The Doll's Storybook

Stories about dolls who live in our world. Although these stories are suitable for children, they should check with their parents before reading and always be careful online. Readers are invited to donate to a charity supporting pediatric cancer treatment and research. Images shown are taken by the author or from a free image website with attribution and appreciation. The author has no connection with Götz Puppenmanufaktur, but gives them credit for the amazing dolls they produce.

Showing posts with label Passover. Show all posts

Friday, April 2, 2021

Rising to the Occasion

"What are you making, Jolena?" Pippa asked.

"I'm baking bread for the family," Jolena explained.

"How do you do it?" Pippa asked. "May I watch?"

"Yes," Jolena replied, after the younger doll had climbed up onto the stool, "but it's more complicated than baking cookies, so it takes longer."

Jolena went on, "You don't just mix all the ingredients and then bake it. I would be happy to let you watch, but we will have to go and do other things in the middle of it several times and then come back."

That was OK with Pippa. While she watched, Jolena measured water and salt, and put them into a container she called a bread-machine pan.

Next she added flour. Jolena said she was using two kinds of flour. One is called whole wheat. She used a lot of it. The other flour is called rye. She explained that wheat and rye flours are made from the seeds of special kinds of grasses. She only used a half a cup of the rye.

Finally, Jolena took a smaller container out of the refrigerator's freezer section and brought it to the bread machine.

Jolena showed Pippa what was in the container. It looked almost like the flour, but grainy. "This is called yeast," she told the younger doll.

Then she used a teaspoon to measure a small amount and added it on top of the flour in the bread-machine pan.

"This yeast stays dormant (DOR-ment) in the freezer," she said after she had put the yeast away again in the freezer. "That's like it's sleeping until it's needed. When it finds itself in the bread dough, it wakes up. Now maybe you could help me get the bread-machine pan down from here and over to the other counter, where the bread machine is. I can do it by myself, but it will be easier if you help."

Pippa liked to help. It made her feel important. "What does the yeast do?" she asked, as she helped Jolena bring the bread-machine-pan down from the stool, move the stool and bring the pan up to where the bread machine was.

Jolena put the bread-machine pan into the bread machine. "Yeast is leavening (LEH-vah-ning)," Jolena told her. "It makes the bread big and puffy, so it's easier to eat."

"Charlotte's special bread isn't big and puffy," Pippa said. "It's like a cracker. Why is that?"

"That's matzoh (MAHT-zuh)," Jolena explained. "Charlotte was celebrating Passover. Matzoh is unleavened bread. That means there's nothing in it to make it puffy, like yeast or baking powder. One way Charlotte celebrates Passover is by pretending to eat matzoh instead of regular bread. She uses it to make some special dishes, too."

"Yes," Pippa agreed. "I had forgotten. A few days ago, Charlotte fixed us a big meal to pretend to eat. She called it a Seder (SAY-der). She told us the story of Passover. It was interesting."

Jolena thought the story was interesting, too. (You can read about how Charlotte celebrates Passover, if you like. There is a link to a story about it at the end of this one.)

Jolena pressed a button on the bread machine. The bread machine started making a whirring sound in short bursts. Pippa had to stand on the cookie box, because she wanted to see.

Pippa could see the flour moving around through the little window in the machine.

"Now," Jolena said, "we go off and do something else for a while. The machine will beep when it's time to come back."

"What is it doing?" Pippa asked. "I mean the bread machine. What does it do?"

"It can bake bread," Jolena explained, "but the bread wouldn't be as pretty and not as good for sandwiches if we let it do that. It also makes one very big loaf, not the little loaves I like to make for us. Most of the time I use it on the dough (DOH) setting. It just mixes everything to make dough. That's what we call the bread before it's baked. When the machine is done, I will shape the loaves and put them in another pan. You'll see when we come back."

The dolls went off to do other things. Jolena sat down at the computer to write an email to her friend Elizabeth, who is on the Doll Ski Team with her.

Pippa got her bear and pretended to have a tea party.

After what seemed like a long time, Pippa heard a beeping sound.

"That's the bread," Jolena called as she got down from the chair at the computer.

Pippa came to watch Jolena get the dough ready. First Jolena said Pippa could help her clean the countertop, because dolls had been sitting and standing on it, and it needed to be clean for preparing the dough.

Jolena dumped the dough out of the bread machine pan. She rolled it and pressed it with her hands. "I'm kneading (NEE-ding) the bread," she explained. "It does something to the wheat flour in a way we can't see. It makes tiny strands of the dough cross each other so they can trap the air the yeast gives off. Mandy explained it to me."

While Pippa watched, Jolena divided the dough up into four parts. She rolled each one with her hands to make a loaf. "These will be just the right size for doll sandwiches," she said.

Jolena got out a big pan that had four sections, one for each loaf. She sprayed each section with cooking spray. Then she put one of the loaves into each section.

Jolena put the pan on top of the stove and covered it with a clean dishcloth, so the dough wouldn't dry out. She wasn't planning to use the burners for anything, so it would be safe there.

Then they cleaned off the countertop again. Pippa noticed that Jolena had some flour on her cheek. She got a tissue and wiped the flour off.

"Thank you," Jolena said, glancing at the time on the top of the stove. "Now we wait for the bread to rise."

"Does it rise from the dead?" Pippa asked. "Veronika told me we celebrate Easter on Sunday, and that's when Jesus rose from the dead, she told me."

"That's a different meaning of rise," Jolena explained. "A balloon can rise in the air, if it's that kind of balloon."

"Children can rise out of bed in the morning," Jolena went on. "Dolls can rise to the occasion. That means that when something is very difficult for them they do it anyway," Jolena explained. "Yeast gives off a gas that makes the bread rise. That means it goes from being flat to big and puffy."

"Big and puffy," Pippa said, "and yummy to pretend to eat! So what does it mean that Jesus rose from the dead?"

"I read," Jolena explained, "that Jesus sat up on Easter morning, got up, took off the cloth he was wrapped up in, folded it neatly and left it where they had laid him on Friday. Then he walked out to tell his friends he was alive."

"That's a miracle!" Pippa said, and Jolena agreed.

It would take some time for the bread to rise. It was not going to get up out of the pan, fold the dishcloth and leave it on the pan. It was just going to get bigger in the pan.

Jolena went back to her email letter to Elizabeth.

Pippa went back to her tea party with her bear.

In a little while, Jolena checked on the bread. "It's ready to bake," she told Pippa, setting the oven temperature with the dolls' cell phone.

The dolls had to wait until the stove beeped. That beep meant the oven was hot enough. Then Jolena put the bread into the oven, which was very hot, so she was careful not to melt her vinyl. She could see the bread through the oven's big window.

Jolena used the cell phone again to set the timer on the stove, and then the two dolls went back to what they had been doing. Jolena tried to think of what else she wanted to tell Elizabeth.

Pippa asked Bear if he wanted any more tea. Bear didn't seem to mind that the pretend tea had become cold. Pippa told him she was sorry about that, but she had been busy baking.

When the bread was finished baking, the timer on the stove beeped. Jolena took the pan from the oven and removed the loaves to a rack to cool. "Now we will wash all the things we used," she said. "You can help."

"I think I know why Jesus rose on Easter morning," Pippa said while Jolena arranged the bread on the rack.

"He wanted to be the present the Easter Bunny had brought His friends," she said.

Jolena couldn't find any reason to disagree.

(Learn about how Charlotte celebrates Passover in this story from two years ago.)

Cast--
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris

Pippa: Götz Little Kidz Lotta

Balloon photo by Hamed darzi on Unsplash.

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Do you have questions or comments for us? Would you like to order an autographed copy of one of our books? You can email us at thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

Note: No dolls were harmed during production of this blog. All dolls shown are Götz Happy Kidz, Classic Kidz or Little Kidz. If you like these stories and are willing, please make a donation of any amount to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital or any organization that supports pediatric cancer research and treatment. We are not affiliated with St. Jude in any way other than these donations.

"The Doll's Storybook" is not affiliated with Gotz Dolls USA Inc. or Götz Puppenmanufaktur International GmbH.
Watch for the next story each Friday afternoon at 1:00 PM Pacific Time.

Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook, Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Our Favorite Verses: Poems from The Doll's Storybook are available from BookBaby and other booksellers worldwide, such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Author's page on Amazon.

Royalties (net proceeds) go to support pediatric cancer research and treatment. If you don't get free shipping elsewhere, buy from Book Baby. Half of the price goes to charity (specific information available upon request). Autographed copies of all three books are available from the author. (Multiple books to the same address have a discount on shipping.) To inquire, email thedollsstorybook@icloud.com.

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Friday, April 19, 2019

Celebrations

Billy found Charlotte, Jolena and Mariah in the kitchen. The girls all had their hair tied back and had cloth napkins tied around their bodies, so he knew they were cooking.

"What are you cooking?" Billy asked.

"We're helping Charlotte fix food for the Passover Seder." Mariah said the word, "SAY-der."

"We'll be having a special dinner tonight,"Jolena said.

"What's a Passover?" Billy asked.

The dolls looked at Charlotte, because she was the one who knew all about Passover.
"Passover is a very important holiday to Jewish people," Charlotte explained. "It starts tonight and lasts eight days. It celebrates the escape of our people from Egypt, where they were being kept and made to work for the people of Egypt."

Charlotte put the large cracker she was holding back on the plate.

"How did they escape?" Jolena asked. "I've never heard the story."

"It's a long story," Charlotte explained. "The important thing is that Pharaoh (FAY-row), that was what the king of Egypt was called, made the Jewish people work for him, and he was unkind to them. He wouldn't let them leave, but God helped a man named Moses talk Pharaoh into letting them go."

"So the dinner is sort of a party?" Mariah asked.

"It's the first meal at the beginning of Passover, but it's more than a party," Charlotte explained. "It's a meal that reminds us of how our people escaped from Egypt. Each part of it is important in some way."

"For instance," Charlotte went on, "the people had to leave in a hurry. They didn't have time to make their bread slowly, using yeast to let it rise, to puff up, like the bread we use for sandwiches." She pointed to the loaf of bread Jolena had just taken out of the oven.

"That was long ago," Charlotte explained. "They didn't even have baking powder back then, so they had to wait a long time for yeast to make their bread puff up. When Moses told the Jewish people they had to go quickly, they had to bake their bread without waiting for it to rise. It turned out flat and hard."

Charlotte picked up the cracker again. "This cracker is called matzoh," Charlotte said. (She said it like "MAHT-zuh.") "This is what their bread was like when they left Egypt. This is the only kind of bread or flour I will have to pretend to eat during Passover." The dolls looked at the cracker, as Charlotte broke off a large piece and gave it to Mariah. "Pass it around," Charlotte said. "Have a taste." Each doll tasted it. They thought it was crunchy.

"It doesn't have any yeast in it," Charlotte explained, "It's just flour and water. It's the special bread for Passover."
"We're using it to make matzoh ball soup," Jolena told Billy.

"We make the matzoh balls by grinding up the matzoh," Charlotte explained.

"Here, I'll show you." She broke up one of the crackers and then ground it up."

"Then we will mix it with eggs, oil and some seasonings, like salt," she said. "We make it into balls."
"Like making a snowball?" Billy asked.

"Yes," Charlotte agreed. "Only we make the balls with the mixture instead of snow. Then we boil the balls in water for a while. We serve them in a soup with vegetables."

Billy thought snowballs wouldn't last long in boiling water. "What else are we having," he asked.

"I can answer that," Mariah said. "We're having fish dumplings and a potato casserole with a kind of cake for dessert. They all have special names, but the names don't say what's in them unless you know the recipes."

Billy nodded. "I always want to know what's in the stuff I'm pretending to eat," he said.

"We will tell you what's in each dish when we sit down to dinner, Billy," Charlotte explained. That made Billy happy.

"I'm learning a lot," Jolena said. "I've never cooked Jewish food before."

"There are a lot more dishes we could fix," Charlotte said, "but we don't want to make too much, because we are dolls. We can only pretend eat, and it isn't good to waste food"

"We still have to make the Easter eggs," Mariah said. "Billy, you can help with that, if you like, but we have to finish the food for dinner first. We don't need the Easter eggs until Sunday."

The girls went back to cooking. Jolena was watching the pot of water, so she could tell Charlotte when it was boiling.

Charlotte ground up the matzoh and Mariah finished cutting the vegetables for the soup.

Billy thought about the special food and the story Charlotte had told them. He thought about Passover and Easter and about what a busy weekend it was going to be. "I need to know the story behind Easter, too," said Billy to himself. "I'll ask Veronika."

Early on Sunday morning, Veronika will dress for church and then go out into the garden. It's her turn to hide Easter eggs.

Veronika wants to wish all our readers a happy Passover and happy Easter from the cast of "The Doll's Storybook."

Cast--
Jolena: Götz Happy Kidz Lena in Aspen
Charlotte: Götz Happy Kidz Anna in Paris
Mariah: Götz Happy Kidz Mariah, "Chosen" from My Doll Best Friend
Billy: Götz Happy Kidz Lily at London
Veronika: Götz Classic Kidz Vroni