Josh works in a school with a pretty large support staff and every year he likes to give them some sort of holiday gift and food gifts seem to go over very well, year after year. The first couple of years he worked here, I bought tons of Hershey Kisses and wrapped groups of them in individual cellophane bags, each with a big bow. And then Josh had to go and find each member of the maintenance staff, whether or or not they ever set foot in his office or even on his floor. This took him a day and a half and this didn't make him happy. Last year I decided I was going to make a huge plate of fudge and Josh could then leave it in the support staff room for everyone to share. The fudge was a huge hit - and a huge pain to make. And with all the winter holidays converging on one week this year, I don't really have time to make a ton of fudge. So this year, we went with m&m cookies. I found these mini holiday boxes covered in candy canes and gingerbread men on clearance, perfectly sized for my cookies. And why were holidays items already on clearance? They aren't. I bought these last January and packed them away for this year in my Chanukah decorations bin. I had totally forgotten about them and then when I opened the bin the other day, they made me so happy. So here goes with the m&m cookies. Buy a big bag of red and green m&m's*. Mix a batch or two of your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and add m&ms instead of chocolate chips. And yeah, then you're done. How easy is that? I tripled a batch of my chocolate chip cookies, baking with my five year old this past Sunday. He mixed, he ate some m&ms, he threw some into an almost empty seltzer bottle to see if they would melt (they did) and we bonded. And when I pack the cookies into their pretty little boxes, I'll show you. *I went looking for red and green m&m's the last time I was in Shoprite and I couldn't find them anywhere, which I thought was weird because everything else in the store was red and green. But okay, I knew Target would have them, so I wasn't worried. At the checkout line, I asked the cashier if the store had any red and green m&m's, hoping to save myself a trip to Target. She said that it was the weirdest thing, but those m&m's didn't come in to the store yet and I wasn't the only one asking for them. And then, as she is scanning the many bags of Chanukah gelt (chocolate coins) that I had in my cart, she asked me why I needed the m&m's if I was also buying gelt, but before I could answer, she asked what she really wanted to know which was what's the story with all the chocolate coins. It seems that her son came home from public school the other day with a bag of Chanukah gelt, singing a song about a sivivon (dreidel in Hebrew) all in Hebrew. He had no idea what it meant, she had no idea what it meant, but all her kid knew was that he really liked these chocolate coins and he wanted more, and oh, his music teacher in school is Jewish. Such a funny world. And it's times like these that I am always reminded that I really am an ambassador for Jews everywhere. Treating someone kindly, with a smile, saying thank you, all tiny little things that one can add to their day and yet all are major kiddush Hashems right there. Don't be shy! If you like what you've read, leave a comment!
We had these for dinner last night. Start with whatever box of pancake mix you usually use and add slightly less water to the mix than the box calls for. The goal is to have a somewhat thicker batter than usual so the dreidels will kind of hold their shapes. Fill a Ziploc bag with half the batter and twist the bag closed (instead of using the "loc" part) to create a kind of pastry bag in order to pipe the batter onto the frying pan. Once the frying pan was hot, cut off the smallest, tiniest piece of plastic from the edge to create a point for the batter to flow through. Carefully (and quickly, because the pan is hot and your wrist will get very warm very fast) pipe the outline of a dreidel and fill it in. I was able to fit three dreidel pancakes into the pan at a time. Also, and here's a biggie and something that I learned the hard way - if you are wearing a bracelet or a ring on your piping hand, take them off before you start. Metals get super-hot super -fast and I'm telling you, a hot bracelet hurts. Flip the pancakes when they start to bubble, let them cook another thirty seconds or so and remove from the frying pan. Start the whole piping process over again until all the batter is used up. This was a very easy and simple way to make my kids smile - and it took maybe five minutes more to make the pancakes this way instead of the regular way of pouring the batter into the pan with a cup. Cute and yummy. And your husband will be impressed too. I mean he'll be impressed with the shape of the pancakes, not with the fact that there are pancakes for dinner... Don't be shy! If you like what you've read, leave a comment please!
Here it is, our Lego menorah. We made this late Friday afternoon - Josh was on bath duty and I was on entertainment duty for those not currently being bathed. I wish I could say it all went smoothly, but sadly, I can't. There was yelling and fighting and hitting and pinching and a few tears. The tears were mine, but I didn't do any of the hitting or pinching. That was the boys. They just don't do Lego well together. I can see how Lego can be a very solitary activity, but I didn't think it had to be. But I was wrong. Now I know it has to be. Once I was able to get them to stop stealing Legos from each other's piles and just look at what I made (yeah, what I made), they were all oohing and aaahing over my menorah. It's not big, and the colors are all mixed up, but for a 15-minute window on a Friday afternoon, I think this is pretty good. Not award-winning Lego good, but definitely mommy-in-a-rush-Lego good. I'm hoping the boys will take some alone time, as in without each other, and try to make their own Lego menorahs. Not because we need more Lego menorahs and not because Lego is great for practicing those fine motor skills - even though it is - but because it's great for splitting the boys up when there's been too much togetherness for their own good. I keep looking at my menorah. I really like it. I'm thinking it'll be a cute little centerpiece for the 'ole family Chanukah party. Don't be shy! If you like what you've read, please leave a comment!
We made this ridiculously easy project after school one day. The boys actually willingly did their homework so they could have enough time to do their project. Right before I picked the kids up from school, I got out a stack of colored paper, a pencil and a scissor. I drew a large dreidel on one sheet of paper, including arms and legs on the dreidel's body. Cut out your dreidel friend and use it as a template to cut the rest of the papers. I think I was able to cut through a stack of 6 or so sheets at a time. After dinner and homework, we sat down on the living room floor with the papers
and markers and the kids colored, for a full twenty minutes. Then we all looked at our dreidel friends, oohed and ahhed and hung them up. I think a key piece of the Dreidel Buddies was that when we hung them on the wall, we hung them in a row, holding hands. And then the kids wanted to take pictures in front of their Dreidel Buddies, holding hands with each other. Don't you just love when your kids hold hands, pose and smile together - of their volition? Makes you feel like a good mommy, which is very rare during the dinner-homework-bathtime-pajamas-read-a-book-bedtime part of the day. Right? These challah rolls looked way different in my head than they do on a plate, but I'm going to attribute that to a bad batch of challah dough. I used the same recipe I use every week, but this week, the dough didn't rise that much. I know the yeast proofed so the only thing I can attribute this un-rising to is the frigid temperature of my kitchen. I made the dough early this morning, at around 8:30am, and then I left for a meeting and came back at 10:30am. The dough should have doubled in size by then. Had I been home, I would have noticed and turned the heat up and let the dough rise on the radiator - a common practice in this house during the winter. But I wasn't home, and by the time I came back, I was too late. I did turn the oven on to 250 degrees and let the bowl sit on the open oven door for a half an hour to get the chill out, but that only made a small difference. So having blah blah blahed about all that, I want to say that these challah rolls have the potential to be adorable, given good dough. And given that mine wasn't that great today, my challah rolls are only so-so. But I will definitely be attempting them again closer to Chanukah. See, it's always good to give things a trial run first. To make four of these challah rolls, take an amount of dough that you would normally use to make one regular sized challah. Then divide that dough into four pieces. Remove a small piece of dough from each section, maybe the size of a grape. Then form each large piece of dough into a rectangle, and using one hand to keep the top of the dough from losing its rectangular shape, gently shape the bottom third of the dough into the pointy part of a triangle. Use your small pieces of dough to form small handles for the dreidels and the letters nun, gimel, hey and shin. You don't need to press these smaller pieces into the dough, just lay the letters on top and the dreidel handle underneath the top of the dreidel with a small section sticking out and it will all bake together. Brush an egg wash onto the dough and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until the challah rolls are golden brown. In an ideal world, with a good dough, the rolls will look pretty much the same when they come out of the oven as when they went in. In my world today, it didn't exactly happen that way. But hey, there's always next time. If you make some dreidel rolls, I'd love to see them. Happy baking :) Don't be shy! if you like what you've read, please leave a comment!
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September 2018
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