Pesach

I have a few confessions to make. This may come as a shock to many, but I am a dork. I like learning new things. And I like teaching other people about the things I have learned about. I get really excited when other people are excited about something new. And my heart soars a little bit every time a child asks a question that leads to deeper understanding on the part of both the person asking the question and the person answering it!

This past summer, the stories of VBS were around the life of Moses and culminated with the story of Passover. Everyone got really excited about it. And the inevitable question came - why don't we celebrate passover? And so, that's how I ended up researching kosher foods, passover menus, and the mysterious world of cooking without butter.

I found a great family haggadah online. I highly recommend it. It comes with coloring pages, which always excite me. I will tell on myself. I spent almost an hour trying to get it to print two pages to a sheet. I got it to print, but it kept coming out backwards and bugging the heck out of OCD little me. It wasn't until I was about to scream that it hit me - Hebrew (and thus, a haggadah) are read right to left, not left to right like we're used to seeing things! I felt really silly, salvaged all my previously rejected pages, and got them all put together quickly after that!

Because I felt crummy and procrastinated, I never made it to the grocery store on Monday or Tuesday. This left me with two options - I could get up at the butt-crack of dawn to go to the grocery store on my way to the prayer meeting or I could wait and go somewhere down in Fultondale Wednesday afternoon after the prayer meeting. So early morning won out. I discovered that grocery shopping at 7:30 am is actually a pretty pleasant experience. I just don't recommend it if you haven't eaten breakfast and the smell of freshly baking bread causes you to swoon. I was quite hungry by the time I left!

Our kosher for passover menu included roast chicken with two potatoes, apple salad, deviled eggs, coleslaw, and parsley salad with macaroons and fruit compote for desert. I tried to incorporate the various elements from the seder plate into the actual meal. I tried to follow the basic rules of keeping kosher for passover, but I know I wasn't able to follow them all. At least I am trying!

Both the meal part and the ritual part went very well and were very well received. Not only did we have a really good time (once the kids got involved and ate!) but I think everyone learned something. The food was tasty and everyone was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't "weird". I don't know if this will become an annual tradition or not, but we really had a good time and I enjoyed being able to share it.

One of these days I want to go to a "real" seder where I can participate and not lead, but this was a really great experience.

If you want recipes for anything, let me know.