Tag: bread

creativity

JoyProject podcast: The Joy of Baking Challah with Vicki Eastus

Christa Avampato
The Joy of Baking Challah with Vicki Eastus

What could be better than freshly baked challah? Talking about baking challah with one of my nearest and dearest friends! In this episode of the JoyProject podcast, Vicki tells us how she got started baking challah with her daughter during the COVID-19 lockdown. She shares her baking process, the traditions of challah, and the joy and memories that food provides for all of us. We also talk about the storytelling community that brought us together and the stories that connect us to our past, to history, and to one another.

About Vicki:
Vicki Eastus is a lawyer, teacher, improviser and storyteller. A native Texan, Vicki declared herself a feminist at age 10 and started her long career as an advocate for women. She has been a campus advocate on sexual harassment issues, a lawyer for the largest group of women to ever successfully sue the government for sex discrimination, and a Title IX Coordinator. Vicki earned her B.A. in Russian literature, focusing on Russian formalist criticism and the distinction between plot and story. She carried those concepts into her legal career, bending traditional legal writing rules to make her clients’ stories more compelling. Now a professor at New York Law School, she integrates storytelling and improvisational techniques into her classes on legal analysis and advocacy. She has given presentations at national and international legal conferences on using storytelling and improvisation to teach legal analysis and to help law students find their legal voices.

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • How Vicki bucked her fear and started baking her own challah with her daughter
  • Some of the traditions and history around challah baking
  • The memories and joy we can all find in homemade and home baked food
  • The inspiring work of Jose Andres and his organization, World Central Kitchen
  • The Instagram account @challahbakeoff

Links to resources:

creativity

In the pause: Baking bread as a holy act

Christa Avampato

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Homemade bagels from my kitchen. ~CRA

Tell bread to rise and it ignores you. It will rise of its own accord. You can’t make it rise faster. It often requires work, and lots of it. Baking bread is a contact sport, and you must give it your hands, arms, and heart. In all these ways, it is a holy act. It is an act of patience, belief, and faith.

Lately the only thing that makes me feel better is cooking and baking, and baking bread most of all. I can’t write or read or multi-task while I bake bread. It helps me to pause, be quiet, and reflect. It demands my mind, my hands, and my attention for a certain amount of time, and then it demands I leave it alone for a good long while.

So if you’re feeling lost or disillusioned or confused, even angry or sad or disappointed, I suggest stocking your cupboard with the magic combination of flour, salt, and yeast. Add some water, tuck it away for a while in a warm, cozy place, and magical things will begin to happen. It will rise. And you will rise with it.