SunClosest of Celeste

The project of the day was making challah bread as my contribution to a dinner gathering this evening. You'd think this would be simple because I am kind of a bread-making pro. But I only made challah once before, and it didn't come up to my standards. I wanted to make an improvement. The thing about this type of bread is that it requires a lot of rising time, and you can't hurry that, or you just don't get good texture. So I needed to start out early--like, before coffee. Which has its perils. It's so cold right now that I ended up having to warm the oven a little and then put the bread in there to rise. The woman whose recipe I followed said this would make a large loaf, but I didn't really take her seriously . . . it was! I held it up for a picture, and it looked like my mutant baby. It came out really well, though, and everyone enjoyed it.

Dinner was really enjoyable and fun. After eating, we sat by a warm hearth fire and Brrsang a lot of Christmas carols as a final celebration of the season. My friend Strawberry Star played the piano for us, and also played a couple of solo arrangements that were very pretty. Brr, freezing cold on the way home! I'm ready to hibernate.