חסל סדור פסח

Getting the Sedarim put together this year was, to put it mildly, something of a challenge. I was grateful to have use of the basement fridge. But having to run down seven flights to get that one thing that had been forgotten was less than ideal.

As promised the fridge repair guy did arrive, not in the morning as requested, but at 4pm. He announced as soon as he walked in that it would be a job that would take several hours. During his time working there were times we had no access to the kitchen.

Our seder was called for 7:00. Candle lighting was at 7. I lit candles as the repairman was just finishing up. (He had replaced all of the internal working bits of the fridge.) Fortunately, our guest came a little late so I had time to get dressed and slap on some lipstick.
Our maror this year was pretty spectacular. here is a glamor shot of the top.

The root was large enough to use as a weapon.

I spent the first half of seder kind of stunned. Amazingly everything looked lovely and if you didn't know about all of the drama you might think it was an ordinary year.

I had a few baking disasters including these pignoli cookies.

I had made with homemade marzipan, and this year I did blanch and peel all of the almonds. I cut up the melted cookies, put them out on our tray of cookies and called them pignoli shards.

A sponge cake that I baked in a thin layer and had planned to serve stacked with layers of chocolate custard and fresh strawberries failed in several ways, too many to mention here. But I remembered a recipe from a New Orleans cookbook my husband bought me about thirty years ago. One of the desserts in that book was called Russian cake and it was made out of mixed bits of old cake and custard,  jammed into a plastic wrapped bowl, doused with sugar syrup and then weighted with a plate and set in the fridge for a while and unmolded.

Amazingly, the Russian cake worked. Decorated with fresh strawberries it even looked like a cake one might want to serve beloved guests as opposed to a failed sponge cake and some chocolate custard and orange scented sugar syrup and a few strawberries.

Dipping the apricot almond balls in melted chocolate was both glamorous and delicious.

We read Who Knows One passing a copy of the poem around the table first night.

Nearly all of the napkins are now ironed.

One of the tablecloths is ironed and the other is at the cleaners.

This is our supper tonight.

Breaded eggplant serves as the crust and fresh tomatoes and peppers are under a blanket of cheese.

Having a working fridge is a nice thing.