It's Passover, So It's Time For Matzah Brei

Since you can't eat leavened bread during Passover, and this morning I wanted a good breakfast, it was time to make Martzah Brei.  Think french toast but with matzah rather than bread.

First, you break up the sheets of matzah, 2 sheets per person or more if you're very hungry.

 Next, soak the broken up matzah in water for about 5-10 minutes until soft.

 

 Once the matzah has soaked, dump it into a strainer to drain the excess water. Beat one egg per sheet of matzah in the bowl very well as the matzah sits in the strainer. Then pour the matzah from the strainer back into the bowl onto the eggs and keep stirring until the egg is all absorbed.

Heat up a frying pan with some oil or butter (or both) and keep flipping the matzah until it is no longer soggy and gets nice and crunchy but nor burned.

 Serve with powdered sugar or maple syrup, or both.

 And enjoy a traditional Passover breakfast.

Happy Passover To My Jewish Readers And A Wish For Good Friday And Easter To My Christian Readers

Happy Passover to my Jewish readers.  Two Seders later (one Wednesday night for the first night, and another yesterday for the second),  and we are well into celebrating Passover now.

With the attacks on Jews worldwide, including right here in West Bloomfield, this festival of freedom is even more meaningful today.

To my Christian readers, may you have a peaceful Good Friday and a happy Easter celebration. 

Happy Passover!

Tonight is the first night of the Passover Holiday.

So, goodbye to bread and other prohibited grains for the next 8 days. Yep, chametz ain't happening around here.

Happy Passover to those who celebrate! 

Passover 2023 Ends

After sundown, we celebrated the end of Passover in style -with a big bowl of Cacio e Pepe that I cooked up to celebrate having bread again.  Quite the tasty treat.

Followed up with some cake.

Now I'm rather carb-loaded indeed.

Contemplating compounding the damage by celebrating with a beer.

Happy Passover!

Passover has begun.

We had out first Seder last night and had a nice time as a family together except with Abby off at University it was down to the three of us.

Natasha made the haroset differently this year.  She used Georgia Pecans my dad had brought up to us on his way back north, instead of Walnuts.  

Apparently using pecans is a Texas Passover tradition and it is a really tasty switch that is worth trying whether you celebrate Passover or not, and I'm all in favor of it.

After the initial ceremony we had the festive meal with leg of lamb, smashed potatoes and  all the side dishes.

Leah when the meal was finished found the affikoman where I had cunningly hid it, and was rewarded accordingly.

It was a very nice festive meal and ceremony.

Last Day Of Passover

Today is the final day of Passover.

That called for a breakfast of Matza Brye. Think french toast but with a nice satisfying crunch.

The matza was broken into pieces and placed in a bowl of water to soften up and then drained.

Eggs were beaten and then added and mixed into the matza.

Then fried in oil until golden brown and delicious.

Served with maple syrup, of course, for a fine Passover compliant breakfast.

Matza does make pretty much make the perfect survival bread - it lasts just about forever, is compact, portable, and tends to be kinda binding if you know what I mean.

On the downside, one does get a bit bored of it and not having other grain-originated products for 8 days.

Here's to hoping the Wuhan plague and associated overbearing shut down similarly pass over us soon.

Tonight after sundown, we're having Fettucine and garlic bread, and some beer for me, to mark the end of Passover.

Passover 2020: And We Just Had Hail

Out of a clear blue sky, we just had a sudden cloud formation with . . . hail.

Not kidding, a whole bunch of actual hail. In April.

I swear, if a bunch of frogs, or a herd of locusts come through next, or a nearby river turns to blood, we're holding some extra seders, stat.

Happy Passover!

Certainly this will be the weirdest Passover we've celebrated.

Instead of in Toronto with all the extended family, we're here at home celebrating on our own.

Well, the Seder table is set, and I smoked a lamb shank on the smoker so we could have a real shank bone on the seder plate:

As the Seder, among other things, prominently feature the ten plagues sent by G_d that led to Pharaoh releasing the Israelites from Egypt, it's a tad ironic that we're stuck at home due to the current plague.

Happy Passover!

Happy Passover 2019!

A very nice time was spent with the extended family celebrating Passover.

We went to Toronto for the first Seder on Friday and had a great time meeting up with all the cousins and catching up with all the folks.

It was a good time for all as we retold the story of the departure from Egypt, with the oldest in the room in their 80s, and the youngest at 4 weeks all enjoyed the Passover story and meal.

We brought Matzah Crack to the Seder. What's Matzah Crack you may be asking? We'll its the tastiest Passover-approved dessert. Caramel and chocolate on top of Matzah along with other toppings. Varieties included chocolate with pieces candied ginger - which was a surprise hit, Chocolate mint, Chocolate Cherry, and White Chocolate almond Cranberry.

Making it is really rather simple:

Matzah Crack

Ingredients:
4-5 pieces of matzah
2 sticks / 1 cup butter
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 (12-ounce) bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (If you're doing white chocolate cranberries, use white chocolate chips for that flavor series)
chopped pieces of candied ginger, or dried cherries or cranberries as desired as additional toppings.

1. Break Matzah into pieces and array on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil that has been sprayed with no-stick spray. Preheat the oven to 350.

2. Take 1 cup butter and melt in a pan with 1 cup brown sugar, mix together over medium-high heat and stir until boiling, foamy and it becomes thickened around 3 minutes after it starts bubbling.

3. Pour the mixture over the Matzah and spread around covering the top of the Matzah.

4. Place in the oven and back for 8-10 minutes to set the caramel.

5. Remove from the oven and cover the caramel with a goodly portion of chocolate chips and spread over with a spatula as it melts. Add additional toppings as desired. Chopped pieces of candied ginger are highly recommended.

6. Let cool in the fridge for a few hours until the chocolate and caramel have solidified.

7. Cut into smaller pieces with a knife, and then enjoy. Bet you can't eat just one!

Happy Passover to all, and a Happy Easter to those of you celebrating Easter.

Matzah Brei, It's What's For Passover Breakfast

So we're about halfway into the festival and celebration of Passover, which means among other things, no bread, no beer, and no whisky until Tuesday night.

So instead of French Toast, this morning I got up early before work, and as the kids have the day off from school as its Good Friday and decided to make them a special breakfast.

Matzah Brei is what French Toast would be when you substitute matzah for bread.

It's very easy to make.

Step one: Get Matzah, about one sheet per person or more if you know they'll be hungry.

Step two: Break up Matzah into chunks and put in bowl. Vary the sizes for a better texture later, not too big though. Then beat some eggs, one per sheet of matzoh in a separate bowl, add a little salt to it and you can add pepper if you're looking for savory over sweet. Today the choice was for sweet.

Step three: Pour some hot water on the Matzah and leave for about 30 seconds. Then drain the water as completely as possible.

Step three: Add the eggs and mix together and let the eggs soak in a bit.

Step four: Fry in a hot pan with oil/butter until crispy. Don't let it burn though.

Step five: Serve with maple syrup -- real maple syrup -- not that fake stuff.

Enjoy!

A Passover Story

As Passover approaches, with tonight being the first night and the first seder of the celebration, there's a story that's rather worthy of retelling.

Many years ago, Shmuel, a British Jew had a life devoted to public service and charitable works in the United Kingdom.

After years of doing these good works, he received a notice that he was to be honored with a knighthood for his lifetime of service.

The Queen would conduct the ceremony, which coincidentally turned out would be on Passover, and those receiving the honors would one by one approach, say the appropriate words and declaration in Latin and then be knighted by the Queen.

All was going well, and then Shmuel stepped up before the Queen.

At that moment he completely forgot the Latin phrase he was supposed to utter and in a panic instead said "Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot".

The Queen, somewhat puzzled, looked at her advisors and then asked:

"Why is this knight different from all other knights?"

Happy Passover!

Happy Passover!

Friday night was the start of Passover.

We went to a friend's house for a seder and had a very good time. Leah did a most impressive job singing the four questions in Hebrew and reading them in English as well.

This morning we had the traditional breakfast meal for Passover in our house: matzah brye.

The easiest explanation for matzah brye is that it is French Toast made out of matzah rather than bread, and it's a tasty treat to start the day.

First take about one sheet of matzah person person and have your minions break it into small pieces in a bowl.





















Next, add warm water to the bowl and cover the matzah. 















Then in a separate bowl crack in an egg per person, beat the eggs and add a dash of cinnamon and couple teaspoons of sugar and a bit of salt.

Drain the matzah and then pour the egg mixture over the matzah and mix it together as you heat a frying pan with butter.

Once the pan is hot pour in the matzah and egg mixture.
 

Flip over when it is golden brown underneath, cook the other side and serve.

And that's how you make matzah brye.  Generally, it is best with maple syrup but other toppings are also acceptable.

Happy Passover, and a Happy Easter to my Christian friends and readers out there.

Toronto Trip Report

Let's start this off with a shot of Toronto's iconic skyline:

The view from my mother-in-law's apartment is darn nice. On a clear day you can even see the lake in addition to the CN Tower.

Looking down eight stories from the balcony isn't too bad even for most acrophobes. When I pointed out that I regularly dive 80 feet down, no big deal, no problem, the family suddenly realized that 80 feet underwater isn't a small distance.

As part of this trip, we took my Mother-In-Law and ourselves went to Honest Ed's. Think a discount/dollar store that takes up an entire city block. Honest Ed's has everything from hats to mugs to prescription drugs in one place surrounded by old theater posters and pictures of stars from a bygone era. Sadly, this Toronto landmark is going to close in December 2016 so if you've never shopped for shlock until you drop, you've got a closing window of opportunity.

One of the mugs Honest Ed's had featured the closest thing Canadians get to a Gun Show these days. I saw this mug and immediately thought of Tam:

The trip also consisted of, as is usual, my on-site tech support calls for both my Mother-in-Law and my Dad in the computer and audio/visual departments. I'm working on turning Abby and Leah into my tech support minions and they were quite helpful with my Mother-In-Law for explaining how to work her new replacement TV and existing DVD player after I had it setup and working.

On a sadder note, the brutal cold winter has taken a severe toll.

My Dad and step-mom live in a nice 100-year-old house in midtown, and one day while they were away, the boiler shut down and then the water froze in the radiators and then cracked them, leading to a flood resulting in the home being stripped down to the boards and walls.

Now, mind you, they are nice 100-year-old boards with no particle board to be seen but the house is currently uninhabitable and a lot of stuff got flooded to destruction. This is extremely bad.

Also revealed was the extensive knob and tube wiring that while sure not up to code now served the house well all this time. Now that its revealed it will all have to be replaced to get up to code.

The structure of the house is still rock solid, but they're looking at a solid 6-9 months to get it restored, renovated, and up to habitable conditions, not to mention lots of expected battles with the insurance co along the way.

This also gave us accommodation issues as we normally stay with them and my Mother-In-Law's one bedroom apartment doesn't have space for 4 of us to stay there with her. There was a guest room in her apartment building that we rented which was unfortunately a big mistake in retrospect. The kids stayed on the floor in a "fort" in the apartment, while we occupied the guest room. The room was small with two single beds that if you shifted in any direction you'd fall out of bed.

Worse, the room was right by the front entrance and lobby so you heard every noise of people coming and going.

Even worse, this is an apartment of predominantly elderly residents. Elderly residents that thought it was a great thing to have loud conversations for hours sitting in the lobby starting at 4 am and loudly carrying on continuously until 6 am or so.

In short, in five days we had very interrupted sleep. Another downside is she has no internet service so I was out of touch most of this week except for the occasional visit to a coffee shop to feed my caffeine and wi-fi addictions simultaneously.

Yesterday, we headed over to my aunt and uncle's place for the first night of Passover and had a very nice time catching up with family and meeting our newest cousin - a cute six month old baby name Sophie.

Unfortunately, we received reports that the storm was moving in and so instead of staying another night, we jumped in the car and headed home, hitting a fair bit of the storm at the end of the trip but at least not driving through it all the way, leading to the picture from my recent post of our arrival at the house at 1:51 am this morning along with plenty of fresh global warming.

So yes, I'm rather tired at the moment. Now I'm busy catching up at work for the time I was in Toronto, and now Im having the fun of having a power outage at the office caused by the storm. What fun.

Overall, the Toronto trip was good but the lack of sleep and seeing the wrecked house were definite let-downs to a family gathering.

Passing By, Passing Over

So this weekend and on Monday we were in Toronto visiting family and celebrating Passover.

We had a good time, and the kids got to have fun with their cousins.

We arrived on Saturday and had a nice lunch with tash's mom and then met up with my Dad and that side of the family, including a nice dinner at their house.

On Sunday the kids got to spend the day wioth natasha's mom while the two of us went out with Natasha's sister and her boyfriend. We saw the movie Quartet, which was more poignant than funny and a pretty good movie. It marked about the first adult movie Tash and I had seen in a theater together in about a year. We then went and picked up Tash's mom and the kids and went to Tash's sister's house for a belated 40th Birthday celebration for her.

On Monday, prior to the Seder, not only did the kids get to go bowling but they got introduced to an important skill - permanent data deletion.

My dad and step-mom each had an old laptop with data on them that needed to stay private.

I yanked out the hard drives, and the kids then yanked the data off the drives.

With a hammer and a pick.

They joyfully set about smashing the hard drives to smithereens.

The hard drives having been reduced to fragments and the data thus destroyed, we changed and headed to the Seder.

Abby did a great job doing the 4 questions in Hebrew and the Seder was a lot of fun.

After the Seder we drove home as we both had to work today. Unfortunately on the way home we wound up getting pulled over for a secondary inspection at the border around midnight which was a pain. there were no other cars around so it was just our luck I suppose.

Two sleeping kids, a cold night and an interminable delay. This was not good, especially as we had to wake the kids up, exit the car and wait in the inspection area as they looked through our car. Nothing contraband there of course, so it was a waste of everybody's time. The kids were then placed back in the car and the journey continued without any further events.

Tonight the kids and I had a mini-Seder.

Abby read the 4 Questions again in Hebrew and Leah decided to read the 4 questions in English.

Leah's reading of the 4 Questions were unintentionally hilarious. The 4 questions are:

1.  On all other nights we eat leavened or unleavened bead or matzah, while on this night we eat only unleavened bread matzah. 
2. On all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables and herbs, but on this night we have to eat bitter herbs. 
3.  On all other nights we don't dip our vegetables in salt water, but on this night we dip them twice. 
4. On all other nights we eat while sitting upright or reclining, but on this night we eat reclining.

Leah's rendition gave two of them a slightly different meaning:

1.   On all other nights we eat leaded or unleaded bead matzah, while on this night we eat only unleaded bread matzah. 
2. On all other nights we eat all kinds of vegetables and herbs, but on this night we have to eat bitter herbs.
3.  On all other nights we don't dip our vegetables in salt water, but on this night we dip them twice.
4.  On all other nights we eat while sitting upright or recycling, but on this night we eat recycling.

It was hard to keep a straight face.

For the record, in this house all the bread, and all the food for that matter, is unleaded.

We don't eat recycling either, really we don't.

A very nice yet busy weekend.

Happy Passover 2012!

Happy Passover 2012!

We're celebrating Passover this year by having a small family seder tonight, followed by a larger group seder tomorrow night.

So the table is all prepared, the matzah, wine, grape juice (for the kids), bitter herbs, charoset and prayers and the festive meal await.

Importantly, a group of leading medical researchers have published data indicating that Seder participants should NOT partake of both chopped liver and charoses during the meal, it seems that this combination can lead to Charoses of the Liver.

There is also a new brand of matzah just released for this passover season. Made from whole wheat and fortified with Metamucil. The brand name, of course, is...'Let My People Go.'

Happy Passover!

What if Moses had the Internet?

This is simply awesome:

Happy almost Passover 5771/2011!

Happy Passover!

So a Happy Passover to my readers as the holiday approaches tonight.

Passover follows the standard Jewish holiday format:
1. They (in this case the Egyptians) tried to kill/enslave us
2. God delivered us from them and they failed.
3. Lets eat!

In essence, the entire holiday is focused around a special meal and prayers commemorating the Exodus from Egypt.

One interesting factoid before it begins tonight is the strange ahistoric appellation that the French use in naming Passover - La Pâque Juive.

Translated straight from the French it would read as Jewish Easter.

Methinks not.

Anyone else see the problem with the labelling?

Considering that Passover was celebrated long before Easter, and indeed the tale of Jesus' last supper was a Passover Seder, the French as usual, have it bass-ackwards.

Happy Passover!