Seder 2017

I started to make my menu, keeping in mind what I have on hand and what was ready to pull in the garden.  Starters are always the same, boiled eggs and gefilte fish.  Then I decided to make matzoh ball soup, making my own stock with the last of the turkey bones in the freezer and using my home grown carrots and celery.

Then I got to the main course, and realized that I'd already planned a whole lot of protein.  Roast anything would get heavy fast.  Did I really dare to make a vegetarian (or even vegan) main course for a dinner party?  I have been to a kosher dairy seder before, and remember being unimpressed because it was all roasted vegetables and potato gratin.  I started thinking of quinoa and roasted veggies, plated in the kitchen, but couldn't come up with an appropriate side.  What would I serve, a baked potato?

And then the light bulb over my head clicked on.  A baked potato bar as the main course!  Like taco night, but on potatoes.  Totally crazy idea, but also really easy to make kosher for Passover.  Omit either meat or dairy and don't serve anything obviously out like beans.  I could easily create a chili around quinoa and veggies.  Since you wouldn't serve chili without sour cream and cheese, that settled it to dairy.  (In my house, separating meat and dairy by courses is the closest we ever get to kosher.)  That made a Greek salad an easy side dish.  Poached pears and ice cream made with my two mature beets finished off the menu.

The potato toppings got a little out of hand.  There were tiny spoons and tongs everywhere.  However, I didn't cut up the avocado because there wasn't enough interest in it.

The potatoes were more filling than I expected.  I had baked up a 5 lb bag so everyone could have two.  With everything else in four courses, no one had the second one.  On the other hand, I don't have to cook for the rest of Passover.

Since I wasn't investing in a meat dish, I sprang for making my own gefilte.  Well, half of my own, and half ground gefilte from Whole Foods.  I bought a whole rainbow trout so I could make fish stock and chopped up the meat to add to the gefilte mix.  I didn't like them as much as the ones I had made entirely on my own, but I was over-extended that week and needed the one shortcut.

Starters:  Boiled Egg, Gefilte Fish

Turkey Matzoh Ball Soup

Main:  Baked Potatoes and Greek Salad

Dessert:  Poached Pears and Beet Ice Cream

Since I didn't want flowers in the house as I recover from bronchitis, my hostess gifts were boxes of matzoh.  So glad I had only bought one box, because now I have the 5-pound case I had tried to avoid buying.