What's The Matzo With You? or Seder 2013

For those of you who don't know-- Monday the 25th was Erev Pesach-- or the first night of Passover. Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating the exodus of Jews from Egypt, escaping the despotic rule of Pharaoh and ensuring  the freedom of the Jewish people.

It's a fun holiday full of symbolism and delicious food. And the first night of Passover is also called the Seder.

The Seder is a big meal where you invite friends and family over in order to share the joyous occasion. As a plus, people hosting a Seder can request the day off of classes and work without penalty. Sounds like a vacation-- but it can be really back breaking work.

Last night, Andy and I hosted a Seder. And here's the breakdown!

I was super nervous for about two weeks, but everything went well.

Let's start with the menu:

Even though I was off of work, I woke up at the same time and started working on this masterpiece. This is a delicious, slow-roasted brisket. I started it around 9 that morning and finished it near 1, and reheated it around 6 that evening until 7.

These are "Passover popovers". I just call them "matzo rolls". These are important because Jews can't eat leavened bread during Passover-- making it nearly impossible to eat any bread for the entire week. These however are made without flour-- making them entirely kosher for Passover.

Okay, so this is supposed to be a berry crisp. I know what you're thinking: "where's the crisp?" Well... it didn't brown on top-- so I just mixed the matzo in with the berries and called it good. It tasted amazing-- probably would have been even better over top of vanilla ice cream.

This is Andy's masterpiece. It's a tomato, cucumber and onion salad. It's was pretty delicious. 

This was my mixture that stood in charoset. Charoset is a traditional Passover food. Typically involving nuts, apples and honey. This one was an apple, peanut butter and honey mixture. And let me tell you-- it was delicious on celery. I'm pretty sure Cody nearly devoured it. 

Our table set up was pretty simple. The fancy glass is for Elijah-- a tradition for Jews during Passover is to set a glass of wine for Elijah. The "crackers" in the middle are Matzo-- if you've never seen it before. It tastes like cardboard. Like Jon Stewart said-- complimenting Matzo is a "goy tell". If you compliment the host's Matzo instead of barely swallowing it down-- then you're a gentile, and everyone knows it. 

After the boring religious part (pictured above), we watched the "A Rugrats Passover". Which is by far one of the best cartoon representations of Jewish people in the media, despite the sheer amount of stereotyping. 

This is where the party picked up-- it probably would have picked up a long time ago if we had been forced to drink the traditional four glasses of wine instead of the four classes of grape juice. 

We had three lovely ladies over and here they are clearly not living in fear or forced to stay:

All told it was a wondrous Seder. Party Hard! Have a Happy Passover, Everybody!