After 9 years of Jewish day school, 10 years of Jewish summer camp, 5 years of Jewish youth group, and 3 years of Hillel and Chabad programming in college, I finally made my own challah from scratch! And it was gluten-free, no biggie. It was a long, arduous process that definitely tested both my belief in myself and my roommates' belief in me, but in the end, it was all worth it. Every week I look over in envy as my roommates dig into their Shabbat challah with dinner, but tonight, I sat among champions with my gf version. This definitely doesn't mean I'll ever do it again, (like seriously never again) but I learned a lot from my day-long journey as a baking extraordinaire, the most important of which is my newfound understanding as to why bakers all wear aprons. Flour is a serious mess.
lesson 1: getting reconnected
This week I've been reading Darin Olien's Superlife since I just finished his show with Zac Efron Down to Earth (which is amazing btw please everyone go watch) and am learning so much about healthy living in every sense of the word. One of my biggest takeaways from the first ~100 pages I've finished reads,
"We have to reconnect with our food and really know what's in each meal."
The more I cook, the easier I find this task and the better I want to eat. For some reason, knowing what goes into the process of making a meal and how to cook it myself allows me to avoid the processed junk I know is made by machines and focus on eating healthfully and mindfully. I love the idea of reconnecting with the food I put on my plate and I've discovered that learning how to cook new foods is such a fun way to do that. This may sound dramatic, but after my baking adventure, I'll never look at bread the same way.
lesson 2: gratitude
I will never take good bread for granted again. Bread is such a staple in every pantry that sometimes I forget what goes into the baking process! It's a huuuuuge ordeal to turn flour into fluffy, delicious goodness. I love eating toast for breakfast so I'm feeling super grateful I can find and afford all of the gluten-free goodness whenever I can!
lesson 3: lizrom!
In Hebrew, 'lizrom' means to go with the flow. The word has become the unofficial tagline of both my program and my entire life here in Israel. When something goes wrong, lizrom. When the entire country goes on lockdown 2 weeks after you got out of quarantine, lizrom. Nothing else to be done, so make the best of it! Today was a fantastic exercise in lizrom, especially for me. In another life (read: me, semi-recently), I might have gotten really worked up over the fact that I had promised my roommates challah and it wasn't looking good. Or even the fact that I was trying something new and was failing without help. Instead, I laughed as the dough turned to slime in between my hands (which you can see on my Instagram story from this morning), and jokingly told my roommates to buy a loaf for themselves just to be safe. Life is too short to get upset over the little things, so I might as well laugh at myself as I blunder my way through new things. Besides, I got lucky and it all worked out in the end anyway! Lizrom!
xx, lindz
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