Daniel Greene
Andy Smithers
Happy end of Passover 2012 / Pesach 5772
As the sun sets on the last night of Passover / Pesach, a look back at the past eight days at the Smithers-Greene.
We held a little seder at home the first night.
Sunday morning I had some charoset with a matzah covered with dark chocolate cream cheese.
Sunday night Andy made a delicious matzo ball soup.
Tuesday night Andy made a sumptuous lasagna with matzah instead of noodles. It had beef in it (my idea), so it’s meat and dairy together, but that’s how we roll!
Friday I made a lemon sponge cake from a recipe on a canister of Manischewitz potato starch.
(Friday night I drenched it in an icing made of lemon juice and powdered sugar. Even yummier.)
I’m not orthodox about the way I celebrate holidays. There was the hamburger in the lasagna. Heck, on some Passovers I’ve breakfast on eggs, matzah with butter on it, and bacon. Once in a while, I give into a craving, mix meat and dairy, add bacon, and have it on a chometzdik bun! As I Facebooked Thursday, “Eating a Sourdough Jack during Passover is wrong in so many ways… but it feels so right.” I do try to avoid “cheating” for the sake of observing the holiday, but when I give in, I don’t feel guilty; I just joke about it. The way I see it, even if I’m breaking tradition and joking about it, I’m acknowledging the tradition. The stomping of feet, the smell of sweat breaking out on flushed skin, the fear and hope of people who grabbed what they could and ran out of Egypt without even time to let their dough rise– these “memories” are with me. One might ask, “If you’re going to break the commandments, why even bother?” Well, I would rather observe the holiday by mostly abstaining from chometz (leavening) than by not abstaining at all. This was our Pesach, and I enjoyed it!
