(Bumping this entry up for timeliness, so apologies for the lack of order lately!)
Want to know one of the worst weeks to be on a diet? On a holiday that is completely surrounding food. I decided that I would try to keep my weight even this week rather than trying to lose anything… knowing it would be VERY difficult to make it through 2 Seders without going over my point allowance. I still tracked everything, however, and managed to gain less than 1 pound that week. So I call that even and a success!
Passover has what you eat and eating your meal actually written into the prayer book. It’s meant to be shared with family and at the meal, the story of the Jews leaving Egypt is read aloud. Now that you have had your little lesson in Passover, onto the food!
Passover has been hosted at my Aunt and Uncle’s house for a few years now, and you can always count on some standards. A new addition, this year, was matzo pizza. Unfortunately, I was trying to be good and I skipped this. Only to learn too late that it was fantastic. Bummer! But there is always next year.
Charoset is a traditional part of the meal. It is made of apples, nuts, wine, and cinnamon (mostly). It is meant to symbolize the mortar that the Jews put between the bricks while building as slaves for Pharaoh. It’s DELICIOUS and one of my favorite parts of the Seder.
It makes matzo quite delectable.
Not quite part of the Seder, yet still traditionally served at every Seder I know of, is gefilte fish. I didn’t eat this for years. Partly because it was typically embedded in horse radish jell-o at my Grandmother’s Seder (and I hate horse radish) and partly because it has the name fish and partly because it just doesn’t look particularly appetizing. It has grown on me, however, and I now each it happily (though only this once per year)
Another tradition that isn’t written but always stands is matzo ball soup. Always delicious. I love a good, fluffy, buttery matzo ball.
Then we go buffet style. Lots of goodies… most of which I cannot remember. A highlight for me this year was the “make your own salad” portion of the meal. Base lettuce was there and then there were add-ons like kidney beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. It made it a LITTLE easier to fill my plate with items that wouldn’t kill my points for the week. I was still doing pretty well with dinner. Just took a little bit of everything else to sample. There were so many things, however, that it filled my plate. I managed to keep it mostly under control, however, until…
Dessert! I should have known better. Everything was good, but I managed to take only a nibble here and there. Until…
I stupidly stood in front of the chocolate, peanut butter, and peanut butter & chocolate matzo. I had SO much of this. WAY too much. This was where the points went overboard.
The peanut butter + chocolate version is just fantastic. It’s a little extra sweet and the peanut butter is like candy on top. My favorite part of the meal.
‘Til next year!
