Recently, instead of lying on the floor feeling impending doom, I’ve been trying to do positive things, one of which is baking challah. Here’s a recipe that has cheered me up, and I hope will cheer you, too––or at least give you something to do while you watch the horrible/amazing new CW drama Riverdale and wonder when Betty and Veronica will get together.

Many American Jews are surprised to discover that donuts—specifically, jelly donuts—are a traditional Hanukkah food. Eating donuts at Hanukkah dates back several centuries in Europe, and is associated with the holiday for the same reason latkes are—foods fried in oil are symbolic of the Hanukkah miracle of a small amount of oil lasting for eight days. Jelly donuts, or sufganiyot, as they’re called in Hebrew, are known today as an Israeli treat (the Labor Federation in then-Palestine declared them the “official” food of Hanukkah in the 1920s), and Americans have happily adopted the custom. Below, JWA food writer Lisa Yelsey shares her own recipe for sufganiyot:

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you are able to enjoy the holiday, but if Thanksgiving is a stressful holiday for you, I hope you are at least able to enjoy some good food. In pursuit of that goal––I present Sweet and Savory Challah Pull-Apart Rolls!

I feel a certain amount of discomfort in posting on JWA’s blog the glowing, cheerful recipes so common this time of year. As a Jewish organization that focuses on women’s history and feminism, what does it mean to fill our blog with recipes for baked goods and brisket? Though we boast an increasingly robust number of male readers, JWA reaches mainly women. Do I want to bombard them with tips for cooking for a large family during the holidays? No, not really.

Looking forward to Hanukkah, I asked Deb Perelman for a tasty recipe to share with our readers. She instantly suggested Latke Waffles, and who can blame her?

Prolific is the word that comes to mind when I think about cookbooks these days. There are hundreds lining the shelves of bookstores or on your computer screen--depending on how you choose to do your shopping. Either way there are a lot of cookbooks to be had, and with new ones published on a regular basis, it can be hard to know which are actually worth purchasing.

There have been many excellent cookbooks published this past year, and Jerusalem is without a doubt at the top of that list. I remember my excitement when I read the news about its publication, and when I finally received my copy, I wasn’t disappointed. It’s one of those cookbooks that elicits exclamations of “I have to make this!” with almost every turn of the page.

Although Hanukkah is known as the festival of lights, I think a more fitting name would be the festival of fried foods. It’s the time of year during which people expect and want to find deep fried food on their plates and I’m more than happy to oblige. Although, as much as I love eating latkes and sufganiyot, there are moments where I need a break from all the fried foods. Yet in the spirit of the holiday I still want to eat a dish in which oil is a central component.

Chanukkah (or however the heck you spell it) is a time of lighting the menorah, recounting yet another story of the resilience of the Jewish people, and celebrating miracles both great and small. It’s also a time of eating things you wouldn’t dare touch the rest of the year, letting your standards slide, and finding yourself hung over on January 1st, loathing yourself as you struggle to button your jeans.

Don’t be that person.

Just before my favorite holiday last week, I sat down with the prolific food-blogger-turned-cookbook-author Deb Perelman. The founder of the Smitten Kitchen was recently given a spot on the Forward 50 and is currently touring the U.S. to promote her new book, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook. Next week, I will post more of the story about how her recipes have inspired my own culinary pursuits. But first, here is your chance to be a fly on the wall in our conversation about how she came to write and publish her delicious new book.

There’s a spot in the morning Shacharis service that reminds us that honey can’t be added to any offering.

It's about yogurt, too!

You're probably thinking that prunes don’t belong in the same sentence as dessert, let alone anywhere near the sweet finish of a meal.

Passover cooking is certainly defined by the dietary restriction of abstaining from chametz, or leavened grain.

Hamantaschen are the signature food of Purim, and I definitely look forward to this time of year knowing that I’ll get to eat my fill of those delicious cookies.

Valentine's Day is not a Jewish holiday. These days it's a secular holiday associated with flowers, candy hearts, and, best of all, chocolate.

It may seem a little contradictory to celebrate the New Year for trees in North America during the winter, and yet it offers a reminder of the renewal that will soon come with spring (although it may seem far away!).

It’s that time of year again when food blogs and websites are filled with recipes for latkes and other fried delicacies for Hanukkah, and kitchens (along with the cooks!) begin to smell of all things deep fried. As my thoughts turned to the latkes I was going to make for Eating Jewish, I knew I wanted to do something different.

I have an affinity for baked goods, both savory and sweet, that runs deep.

As far as underrated vegetables go, cabbage is near the top of the list. People generally don't rhapsodize over cabbage like they do for fresh sweet corn or a juicy red tomato.

For most of us, the break fast meal following Yom Kippur evokes images of bagels and cream cheese, coffee cake, blintzes and noodle kugel.

Even before Rosh Hashanah was over this year, my mind turned to what I should make for Yom Kippur.

Apples are a central component on Rosh Hashanah tables, from the honey dipped apples eaten at the beginning of the evening meal in the hope that they will help bring about a good and sweet new year, to the apple cake eaten at the end of a meal. Thinking about all the apple-eating that happens on this holiday, I couldn’t help but notice that more often than not apples are used in the dishes that grace the dessert table. However, while flipping through Joan Nathan’s latest cookbook Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous (I think this is definitely one of my favorite cookbooks at the moment) my assumptions about apples and desserts were dispelled when I saw the recipe for Rosh Hashanah Chicken with Cinnamon and Apples from Metz. I got extremely excited about this dish and I knew that I had to make it seeing as apples don’t often make it into the savory dishes that I cook.

The first thing you should know about making challah is this: DO NOT BE AFRAID! I find that many people are intimidated by the thought of making their own challah.