Heading into Pesach–land

Yesterday my kids and I switched the house to Passover mode. All of the shelves and counters are cleaned and covered. The oven is cleaned and kashered . All of the regular dishes are put away and all of the Passover dishes and glasses and pots and silverware is in it’s place.

What we didn’t have was food. It was our anniversary so we decided to go out to dinner.

This is what we looked like 28 years ago yesterday.

Yes, it was a fun wedding.

Today I did the giant Costco pre-Passover shop.  It was time to get cooking.

I went to start the charoset and realized that my  chopping knife was gone.  Actually it seems like the bag with  the kitchen shears and can opener and the like has disappeared.

 

I went to the hardware store across the street. it’s owned by a Yemini family. I asked for the sort of knife the owner’s grandmother uses to make babaganouj. he had just the thing. A chopping knife known in my family as a Hock-messer. If my grandmother were Italian, it would be a mezza-luna.

He asked me what I planned to make with my chopping knife. I started to describe charoset. He said that his grandmother makes something similar. he had to think for a minute to remember the name…”baklawa!”. I said..but this has no filo dough. he told me that they call all sweet pastes baklawa.

Here is my charoset/baklawa. 

It’s made with apples, granny smith, Jonah Gold and Macs, three types of figs, dates, raisins, prunes, walnuts, almonds, apricots, fresh ginger, cinnamon, allspice, black pepper, honey and sweet wine.

 

I also set up the soup.

Right now it just looks like stuff. Tomorrow it will be soup.

The soup is made out of  8- 3/4 lbs of chicken bones, 4 onions, three big parsnips, a head of celery, a celery root, a few onions, a big bunch of parsley, a few carrots. The pot is large enough to cook a medium sized toddler.

 

This ought to make enough soup to last for the holiday.