my first seder

April  6, 2012 -- The dream was finally realized, I was at the Finkelstein-Rothbart house for Passover! It was my first real seder. I think I did some serious fishing for that invite from Melissa, but I dealt with some major disappointment over missing Hannukah because I was back in Seattle, and I was not about to miss another holiday. So I had no shame in trying to weasel my way into this family's dinner, and luckily for me, they are all really nice and welcoming and willing to have Melissa's weird food friend over...I'm already counting down the days to the next holiday.

The seder plate: charoset (in the bowl), what I think is lettuce, parsley, egg, maror (horseradish), and zeroa (roasted lamb bone)...you can decide for yourself if I actually knew all of those words or had to read the entire Wikipedia entry on Passover seder to make sure I didn't write any incorrect information. 

First there was wine (take a sip while reclining to the left, yes! I remember this part!), then next comes the hand washing...but I don't think that actually happened, then the parsley dipped in salt water, breaking of the matzah, then a lot of information that I am definitely missing, reading from the Haggadah and a blessing, I think...and then this:

 

charoset and horseradish on matzoh

I was too nervous about the part that I had to read that I didn't read any of what looked like descriptive information in the Haggadah, so my knowledge of what actually happened at dinner is really not so great, which I'm a little bit embarrassed about. And reading the Wikipedia entry didn't help very much either since my post-dinner food coma was so extreme that I have very little memory of anything but shoveling food into my face.

Egg in salt water

Gefilte fish

My experience with gefilte fish was limited to the outtakes from Rush Hour (where Chris Tucker tries to order the kosher meal but can't say gefilte fish) and from the nasty kind that the RISD cafeteria served at Passover. But I really liked this, it was pretty fishy (ha, duh), but not in a canned sort of way. Let me tell you guys, everything they tell you about gefilte fish is a lie. It's actually good.

Matzo ball soup!!!! I want to eat this every day.

My dinner plate...I was bragging about eating this brisket all week before I had even tried it, but my preemptive bragging wasn't for nothing since it was sooo tender and flavorful. I wish I had gotten a picture of the whole plate, it was amazing.

Matzo covered in caramel, chocolate, and walnuts

Chocolate macaroons