* this is the first seder we will be celebrating in california. i am just beside myself that my darling boy will be home from college for a few days and will be able to celebrate with us. of course, we will also have my sweetie girl in attendance. i will not actually be hosting this year as we have been invited to the home of one of my dearest, oldest friends. i might have to stay late and vacuum HER house at the end of the night because vacuuming up the matzo crumbs is an essential part of the seder “order” for me! HAPPY, HAPPY PASSOVER all! x0x0xx
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REPOST: the order of a seder
* this is the last seder i will be hosting in our boulder house… i have so many wonderful memories of passover celebrations around this table and i am so grateful for all of the lovely friends who shared in them! HAPPY, HAPPY PASSOVER! x0x0x
seder means “order.” there is an order to every aspect of the passover celebration from the way the seder plate is prepared to which course is served first and second and third to what prayer is said, what song is sung, what question is asked and when. even though i am not jewish, i have been hosting passover dinners for nearly twenty years. inevitably i mix up at least one aspect of the order. sometimes i even schedule the seder for the wrong evening - the jewish calendar is confusing and i am not always sure if “begins at sundown” means the dinner should take place that night or the next. i give myself a pass on this as a shiksa mama raising jewish children. i have enough trouble with simple time telling (my mom thinks that’s because i had the chicken pox the week i was meant to learn it in first grade) and adjusting to different time zones and daylight savings.
Read MoreREPOST: the order of a seder
* with the approach of passover i am reposting this story about the seder dinner… it is my favorite of the jewish holidays!
seder means “order.” there is an order to every aspect of the passover celebration from the way the seder plate is prepared to which course is served first and second and third to what prayer is said, what song is sung, what question is asked and when. even though i am not jewish, i have been hosting passover dinners for nearly twenty years. inevitably i mix up at least one aspect of the order. sometimes i even schedule the seder for the wrong evening - the jewish calendar is confusing and i am not always sure if “begins at sundown” means the dinner should take place that night or the next. i give myself a pass on this as a shiksa mama raising jewish children. i have enough trouble with simple time telling (my mom thinks that’s because i had the chicken pox the week i was meant to learn it in first grade) and adjusting to different time zones and daylight savings.
Read Morepassover moon cake (REPOST)
we were still in amsterdam over passover this year, so we had a belated seder dinner this weekend. seders are a big deal to prepare… there’s all of the components of the seder plate, which depending on where you live, can be difficult to come by. in new york, all of the markets suddenly dedicate at least two aisles to passover related groceries in the week leading up to the holiday. in amsterdam, you would never know passover is happening. i had to roast a drumstick our first year living there because i couldn’t make the butcher understand the lamb shank. also, there is no matzo meal, only matzo crackers. in order to make matzo ball soup, i had to first grind up the crackers myself with a rolling pin. it was like little house on the jewish prairie in my amsterdam apartment. horseradish, also, is not easy to find. for that i would have to go to what we referred to as the "expat black market.” it’s a tiny shop on leidesgracht that caters to homesick american and british expats. the prices are outrageous, but it’s often the only place to get a crucial ingredient… a can of libby’s, libby’s, libby’s pumpkin, for example, is typically about ten euros around thanksgiving! so for a shiksa raising my children jewish (the faith of their father), seders can be a challenge, especially when we were living in the netherlands.
Read Morethe seder plate
i feel like we should have invited the flintstones to passover this year (except for the corona) because i am pretty sure the butcher gave me a brontosaurus bone to roast for the seder plate. it’s always a bit of a crap shoot about what they deem a “lamb shank” and honestly, i have never totally figured it out either. i am not at all familiar with the anatomy of a sheep (or the anatomy of a human for that matter… when i used to take my bar class pre pandemic i could only do the exercises if the teacher demonstrated what we should be doing. when they started saying things like, “lift your deltoids” or “squeeze your quadriceps” i would have to look around the room and see what everyone else was doing. that’s what happens when you don’t pay attention in biology and get all of your medical knowledge from gray’s anatomy.) wishing you all a happy, peaceful passover! x0x
Read Moreright now things feel terribly OUT of order...
as i am sitting in my north boulder home this evening there are two horrible incidents being dealt with by the boulder police and additional swat teams: the north boulder high school has been locked up (all students who were at sports practices brought inside) and a shooter in a south boulder king soopers market, who as i write this, is still “active.” i don’t know if these situations are related but i can say that it has been a frightening afternoon and none of us have enough bandwidth for this after the past year of the corona, BLM, fires, electrical outages, floods, me too, the crazy election and all of the isolation. my favorite of the jewish holidays is approaching - passover - the one that puts everything in order and i am hoping that all the madness that seems to exist in our current world will somehow be safely dealt with because this is just TOO MUCH! i am reposting a story about passover and vacuuming because it calms me down…
Read Morethe order of a seder
seder means “order.” there is an order to every aspect of the passover celebration from the way the seder plate is prepared to which course is served first and second and third to what prayer is said, what song is sung, what question is asked and when. even though i am not jewish, i have been hosting passover dinners for nearly twenty years. inevitably i mix up at least one aspect of the order. sometimes i even schedule the seder for the wrong evening - the jewish calendar is confusing and i am not always sure if “begins at sundown” means the dinner should take place that night or the next. i give myself a pass on this as a shiksa mama raising jewish children. i have enough trouble with simple time telling (my mom thinks that’s because i had the chicken pox the week i was meant to learn it in first grade) and adjusting to different time zones and daylight savings.
Read Morepassover moon cake
we were still in amsterdam over passover this year, so we had a belated seder dinner this weekend. seders are a big deal to prepare… there’s all of the components of the seder plate, which depending on where you live, can be difficult to come by. in new york, all of the markets suddenly dedicate at least two aisles to passover related groceries in the week leading up to the holiday. in amsterdam, you would never know passover is happening. i had to roast a drumstick our first year living there because i couldn’t make the butcher understand the lamb shank. also, there is no matzo meal, only matzo crackers. in order to make matzo ball soup, i had to first grind up the crackers myself with a rolling pin. it was like little house on the jewish prairie in my amsterdam apartment. horseradish, also, is not easy to find. for that i would have to go to what we referred to as the "expat black market.” it’s a tiny shop on leidesgracht that caters to homesick american and british expats. the prices are outrageous, but it’s often the only place to get a crucial ingredient… a can of libby’s, libby’s, libby’s pumpkin, for example, is typically about ten euros around thanksgiving! so for a shiksa raising my children jewish (the faith of their father), seders can be a challenge, especially when we were living in the netherlands.
Read Morepassover moon cake
we were still in amsterdam over passover this year, so we had a belated seder dinner this weekend. seders are a big deal to prepare… there’s all of the components of the seder plate, which depending on where you live, can be difficult to come by. in new york, all of the markets suddenly dedicate at least two aisles to passover related groceries in the week leading up to the holiday. in amsterdam, you would never know passover is happening. i had to roast a drumstick our first year living there because i couldn’t make the butcher understand the lamb shank. also, there is no matzo meal, only matzo crackers. in order to make matzo ball soup, i had to first grind up the crackers myself with a rolling pin. it was like little house on the jewish prairie in my amsterdam apartment. horseradish, also, is not easy to find. for that i would have to go to what we referred to as the "expat black market.” it’s a tiny shop on leidesgracht that caters to homesick american and british expats. the prices are outrageous, but it’s often the only place to get a crucial ingredient… a can of libby’s, libby’s, libby’s pumpkin, for example, is typically about ten euros around thanksgiving! so for a shiksa raising my children jewish (the faith of their father), seders can be a challenge, especially when we were living in the netherlands.
Read More