Lucky for us (and all other working 9-5ers), this year was the second year in a row Passover fell over a weekend, providing no excuse for missing the holiday with family. So off we went, down to South Florida to spend Passover 2016 with my beautiful, goofy, loud, and loving family.
WHAT WE DID DIFFERENTLY
This year, we decided to have both nights of Passover Seder catered in. This meant minimal food shopping, prep, and cooking. The amount of difference that decision made was so significant in lifting pressure from everyone (ahem, the ladies who would be doing all the work), that I don’t think we’ll ever go back.
We had so much more free-time outside of the kitchen, we almost didn’t know what to do with ourselves. Almost.
WHAT WE DID INSTEAD
- We went to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, and holy moly, it was incredibly beautiful. I walked around with my camera glued to my hand, snapping away at everything. I must have uttered ‘wow this is so gorgeous’ about a thousand times. (Read: Morikami Gardens)
- Mornings were filled with coffee, breakfast, and bananagrams on the lanai. That’s right, we actually had time to play games! And even time for Publix subs (my absolute favorite!) for lunch.
- The guys began a game of Risk, and the girls decided to sneak out to get pedicures and walk around a few outdoor shops (our absence was hardly noticed by men playing a game about war).
Again, we had so much time notinthekitchen cooking, that the girls had time to get pedicures and go shopping. Passover miracle? I think so!
THE SEDERS
Seders were Friday and Saturday nights. There were loud, tear inducing hilarious, and long, as these dinners tend to be. There’s a lot of material to get through before you’re actually able to start eating… but we make it as fun, and lively as possible. We have props to demonstrate the plagues [rubber frogs, plastic bugs, rubber animals to represent wild beasts, sunglasses to pass around for darkness, ping pong balls for hail, and red stickers for boils], in addition to mustaches — long standing tradition.
We go around the table, each taking turns reading from our haggadah (text recited during seder). We each are required to come up with a slave name, a backstory, and a job we did back in Egypt, as a slave. It is great. My family usually brings their best accents to the table: a slave who spoke like Mort from Family Guy, a slave with a German accent, a slave that spoke like a Southern Baptist priest, one who spoke like a professional surfer from SoCal, one who was a tennis playing housewife, one who spoke only in Hebrew (which was the classy thing to do), one who was a midwife, another spoke like Donald Duck, and another with a bad case of tics. This year, it was epic.
Saturday night was Night II of Passover, which was pretty much a repeat of Friday night. We stayed up wayyyy too late each night, and stuffed our faces with more food than was necessary. We were up super early on Sunday to catch our flight home to DC. The weather greeted us with perfect Spring weather, and we spent the rest of the day catching up on much needed sleep, and cheeseburgers. All in all, it was a fabulous trip. We are so glad we were able to spend it with my family — again!
What are some of your family traditions for Passover?