Chag sameach from all of us at the Shack. We wish you a very happy and healthy Passover. May your seders be meaningful, may our captives be redeemed and on a less serious note may your cholesterol not go through the roof.
Holidays
Apple Matzah Kugel
I love this stuff:
9×13 pan
8 matzahs
Soak in hot water until soft. Drain but do not squeeze dry.
Beat six eggs and one teaspoon of salt thoroughly
Add 1 cup sugar
1 stick melted margarine
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
Add everything to matzah mixture
Stir in one cup of raisins and four large grated apples
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes
dot tip with margarine.
Passover Lunch Menus
Miriam is providing a public service by providing a post about Passover brown bag lunches. Click here.
Struggling With Pesach
In a short time Pesach will be here again. I am excited about it. It really is one of my favorite holidays but lately it has been quite a struggle for me. I am not really sure why but I have less motivation than normal to try and clean the house of chametz.
I look around the JBlogosphere and I see many posts about the craziness that has enveloped their homes. One story after another in which mothers /wives speak of the challenge of getting the house ready and the fathers/husbands talk about how to keep everyone happy.
Perhaps it is because I am short on caffeine. Or maybe it is something else, but I can’t say that I know exactly what bothers me this year.
On a different tack I can say that I am looking forward to the seders. My son has been working with me on the Four Questions as well as hammering me on the same question from last year.
Abba, tell me why pharoah was bad. Tell me why the plagues happened. Tell me why the Egyptians killed the babies and why G-d killed theirs. Do you think that Moshe is really dead. Does Elijah get a stomach ache from eating all that food?
Whew!
A number of years ago some friends and I played around with creating a Star Wars seder. It was kind of a goofy, nerdy concept but it would have been a lot of fun.
I am still not convinced about kitniyot. This is going to lead back to the age old discussion/comment about picking/choosing what to follow.
Anyhoo I have to get back to reality. Here are a couple of links to other posts I have written about Pesach.
Some Passover Musings
Passover
NY bus converted into oven for matzos
Here is some creative thinking you don’t see every day.
SPRING VALLEY, N.Y. – It wasn’t your typical fire. When police responded to a report that something smelled of smoke in the middle of the night, they found an old school bus that had been converted into a supersized oven for Passover matzos — complete with a smokestack, exhaust fans and working fire.
A building inspector said that while the bakery bus wasn’t nearly up to code, it was “very creative.”
The derelict red-and-white bus, connected by a plywood passageway to a single-family house, was out of sight of casual passers-by in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood and had apparently escaped the notice of authorities.
Its owner, Rabbi Aaron Winternitz, said Monday he had been making the unleavened bread there for three Passovers and was eager to do the same this year, with Passover coming up in a week.
Winternitz made them for his 50-member Congregation Mivtzar Hatorah. Observant Jews eat matzo during Passover week to illustrate how the Jews had no time to let their bread rise as they fled slavery in Egypt.
He said that the oven-in-a-bus was his invention, and that he purposely bought an old school bus because “school buses are made strong and safe.”
Police Sgt. Lou Scorziello said police traced the smoke to the bus at about 3 a.m. Friday. He said the back door of the bus, formerly the emergency exit, was the oven door. “All the seats had been removed and the whole inside was an oven,” he said.
Pesach Soda/Shamrock Shake
Off the Broiler caught my eye with two different posts. The first is about Kosher for Pesach coke.
For many of us this isn’t all that much of a novelty, but it grabbed me because it reminded of a post I want to write.
Jews who observe Pesach have to adjust our regular diets to comply with the laws surrounding the holiday. In many homes the seders are well planned, elaborate meals that are a tremendous pleasure to eat. Sometimes the meals that come in between are not so well planned so one finds all sorts of culinary challenges.
Tied into this is the effort made by some in the food industry to create Pesadich food products that resemble their leavened brothers. In recent years I have noticed that they seem to be having more success. The end result is that there is less of a distinction between the two. This begs the question of whether this is a good or bad thing. But like I said that is a post for a different time.
The next post that caught my eye is about the Shamrock Shake. If you have kept Kosher your entire life this might not be of any interest to you whatsoever, but for me it is something that brings back warm memories. My grandfather ZL used to take me to get one of these fabled shakes. Here is the link: