Jewish holidays aren't usually something that I find myself looking forward to, as they all seem to involve meals that are absolutely despondent by intention - if it's not an occasion when you're strictly limited to sand and boiled cobblestones, the traditional really bland cracker can sometimes spiced up by adding a topping that is symbolically meant to resemble cement. But on the first day of Chanukah they suddenly get to enjoy themselves, and America's supply of canola oil takes a sharp drop as everybody deep-fries every potato, onion and anything else edible within reach. This year, Whitney also harnessed some sort of forbidden technology and managed, honestly, to replicate Tesco doughnuts.


These... magnificent artefacts were made using a recipe for yeast doughnuts from Alton Brown, modified to make them filled with jam in some sort of arcane process that I'm told involved a chopstick and a plastic bag.

The result was incredible, but as the recipe called for nearly two thirds of a kilogram of flour, we ended up with about two dozen. I'm sure that when I was in primary school I used to be able to get through a pack of ten of these in a couple of days, but as they're made mostly out of cholesterol, we had absolutely no idea what to do with them - so I brought a gallon-size plastic bag of them in to work and pushed them on to anyone who looked remotely interested (or a bit thin). Whitney is now the most popular person in our office by some margin, especially to the two other British immigrants.

They do involve boiling up a large pot of oil and so carry with them an elevated risk of burning the house down - but I think they're well worth it.