Quarantine Seder

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Originally, my family had planned to visit my grandmother in New York City this coming weekend to celebrate a belated Passover together. BUT, clearly that didn't happen. Not only could we not even go out of state, but my grandma is actually in the hospital with the coronavirus; we can't go up there for a festive occasion or to be with her while she is sick.

As the Jewish matriarch of the family, my paternal grandmother was always the one to cook the Seder. It was only until after she moved into a senior living situation where she didn't have a real kitchen that she started celebrating at her synagogue and eating the festive meal out. But since my parents and I are stuck at home, we had to do Seder on our own for the first time.

Notice the Easter egg place mat in the background. Mixed family! 

I was very proud of our Seder plate. We didn't have a lamb shank, so the chicken leg had to do (sorry). And it's the first time we included an orange for feminism/inclusivity (read that story here).

I made charoset for the first time, and it was so easy! I found this recipe on Epicurious, but you know me: I changed the ingredients up a bit.

Ingredients

• 3 medium Gala or Fuhi apples (peeled, cored, and finely diced)
• 1.5 cups walnut halves (slight;y toasted, cooled, and coarsely chopped)
• .5 cup sweet red wine
• 1.5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar

The directions are so easy because all you have to do is mix the ingredients together, and voilà! I used pecans instead of walnuts (I did not toast them.). I also didn't want to bother buying sweet kosher wine (let's be honest: nobody likes that stuff), so I used some random V-8 berry juice that I had; worked like a charm!

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My mom also made matzoh balls for the first time, and they were fantastic! I thought they were just as good as my grandma's (but don't tell her that!). We didn't use my grandmother's recipe; hers was too complicated with separating the eggs, whipping the whites into peaks, using chicken fat (which we didn't have), chilling the mixture for an hour... Instead, we just used the recipe on the canister of the matzoh meal, and it was great!

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs, slightly beaten
• .5 cups matzoh meal
• 2 tablespoons chicken or vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

• In a bowl, beat the eggs. Then add the oil, matzoh meal, and salt. Blend together. Add broth and mix until uniform.
• Cover and chill in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes. In the meantime, bring six cups of water to a boil.
• Remove chilled matzoh ball mixture from the refrigerator. Wet hands and form batter into matzoh balls, ~1 inch in diameter.
• Reduce heat. Drop matzoh balls into pot of boiling water.
• Cover tightly and simmer until thoroughly cooked, about 30-40 minutes.

We actually boiled the matzoh balls right in chicken broth instead of water; they're going in the chicken soup anyway! We also added shredded carrots and diced mushrooms to the broth to give the soup some more flavor and color. My grandmother's recipe called for adding nutmeg to the matzoh ball mixture, so we did do that in her honor. I always thought matzoh balls would be a complicated Jewish food to make, but they're really easy!

Perhaps everything went more quickly because it was just the three of us, but we seemed to breeze through the Maxwell House haggadah. Of course we didn't read everything, but we read most of what we would usually do at a family seder, and it felt like we got to the festive meal in just a few minutes. Thank goodness; we were hungry!

Happy holidays, everyone!