Christma-Channuk-Thanksgiving-mas!

Its seems that it is always hard to find time to get everyone together but during December this is especially true. One of the best parts of the holidays is visiting with friends and family that we might not see often enough during the rest of the year. This year it seemed like we had even more than usual going on and so we decided to combine our usually holiday parties into one big dinner....for 12! Officially our biggest sit down dinner to date.

Last year, we held a Latkes/Christmas Cookie party - everyone really enjoyed dinner and loved decorating cookies so we knew that was definitely part of the evening. Since my Thanksgiving was a little short of leftovers,  I was really itching to cook a turkey so there was another huge part of my menu. With so many holidays to celebrate we certainly didn't have a shortage of traditional foods to choose from! Everything came out really well except for my stuffing... which needed a little more time in the oven to get nice and brown.

I used a Martha Stewart recipe for the sugar cookies and they came out wonderful! Just make sure you watch them because a sheet of mine (or maybe two) ended up in the trash when I got distracted. For the latkes, I used about 7.5 lbs of potato and 2 onions to make about 60 latkes. I didn't have any matzah meal on hand so I went with panko breadcrumbs....it didn't seem to cause any issues.

Rosh Hashanah Dinner 2010...old favorites and new takes

Last year, I held my first ever Rosh Hashanah party. Since I am not Jewish all these foods and customs were so forgeign to me that I pretty much just followed the recipes as written. The one place I felt comfortable doing my own twist was in the noodle kugel I figured as an Italian I knew all I needed to know about what is basically a pasta dish but those who know and love kugel were not happy! They wanted the old-fashioned kind.

This year was a complete flip....I did the traditional for the kugel but went my own way on the other foods and it seemed to turn out well. We were joined by even more of our veggie loving friends so the brisket was barely touched but the roasted vegetables were demolished! Looks like I should have cut up those last two sweet potatoes!

Another Challah! The Annual Baking

So every year around this time, I bake a round Challah for my boyfriends parents and for my own celebration.  We love celebrating all holidays so we have an annual Rosh Hashanah party and after three years of baking challah I finally feel like I have got it down. Every year I always end up with a very sticky dough that is closer to batter and I have to add more flour this year I measured it so I can change the recipe! I have decided that I need closer to 6.5- 7 total cups of flour using about 5.5-6 in the first mix and then adding about the final one during the final kneading.

I made two recipes of the dough which will yield you two large rounds and 1 loaf or you can also make 4 loafs if you desire. On Rosh Hashanah, you traditionally would make the circular loaf and I just happen to think that they are prettier so I made both that way! This recipe would not be appropriate for someone who keeps kosher as it uses both milk and butter which can not be consumed with meat - traditional recipes would use oil in its place.