Happy Hannukah

This year we noticed that Hanukkah started the Sunday after Thanksgiving. When the kids overheard our short conversation about this, the kids naturally asked, "What is Hanukkah?" Well, we decided to turn it into a whole experience. 

I started first with a stack of books from the library, which we've been reading one or two every day. Some are nonfiction, explaining the whats and whys of Hanukkah, and some are stories with Hanukkah as the main theme.

We'd read about how Hanukkah is celebrated with latkes and jelly donuts and other fried foods (to remind Jews of the miracle of the oil burning for eight day instead of only one) so we felt like we needed to try them out, too. On Tuesday, November 30, we had our latke party. I made these latkes, we bought a couple of jelly donuts from the store, and we even made bimuelos (basically little balls of fried dough with a honey-orange drizzle). (I didn't know what to serve with the latkes beside the typical toppings of sour cream, dill, applesauce, horseradish), so a little googling found me a recipe for creamy carrot soup that sounded good and easy, so I made that. (The kids were not crazy about the soup, but gobbled up the potato pancakes!)

After we ate dinner, we ate our treats and played a round of dreidel (with an old dreidel that I had gotten when I was a teenager and have somehow held onto for years). I couldn't find any chocolate coins (gelt) at the store, but I did dig up one piece from our candy bin in the cupboard, so we made that our prize for winning the game and we used cheerios for our game pieces. (Cal actually won, but kindly gave her prize to Sam at the end.)

All in all, we've had a great time this week learning and eating and playing, and I think for sure we could add latkes into our holiday traditions in the future. ;)

My latkes are not nearly as dark and golden
as ANY of the pictures I saw online. But they were still crispy and good.

Bimuelos and sufganiyot and dreidel oh my!

Winner!

My trusty dreidel. I had to ask my family
where and when I got this thing and we collectively
remembered a ward party where a Jewish family
came to teach us about Hanukkah, and feed us latkes,
and gave everyone a dreidel.