Passover Prep part 3

When we last left our heroes, we were beginning to clean out the house. The cleaning lady came on Thursday (an hour late, but she got there) and by the time we went to bed on Thursday night (2 am) most of the kitchen was now ready for Passover.

We ate Friday night dinner at mkm’s parents house and then spend the afternoon after Synagogue at the home of one of the other families. We got home at about 8:15 pm, bathed the kids and get them to bed. By 9:30, the moms had arrived and cooking began. One of the moms brought the largest pot I have seen in a non-commercial kitchen and we make gallons of Chicken soup. They also rolled about 135 matza balls and prepared veggys for some of the next days cooking fun.

Everyone was supposed to show up at about 9:30 on Sunday. One mom got there at 10:00 and the other at 11:00, but they did do some significant cooking. The chicken for Friday night was done. The roast for the first seder, done. Tzimis, done. 709 meatballs, done! ( ok, that is way too many meatballs and the one mom who was in charge of meatballs admitted so, but we can eat meatballs for the next two weeks!)

Most of the food is not packaged and frozen, waiting for the seders. The only big-ticket food to cook is still the turkeys, and that will happen over the next few nights. Beyond that is green veggys, the quinoa and desserts. We will probably just make it!

The next major part of passover prep will occur on Thursday night. We will make one final sweep of the house to make sure there is no more non-passover food in sight. We do this by placing a few pieces of bread around the house and then we make a blessing and go “search” for them. The reason for placing the bread around the house is that we can be pretty sure we put everything away, but since we make a blessing to search for the food, we need to make sure we find some.

On Friday morning this bread will be burnt, also with a blessing to ceremonially show we have gotten rid of all the non passover foods. I will be taking off from work on Friday to help with the final prep work. We will prepare the ritual foods for the Seder table so that everything will be able to be put out when we start on Saturday night. If there is time, we will also get the tables ready and set as much as possible.

I know this sounds like so much work, but we do enjoy a lot of it and once it is all together, the Seder is a lot of fun. I don’t know if I will post another Passover prep, but I will probably post a post Seder entry.

Here is a link to a youtube that does not allow embedding. It is so cute!

Here is another fun video.

Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fffud6Ewzps&hl=en]