Some of you celebrate Passover and Passover this year starts on Monday April 10. Often we have to start preparation early for Passover. One of the things about Passover is that we clean our homes of Hametz. Hametz is stuff that can be leavened (well kinda in a Medieval sense). In my house this means that we move about three quarters of the food in the pantry down to the basement. Some people do a total clean and throw out, sell or give away things. We don’t bother, but of course we are Reform Jews. And last year there was a decision by the Conservative movement to allow corn, millet, beans, peas, legumes and seeds such as rice (and chia). But of course I made minimal progress keeping my wife from moving it all downstairs.
What I did do today is start a brisket cooking. It is always better to cook the brisket before, let it rest a night or two in the fride and then reheat it for the meal.
What are your plans for Passover? Do you have Passover memories? Do you always remember that you are supposed to have four glasses of wine?
ps. For some archaic reason Passover contains *ss and is banned from titles. Hahahahaha!
Course, we’re orthodox, so we do a total change-over of the kitchen - though we lock away some things, instead of moving everything out. Aside from the “festival of carbs” that is the holiday, one very challenging bit is the couple days before – when we can’t use the kitchen for non-passover, but we can’t yet cook for the holiday.
i dread the passover seders. i grew up conservative, but my husbands family is ultra-orthodox, so in his family’s household life is much different than in mine. my home and my family are rather laid back. we are joyous and jovial and loud. we read from the haggadah so quickly that your tail will spin. our hebrew is a sloppy mess. but we are thorough and get things done. we can’t wait to dig in and eat.
my husband’s family is so slow. everything seems to take forever. everything is read with intense purpose. hebrew is the only language spoken while reading. their seders last endless hours. i just want to take
sorry about that; i pressed the wrong button on my computer, and poof, i sent a half finished response.
anyway. what i really wanted to say is that i have a really difficult time with seder food. i don’t ever drink wine; grape juice is too sugary, i can’t eat the charoset (and i LOVE it).
matzo balls, well, thats just a nightmare, although my mother-in -law makes a special one for me without sugar in it. (same with gefilt fish; lucky me) etc etc.
BUT, i lOVE matzo bri. and my dad makes the very best in the entire world. it was his mother’s recipe and her mother’s recipe and all the way down the line. i could eat it every day, and i do.
While I do avoid grape juice (except to correct a low when nothing else is available), I do drink wine. Usually one cup/glasss of wine is enough to make me sleepy, but at the seders, I do drink 4 cups of wine. I choose a low-carb wine, like a Cabernet Sauvignon - can’t stomach the sweet stuff, anyway. No matzoh balls at my seder, but the matzoh itself is the challenge. I eat the prescribed amount of matzoh, so it amounts to quite a bit. Our family used potatoes for karpas (what can I say - my father’s family is from Poland), which is not an easy carb for me.
The meal itself is no real problem for me, generally, except again the matzoh at the end. All-in-all, it’s an evening of lots of corrections!
The first year I was diagnosed and before I learned much of anything I asked my endo who is Jewish how to deal with insulin at the meal. He said take half of the insulin when I take my first bite and then the rest when I start the main course. I treated the karpas as the first bite and by the time I was coming to the second cup of wine (diluted grape juice that year) I was feeling faint. It’s gotten better since then but the seder is always an insulin adventure.
you took the words right out of my mouth. i have to own up to one thing in particular: with all the many years on my pump, i have NEVER used the square bolus feature. i love my dual boluses, but i am too afraid to just give myself some arbitrary doseage of insulin and then winding up passing out; especially for seders, b/c with my mother-in-law, our seders go on for about 6 hours and the food/eating is all spread out; i simply cannot calculate the amount of insulin appropriate nor the time i want to extend the bolus for. call me an archaic idiot, but i am just really a worry-wart.
I can’t believe we actually got something approved before the States! FYI If you’re ever up here you can buy it for just over $30/vial, no prescription required! I don’t know if it’s the Fiasp or just good luck but I definitely didn’t pre-bolus and ate lots of matzoh, fruit and chocolate chip cookies. No spiking whatsoever!!
Not a Jewish person here, but was invited to my first seder dinner this year and looking forward to it! In all honesty, hadn’t even thought about the carb-insulin challenge that it might present (mind you also, the friends who are holding it are vegetarians, so it will certainly not include brisket ), and it was helpful to read the discussion on that point here. The way I, as a guest, am “getting ready” is to read about the rituals associated with seder itself (I already know the story of Passover). I also found a Passover-approved recipe for a dessert I am bringing.
Yea. Takes a very long time. I will say that Wegmans carries one in there Kosher aisle that is incredible, by Yehuda. I buy it all year long. Makes a great low carb lunch.
), and it was helpful to read the discussion on that point here. The way I, as a guest, am “getting ready” is to read about the rituals associated with seder itself (I already know the story of Passover). I also found a Passover-approved recipe for a dessert I am bringing.