, because
surprise surprise, all you have to do is come back when the timer dings. No
punching down the dough, no checking, nothing. Just braid, use an egg wash and
bake at 350 for 25 minutes (depending on the size of the challahs) and eat. 
 

I tripled the recipe and was able to make 9 large round challahs plus two more
challahs, jelly roll style, filled with brown sugar, chopped apples and
chopped dates, special for Rosh Hashana. But more about that tomorrow.


*Maybe 2.5 cups, depending on the humidity outside. More humid, less
water. That's a life lesson in baking.
** That's right, you don't even need to proof the yeast. I'm telling
you, it's like magic.

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Today I had the super-fun opportunity to bake challah for Rosh Hashana with
my daughter's nursery class. The kids are adorable, the teachers wonderful and
we all had fun getting covered in flour. Some kids say soil instead of
oil. Some kids like the taste of straight up flour. And some kids were
practically licking the table when some sugar escaped the measuring cup.

They all washed their hands before helping and they all kneaded the dough -
except for one little boy who told me, in a totally horrified voice, that he
wasn't going to stick his hands into the dough to knead it. My mommy uses a
machine for that. This way is messy. Truth is, at home, I use a machine too
and it was very messy to do it this way, but it's been years since I have
actually kneaded dough by hand and been up to my elbows in flour, and I miss it.
It was awesome and very Fiddler-on-the-Roofish. Kneaded dough on a table with a
pile of flour is very mother earth, very Birkenstocks and tiered flowered
skirts. All things I love. 

With the dough finished, the baby and I left for home so she could nap. And then
three hours later, after the dough has risen, we headed back to nursery to shape
the challahs. Each nursery kid got a big piece of dough and we taught them to
make round challahs, the shape used especially for Rosh Hashana. 

  
Why round challahs? There are several reasons. One is that the round
challah sort of look like a crown, a crown that Hashem wears as the ultimate
King.

Another reason for the round challahs is to illustrate the cyclical nature
of the year. Each year or shana, in Hebrew, draws to a close and
another begins with Rosh Hashana, literally meaning, the head of the year. But,
and I remember learning this in high school (thanks Rabbi L.!) the word
shana also means to change, as in the Hebrew word mishaneh. As
in, we should take stock of how our year has gone and look inward to see what
positive changes we can make this coming year.

If one looks at the round Rosh Hashana challahs, one will find that many
are round and braided but many are in the shape of a spiral - a shape that
repeats itself as it goes around and around. So the question remains, do we want
this coming year to be a spiral, one that repeats itself like last year or do we
want this year to be one in which we make positive changes - whether they be
personal changes or changes in how we treat others or changes in how we connect
with our Creator.

All excellent questions. Just something to think about as you make challah
this today.

Wishing everyone everywhere - and especially everyone who reads this blog
(and we've recently hit an average of 120 a day!) a happy and sweet new year, filled with health, happiness and love
and all good things but especially peace in the Holyland. 
 

Thanks for reading! And if you liked what you saw, please leave a  comment! 

Rosh Hashanah is in like five minutes. Really it's in three days, but it
feels like five minutes. The only cooking I have done so far is none. But I've
baked, so if nothing else, we'll have dessert, which is all that really matters
anyway.

I started the day with chocolate chip cookies. Everyone says their recipe
is the best but mine really is. Really. And I will share it with you, just not today. 
Cookie Tueday will be back after the holidays and the sharing with happen then.  
 
The other cookies I made today came to me from my good friend, Chai. She
sent me this recipe for Honey Cookies ages ago, but I never seem to have honey
in the house, except around Rosh Hashana. And as luck would have it, I
remembered to pick some up at Shoprite last week so we were good to go.

I followed the directions exactly and yet, I'm pretty sure that something
went wrong somewhere, I'm just not sure where.

The original recipe says to form the dough into small balls and roll them
in sugar. Except my dough didn't come out like dough, it came out more like a
batter. I stuck the bowl with the batter/dough into the fridge for half an hour
but it didn't really help, so I skipped the shaping of the dough and the rolling
in the sugar and just used a teaspoon to drop the batter onto the cookie sheet. 

These cookies spread - a lot. So much so that a) I was very happy I used a
teaspoon and not a tablespoon to ladle them out because otherwise I would have
been in big trouble and b)I had to use the edge of a spatula to cut the cookies
apart when they came out of the oven, which would explain why many of the
cookies are square in shape instead of round.

One thing that I noticed that was strangely fascinating - despite the huge
amount of honey in the recipe, the batter was strangely pale in color. And yet once the
cookies were baked, they were a beautiful golden honey color. Weird. I'll have
to ask Josh, my scientist, about that one.

But all in all, these cookies are actually pretty good - and this coming
from someone who doesn't like honey. None of us do. We don't like honey cake, we
don't like honey in our tea and with the exception of Josh who eats just a
little, none of us put honey on our challah over the Rosh Hashanah through
Succot foodfest. 

Here is the recipe, straight from Chai (unless I wrote it down wrong, which
is entirely possible. Then it's just my sightly off version of her yummy
cookies).

Honey Cookies:
1 and 1/3 cups oil
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup honey
4 tablespoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups flour

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Foil and grease 5 cookie sheets (or
however many you have). I used three and rotated them in and out, but my point
here is that no more than 12 cookies should be baked per sheet and I got 5 dozen
cookies out of this recipe.

Mix all the ingredients together, except for the flour. Once everything is
mixed well, add the flour and mix until just combined. Roll the dough into
balls and roll the balls in a plate of sugar. (I skipped this part as my batter
was not rollable.) Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool and transfer to a cooling
rack. These freeze well - and I know this because I have four and half dozen of
them in the freezer right now and I just took some out to stick into the
lunchboxes and they are totally fine.

Thanks for reading! And if you liked what you saw, please leave a comment!