Holla at My Challah, Yo

(Excuse the dorkiness of the title tonight. Brain’s a little sleepy.)

I came home from work today to find this package on the kitchen counter:

Thanks to Twitter, I knew exactly what it was, but still I was more than excited to open up my package to find this:

A home-baked Challah from none other than Mara @ What’s for Dinner!

Now, like just about everyone who’s ever tasted it, I LOVE challah. Basically, challah is a braided egg bread, for those not in the know. Every week when I was growing up, we’d get a challah on Fridays to take home for the weekend. I used to tear through the inside of the loaf because that was my favorite part, and my mom would eat the crust because she liked that the best. Challah makes a great PB&J, is perfect plain or with a touch of butter, and makes the best bread for French toast around. Mara’s bread is perfectly sweet without being overly so, totally uniform in color and shape (so impressive!), and denser (in a good way) than some other challahs that can almost be like eating air.

Last month, I bought a loaf from a local bakery and made stuffed French toast. It was good, but they sliced the bread thinner than I would have liked. I’m going to make (non-stuffed) French toast this weekend using Mara’s bread, and I know it will be ten times better than my last attempt.

THANKS, Mara! I know the winners of your challah from Meghann’s Blogger Bake Sale will be very lucky recipients, indeed!

For dinner tonight, I made Parmesan-Panko baked chicken and salad. Sounds good, right? Well, the salad was great, but the chicken? It was an epic FAIL. (You must click that link if you’ve never seen that site before!) The flavor of the breading was good, but the chicken was way overcooked, the coating didn’t get browned, etc. I’ll post the recipe when I get it right…maybe with fish instead of chicken. I always overcook chicken when I bake it because I’m paranoid about salmonella! Anyone else do that too?

Tomorrow is an exciting day for Healthy Twists. First, my guest blog is appearing on For The Love of Oats, so please check it out! Second, I’m debuting a new section of the blog (that’s actually related to my guest post, for those paying attention) that I’m excited about (yeah, it’s the little things that make me happy) and I hope others like it as well.

Ok, now it’s sleepy time for this “night owl”! I have the day off tomorrow, which is awesome on one hand but not on the other because a) I have tons of errands to do (including getting work done on my car which is always a blast) and b) I’m working on Saturday instead so I hardly get a long weekend. But hey, I’ll take it!

P.S. Oh, and for a cool giveaway, check out On A Lobster Placemat.