The Good Rabbi's Blog

At the catering company where I work, I've spent the last three days lending assistance to the hot and cold lines as we prepared a huge amount of Passover dinners. At first I thought it was nuts that people would have the meal catered, but then I realised that it was actually pretty smart. The food was good, and made to kosher standards (well, as much as you get from a regular kitchen). The ironic part about all this, is that now I've returned to my normal station, in the bakery. Not only am I forced to endure cardboard as a meal, but I get to do it while baking cookies, muffins, breads, cakes, etc.

The worst part about this holiday is that this food is presented as part of a fourteen step dinner called a seder. The actual meal is step number twelve, I think. Now, being a first-born son, I'm required to fast the day before Passover (the day of the first seder). So, by the time dinner is ready to be served, I'm a step away from dead (it should be noted that the lack of eating doesn't bother me, but the lack of drinking does make me fairly lethargic). I'm a fairly healthy thirty-something, and I have the patience of a halfway lit firecracker for these things. I can't imagine what, say, my 88 year old grandmother must be thinking.

So given my general lack of enthusiasm for the holiday, one can imagine how I reacted when the girlfriend approached me and stated that she wanted to host a seder this year (since the holiday is in the middle of the week, and I work ridiculous hours, it pretty much rules out going home to the family). This poses some interesting dilemmas. First, while I'm generally not enthused about the idea of the whole seder thing, I would get to cook, and fire is good (I am a man, after all). Second, it would give me some degree of social contact, which to be honest, has been somewhat lacking during my externship, due to the schedule that I am keeping.

So in the end, I decided to agree to it on two conditions - I would handle the menu and cooking, and that I steadfastly refused to sing the stupid "super-Jew" songs that the local JCC put into the packet they were giving out. Ultimately, my menu consisted of a traditional chicken soup with matzah balls (see post-script below), a spring green salad with an assortment of different ingredients, a roasted leg of lamb with a pomegranate glaze (which came out beautifully, by the way), a matzah kugel (generally a kugel is a noodle pudding, but due to passover restrictions, I made mine with matzah. Suffice it to say that mistakes were made), a tzimmes (a stew with carrot, sweet potato, dried fruits soaked in port, cinnamon, ginger, and some spices), a spinach pie (courtesy of my good friend Dana), and for dessert, some fruit and maztah brittle (yes, I know, it's a strange concept, yet it's very addictive). We had four people over, my friend Dana, a friend of the girlfriend, and two chicks we got off the Internet (hell, the seder had to be made interesting somehow). The things I do for my girlfriend...

Post Script: According to the International Federation of Competitive Eating, the world record for matzah ball consumption is held by Eric Booker, who ate twenty-one baseball-sized matzah balls in five minutes and twenty-five seconds. That's incredible. I'm just glad I was nowhere near him over the next few days...