Shanah Tova!

There are a two traditional foods that I remember eating as a child every year on Rosh Hashanah: apples dipped in honey (to symbolize a sweet New Year) and a round loaf of raisin challah. Challah is a braided white bread traditionally baked to celebrate shabbat, but on Rosh Hashanah, we eat a round challah to symbolized the cycle of the year. 

I thought this holiday would be a perfect place to begin blogging about my Jewish-vegan cooking journey because this year I did something extraordinary: I baked two loaves of challah. 

I know at first this doesn't sound like such a big accomplishment, but I'll preface by saying that, before last night, I hadn't taken one bite of challah since becoming vegan years ago. About eight egg yolks go into a traditional challah recipe--far from vegan.  When I first gave up all animal product while living in Odessa, Ukraine, I would regularly pass up a piece of challah handed to me during shabbat services. Usually the only person in the room without a piece of challah, I felt that I had abandoned the ancient custom of breaking bread, or worse, that I was somehow causing a rift in an otherwise closed ritual circle. 

Even after returning to the US, there have been numerous occasions where I've had to pass up a piece of challah. That all ended this year! I baked my first two loaves of challah (and my first loaves of bread, for that matter) and they were delicious. 

I got the recipe from the PPK via The Never Homemaker . 

You will need: 

2 1/2 Tbsp dry active yeast

1/3 cup warm water

5 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups wheat pastry flour

1 Tbsp salt

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup canola oil

2 overripe (mostly black) bananas -- I actually used one banana and one extra-ripe plantain

1 cup boiling water

1/2 cup cold water

another half cup of boiling water for brushing braids

raisins and/or poppy seeds

• In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in the warm water (I whisked mine with a fork until frothy), put to the side to stand for approx. 10 minutes.
• Mash bananas in your electric mixer until runny, like egg yolks.
• In large bowl mix together the canola oil, brown sugar, salt, and boiling water. Stir until well incorporated.
• Add the cold water to the large bowl. Stir in yeast mix.
• Add bananas.

• Add flour, one cup at a time -- this part is important. I used a spatula to mix mine, carefully one cup at a time. Near the end (last two cups), I used my hands.
• Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Knead for 5-10 min, dough should be smooth and elastic.
• Lightly coat the large mixing bowl in oil, turn the dough in it to just coat it with oil, place a damp towel or plastic wrap over the dough in the bowl and let it rise for about 1 hr (double in size).

The dough will rise quite a bit. Attack of the killer challah! 

• Punch dough down, turn out and knead again 2-3 min.
• Divide dough into 2 large balls. Then divide each ball into 4 or 6 sections, roll each section into long ropes (if using raisins, stick raisins about an inch apart in the center of each rope before braiding) and make 2 round, braided loaves. For a tutorial on how to do this, see this video. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

• Let the braids rise on a baking sheet for 45 min. Boil a little more water. Just before putting braids in the oven, brush them with boiling water, then sprinkle with sesame seeds.
• Bake 30 min -- that's all the time you'll need. PPK says, "You'll know they're done when you tap them on the bottom and they sound hollow."
• Let cool on a drying rack for 10 min before slicing.

One of my favorite aspects of being vegan is the daily opportunity I have to rethink and reinvent traditions I have been practicing my entire life. I can't wait to make this part of my yearly tradition. 

New Beginnings!

After months of neglect, it’s about time I breathe new life into this blog of mine. A lot has happened since I last wrote: I moved to Las Vegas, started an MFA program in poetry, went through some pretty big life changes, and moved into my first very own little apartment under the glow of the Stratosphere and the lights of The Strip.

One thing about my life hasn’t changed one bit, however; I’m still absolutely dedicated to my now nearly five-year strong vegan life and I am still fervently holding the sour cream (especially when dining at one of the many yummy Mexican restaurants in my area of Vegas). As such, this will still be a vegan food blog, dedicated to all things deliciously animal-free.

I was thinking earlier, however, that I want this blog to have a real direction and not just be about my general vegan cooking hijinks (although I could fill a blog with such things).  My previous focus of this blog, living vegan in Ukraine, where I spent seven months teaching English in 2010, gave this blog a real direction. Writing, therefore, became a little harder for me once I left Ukraine and couldn’t keep with my original theme.

That’s why I have decided to restart this blog with something specific in mind. I intend to focus my blog on vegan adaptations of traditional—and not so traditional—Jewish cooking. Some of my earliest and fondest memories I have growing up are in my mother’s kitchen as she whipped up a batch of matzo ball soup, or with my grandmother putting salad plates together for one of her epic Passover dinners. I’m sorry to say that since going vegan, I haven’t had one bite of matzo ball, kugel, potato latke, tzimmes or cholent. And dare I say I’ve never met a vegan shmear I liked. I hope to change all this and cook my way through some favorite Jewish recipes with a vegan spin. I also hope to continue blogging through the Jewish holidays as I’ve done here and here in the past. If this blog serves to help me reunite myself with all my favorite childhood dishes (and perhaps meet some new ones along the way), then hooray!

Also, I can’t think of a better time to start blogging about vegan Jewish food than right now. In less than thirty-six hours, I am flying to Eastern Europe to spend two months in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. What better place to revive this blog than in the “Old Country” as my dear bubbe—may she rest in peace—would call her place of origin?

Over the next couple months as I explore Vilnius, Warsaw, Krakow, Gdansk and Riga, I hope to glimpse some of the roots of my favorite family recipes, successfully navigate what I know to be an otherwise very meat and dairy-heavy cuisine, meet wonderful and inspiring travelers, and blog along the way. When I return to Vegas, I’ll have my kitchen simmering with the smell of carrot tsimmes, savory borscht, and—baruch hashem—my Grandma Molly’s divine mandel bread (with some substitutions of my own, of course).