seder at the brown's

i know all jewish holidays are celebrating some different aspect of jewish history. but let's be honest, all jewish holidays are about the same thing - they tried to kill us. we survived. let's eat. and yes, i realize that passover doesn't technically start until tonight at sundown. but, i have tickets to christina aguilera tonight so we just had our seder last night. no big deal.

once everyone finally got there we got seated around the table and broke out the haggadahs to get started. luckily we have a current, condensed version - and it's mostly in english! i can only imagine what my mom had to suffer through as a kid - three hour seders all in yiddish. ugh.

so we went around and started reading. it seems like every other page has a prayer about wine. and we all know there's nothing better than uber sweet passover wine. and if you stick to the schedule you finish four cups of wine before the meal is even served. it's like a jewish power hour.

i think my favorite part of the seder is when someone reads off the ten plagues and you put a drop of wine on your plate for each one. i mean you've got all your normal plagues - floods, lice, boils, etc. but the last one gets me every time - death of the firstborn. i mean, really?

and then we came to the first song of the night. it was go down moses. we didn't really know the tune so we just improvised. and it was going pretty well until we hit one of the verses and we didn't know what to doooooooo. so my dad and cousin started rapping it and then one kid starts beat boxing in the background. it was absolutely ridiculous - and i loved every minute of it.

we got through the rest of the service and then it was finally time to eat. hooray! and we started it off right with matzo ball soup. delish! the rest of the meal was delicious (as expected), but i was really holding out for dessert. especially for the flourless chocolate cake i had made. it was quite a process to make - first the cake, then the chocolate glaze, and then i decorated it with giant strawberries. and yes, it was just as delicious as it sounds.

at the end of the night i had to roll myself out of my house - but it was definitely worth it.

and if you haven't heard - we're having a cinco de mayo blowout. you really don't want to miss this one. 5/5 at 5pm.