The only Jew in New Zealand

As I've undoubtedly mentioned before, I'm close to being the only Jew in Dunedin...aside from maybe other kids from upenn. I had been wanting to cook a Jewish dinner for my flatmates, and finally on Friday decided it was time.

After spending copious amounts of time googling Jewish recipes and learning about Jewish foods (not the most authentic of ordeals, considering I didn't quite know what I was doing either). I racked my brain for memories of holiday past, and craved challah, Mandel bread, and noodle kugel. As three unbelievably sweet items, I decided it would only be appropriate to find some new savoury dishes to add.

I started cooking at 2 pm, leaving challah to rise in the sun and scrambling around frantically looking at photos I had taken on my camera of recipes to deal with the lack of Internet at my flat.

At 6 pm, 4/5 of the flat mates were seated, as well asa 3 additional dinner guest friends. Served was challah (which had all the right flavours but seemed to sag a bit in its braiding, and kind of just looked bumpy), pesto parmasean pinwheels (didn't know that was a Jew thing, but they were awesome), latkes, caramelised onion with raisins and quinoa, noodle kugel, roasted chicken, and eventually Mandel bread for dessert. All was a success and though I had little knowledge to impart on my guests about the nature and reason for the foods I had prepared, and used about 16 eggs, everyone was happy.

Happy enough that yesterday, when offering to bake bread, challah was the request. Braiding went a lot better and it actually looked like what it's supposed to, but with very little yeast left in the flat, the consistency was compromised.

I have such a new founded respect for all the crazy wonderful people that make epic dinners possible and try to cook for heaps of people.

Friday night meant setting up the projector and watching men in black 3 in the lounge.