Oy Vey! You call that a Passover?

It was quite a weekend here at chez Schmoopy. Passover and Easter in one big hodge-podge of festivity. On Friday evening, the traditional night of the first Seder, I got home late from work and so made matzah pizza for dinner. Vegan "cheese" for the husband, and dairy for me and SchmoopyBoy. Ancestors, I apologize. Please don't strain something as you turn over in your graves.

Vegetarian matzah pizza

Vegan matzah pizza

I haven't really done Passover for a few years. Putting together a full Seder is a lot of work. I don't have grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins around, and quite frankly it's not worth all the work involved for basically, me. Before SchoopyBoy was born I always found a community Seder to attend with the husband. The thought of dragging a small child to a 3-hour community seder with a bunch of strangers sounds like about as much fun as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, so I've basically been doing not much more than a Passover themed dinner. This year, however, I wanted to do something more, since SchmoopyBoy is at an age where the things we do in the home will become "his".

Covered matzah, parsley, eggs and salt water appear
on traditional seder tables

So I put together a short child-friendly Seder for Saturday. With the help of Uncle Eli (think of a Jewish Dr. Seuss after drinking 4 cups of wine) and a few other online sources like this and this, I put together a mish-mash children's Haggadah. I made fresh vegetable stock and matzaball soup. Parsley and hard boiled eggs for dipping into salt water, charoset, matza in the cover I bought at a Jewish cultural fair a number of years ago, and grape juice in wine glasses and one plastic cup adorned my table. We got through everything in about an hour, including the main course, a Moroccan style eggplant and garbanzo bean dish (garbanzos are kosher for Passover aren't they?).

Then on Sunday we first went to visit our next door neighbors for an egg hunt in the morning. Another egg hunt at my in-law's followed in the afternoon. More toys and candy than any human should be exposed to. But fun, fun, fun for SchmoopyBoy!