Happy Easter!

I’m blogging live from the Peter Pan bus back to NY … as long as my battery lasts (which is probably not much longer). What an exciting new development for the world of bussing.

Yesterday seems like about 10 years ago, but I’ll try to remember. It would be a tragedy to leave out any details. I got home from dinner(s) with my sister on Friday night around 12:30 and spent the next hour or so packing. After four whole hours of sleep, my alarm went off at 5:40 am, and I crawled out of bed to get moving so I could catch the 7:30 am bus up to Providence from Port Authority. At 10ish, I had my packed bus breakfast with 1/2 cup matzo muesli soaked in 1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk overnight:

Doesn’t it look like cat food?

I dumped a cup of fruit salad (strawberries, pineapple, plum) on top:

My dad picked me up at the bus terminal in Providence at 11:15 and dropped me off at my mom’s house. As soon as I walked in the door, she instantly stuck one of her just-baked famous kitchen sink muffins into my mouth. It was obviously delicious even though I was still stuffed from all my dinners the night before.

I spent the next hour sleeping blogging, and we headed off to my aunt and uncle’s house for our seder at 1:30. I snacked on two teeny pretzel sticks before we got started:

After some chatting time, we all took our (assigned) seats to carry out our super abbreviated version of a seder. We’re pretty informal in my family, and now that there’s a new generation of babies around, we have to move quickly! Here’s some of the Haggadah we’ve been using since I was teeny. I think my grandma wrote it all out way back so that it would be easy for young ears to understand. It’s very cute:

Here’s the seder plate (decorated by my cousins in their younger years!). These foods are all there for symbolism, so we don’t actually eat what’s on this plate. It just sits there taunting us the whole time 😛 There’s charoset, maror, karpas, an orange, a hard-boiled egg, and a lamb shank:

And of course, we had some Manishewitz going. It’s the only type of wine I like!

As we went around the table reading the Haggadah, we pinky-dripped wine drops onto a plate to represent each of the 10 plagues, plus a list of modern plagues we added in to keep things relevant. Here’s my cousin Joshua pinky-modeling:

As I mentioned, each food has a meaning, and we finally get to start eating each thing as we get to it in the Haggadah. Here’s the legend:

Charoset is my FAVORITE part (well, maybe tied with my mom’s matzo balls) of Passover. My Aunt Sherye makes it each year — basically mashed up apples, honey, wine, walnuts, etc. Once we hit it in the Haggadah, I always end up inhaling pretty much the table’s whole bowl. So consider this photo a small token of my pre-meal meal of charoset.

The maror is the red — horseradish mixed with some beet juice. I hated it when I was younger, but I love it now. The heat and bite of the maror mixes perfectly with the sweet charoset. Seriously, picture me eating an entire box of matzo topped with mountains of maror and charoset. Because that’s what happened.

Gefilte fish … another Passover staple that I hated when I was younger. I don’t know why I love it so much now since it’s just kind of a reformed patty of mashed random white fish. But I’m claming my love. Gefilte fish, I love you.

And mama’s matzo ball soup!! No two batches are ever the same. This year’s batch was light and fluffy and delicious … and mom is sending me home with a whole container full of them so that Passover can keep giving and giving over the next several months 🙂 I had two bowls:

And then it was time for the main meal. Because the five meals’ worth of food I had just eaten were simply teasers. We had turkey with cranberry sauce:

Eggplant parmesan:

And lots and lots of salad with balsamic and olive oil:

We took a little breather to digest. I played with my first-cousins-once-removed, Lilly and Jonah. We built things with blocks and then bulldozed them:

And then, it was time for dessert! Well, time to prepare dessert since my mom was learning how to set up the chocolate fountain she’s had sitting brand-new in the box for a few years. While the fountain’s motor was revving, we all snacked on the candy fruit slices I bought during my Jewish shopping spree the other day. I had at least one of each:

And then we got the fountain running!!

I managed to snap this picture during the 7.59 seconds it was running before the motor gave out and the chocolate fountain became chocolate fondue. We didn’t have a problem with that. Melted chocolate is melted chocolate 🙂

I had at least three huge plates full of chocolate and all the fixings: strawberries, oranges, pineapple, pears, apples, bananas, and cubes of the blood orange Passover sponge cake I made the other day:

When the chocolate got low, dipping got hard and it was time to resort to finger-swiping and licking. Uncle Jim and mom in action:

I pounced on the spoon:

And made short work of the dregs.

Once there was really nothing left, I stopped and sat for a while alternately holding my belly and playing with the kids. It was so fun to visit with my cousins and have some family time since it’s pretty rare we all get together. I wish we could do it more often!

At 6, my mom, stepdad, and I had to race out of there and head to Boston for our evening engagement: Dirty Dancing On Stage!!

I literally grew up watching
Dirty Dancing — I remember coming home from first grade every day and immediately popping the VHS in the player. I knew every word … and apparently I still do! The musical was SO TRUE to the video, and I loved it! If you have any special place in your heart for Dirty Dancing, you need to do everything in your power to go see it right now! The music, the dancing, the story … it was all perfect (except for Johnny’s native Australian accent that kept popping out every so often).

I was still stuffed from the big seder when we got home at night, so there wasn’t much more eating going on. Oh, except for when my mom offered to squirt half a can of whipped cream into my mouth while my fingers were busy typing … and I accepted. I did take photos, but believe me when I say they are totally not blog-appropriate!

Today was the big Easter buffet with my dad and stepmom’s family, so I’ll report bag later with all of that once I’m back home in Brooklyn. My battery’s going to give out pretty soon!

Did you feel expanded at any point during this weekend? Was it worth it? My expansion was definitely worth it, but I’m also really looking forward to getting back to normal eating tomorrow!

Remember, tomorrow (Monday) is your last chance to enter the pistachio giveaway. Get your entries in by 6pm!