On the Second Day of Chanukah my true love gave to me...

Well actually no presents were exchanged but I won my first game of Dreidel. I won a whole $3.00. It was a short game in that on the second spin, when it was my turn to call the ante, I went all in, because my wrist hurt, and won the pot when Chaim landed on the shin letter, and he couldn't put one in.

For today's gastronomic experiment, I saw that the Wednesday food section had a write up on Babka, so I decided to give it a try. Chaim's friend Darra Goldstein, (who curated his plastic spoon collection into the Feeding Desires Show at the Cooper Hewitt) was quoted in the article defining: "Babka comes from baba, a very tall, delicate yet rich yeast-risen cake eaten in Western Russia and Eastern Poland." Unfortunately, it involves yeast as Darra says, and definitely not my forte. I am now waiting, ( have been for about an hour now) for the dough to rise, and I don't think the mound has moved in the vertical direction one inch.

We lit our candles tonight, this time three, and because last nights candle burned the right side of tonight's candle, the third candle burned much shorter than it should have. I hope the dough rises before the candles burn out.