My vegan family Seder

Passover is one of my favorite holidays, and I usually spend it with my fabulous crazy vegan cousins.

Even before the Seder itself, it was like an Oscar Wilde comedy.

I arrive at 6:00, as requested.  Jeffrey and Dylan, the boyfriends, are sitting on the couch watching the History Channel's show on engineering disasters, this one on the Deepwater Horizon.  They report that I'd just missed the show on underwear.  It took me a minute to realize this was not something in the engineering disaster series.

Lynne reports that Marty and Carol aren't coming.  She's upset.  Andy tells his daughter, Chloe, that Marty gave him the number of someone who works at an ad agency and that she should call him.  She looks at him like he's crazy.  He says, "Why can't you be normal and call him?" She says, "Because it's not normal to call people you don't know.  You email them."  Andy had neither his email address nor his actual name.

Lynne tells me I'm leading the Seder.  What a treat, although had I known before I would have pulled some material.  She says we're starting as soon as Rochelle arrives.  This is good: I want to start asap because then we won't be rushed through the Seder; everyone else wants to start asap so we can eat soon.

Mickey and Barbara arrive.

Rochelle arrives.  I'm eager to sit down and get started.

Andy gets on the phone to call Marty to ask him for the email address of the ad agency guy.

Lynne remembers that we need a pitcher of water and a bowl for handwashing and digs out a pitcher.

Chloe announces that we are going to Facetime with her sister now.

Lynne asks Chloe to corral everyone into the dining room.  She corrals them into the kitchen.

We discover that there are two extra chairs around the dining room table.  We debate whether or not to remove them.

Andy is not there.

Andy arrives, but Lynne has to get up to get something.

Lynne returns, but I remember that I have a great story on my phone I could read, so I run and get it.

Richard starts talking about the Breslov Haggadah and how it reminds us that we should find our ways out of our own narrow places and that we need to teach future generations about this.  My reaction is that he's just led most of the Seder, and I wish I didn't have to now because he's been so eloquent.  Also that what he said isn't unique to that Haggadah by a long shot.

Mickey says we should share our narrow places with each other.

Chloe's phone rings as she tries unsuccessfully to Facetime with her sister, and she asks her dad why the internet connection keeps cutting out.

All this before the Seder officially begins....

I love my family.

The butter holiday

Most people think of Passover as the time of year when we eat matzah. And I love matzah: matzah brei, matzah ball soup, charoset on matzah. But, really, it's the butter holiday.

Growing up, it was the one time of year I was allowed to have butter, and my mother served Land O' Lakes sweet unsalted whipped butter in a tub. The rest of the year, we had margarine. But the corn oil in margarine isn't kosher for an Ashkenazic Jew. So we had that special treat of sweet butter.

On matzah. I became expert at perfectly evenly glazing a matzah with this butter. Amazingly thinly, too, because if I was caught eating too much of the butter I'd get in trouble. And then: the salt. My second favorite food, after butter. I'd coat the thin matzah with the thin layer of butter, then with a thin layer of salt. It was art. And I ate as much of it as I could.

In a perfect Hallmark moment, my oldest friend K. and I had a long phone conversation this weekend. While we spoke, she was cooking for her family in Philadelphia, and I was painting a wall of my condo here in Emeryville. (Boy, have we come a long way since second grade in Cleveland!) We took turns putting each other on speakerphone. She told me about her own memory of my mother providing sweet unsalted whipped butter.

(I will be making K.'s recipe for matzah kugel tomorrow. At her recommendation, I won't use the full 1/4 pound of butter it calls for.)

Several years ago I finally broke from sentiment and bought sweet salted whipped butter. I don't really know why my mother bought us the unsalted version. I got tired of the art involved, and now I just slather it on.