Passover: Success!

Well, what can I say? You freak out, go to 15 different grocery stores, jabber indecisively about menus for 2 weeks, and cook for 2 days straight, and then you have a success! That's Passover, baby. Its a pain in the ass, but its worth it.

All my Germans (that's also the title of my new soap opera, btw, "All My Germans") showed up on time and ready to be educated about what, exactly, a Seder is. They were rather shocked that it was pretty straight-forward and undemanding- we had the Haggadahs printed out (I'm not fancy enough to have 12 of my own) and my friend Kat and I did most of the reading, saving the "read-along" portion for the all-important Passover story, ie, the tale of the Jews departure from Egypt. As not everyone speaks English that fantastically, we gave the option that anyone who didn't want to read a paragraph could just say "passover"! But actually, everyone did read and even discussed afterward. It was a dream-Seder, actually, and no one complained about the hour of dipping and reading preceding the meal.

And speaking of the meal, everything shockingly came together on time! It helped that I had made about half of the items before, but still I was thrilled that there wasn't a last minute moussaka induced panic-attack, or similar. For the matzoh ball soup, I made a lemongrass-ginger-kaffir lime broth this year, with plenty of mushrooms for depth. It worked wonderfully with the fluffy matzoh balls, and was arguably the hit of the meal. (Below, a couple of my lovely friends enjoying.)


As for the rest, I wasn't fantastic about getting pics with all of the action, but you can kind of glean what was served from my leftover plate, minus the moussaka.

Clockwise, matzoh, cucumber dip from V'Con, Quinoa-Tzimmes Tagine with carrots, sweet potatoes and apricots, and apple-walnut charoset. Not pictured, mushrooms stuffed with shallots and garlic, Eggplant Potato Moussaka from V'Con, and chocolate mousse provided by a friend for dessert.

All in all, I was very pleased with the turnout, both guest-wise and food-wise. It was a great way to say a temporary good-bye to Berlin and give my friends a little demo of both Judaism and veganism. I hope they had as much fun as I did!

Next year in Budapest?