Passover pics

As you may have guessed, there aren't many Jews in Normal. The grocery store had some Passover food, although it was crazy expensive (and also went on the shelves and sold out a month before Passover). I thought that I would try to make my own Passover food.

I made my own gefilte fish! The process of making it was kind of nasty--I had to put fish in my food processor and mixer, which seems kind of wrong. But the end result was astonishing! It actually came out looking and tasting like canned gefilte fish, but much better--my gefilte fish was lighter and less soggy. I had hoped that it would be cheaper than canned gefilte fish, but I think that the price came out about even.

I made my own matzoh ball soup, but I did it from a mix, and it pretty much came out just like the canned kind. (Except that I didn't use a large enough pot and my matzoh balls got squeezed into all sorts of dodecagons, icosahedrons and triacontakaidigons.)
I tried to make tzimmes, but I have no ideas whether or not it came out OK--I have never had tzimmes before. I was imagining that it would taste like a Thanksgiving yam and carrot dish with fruit in it, but it did not end up like that at all. It was a slow cooker recipe, and the end result was sweet and savory, but black and slimy. I had a lot left over. I have decided that it is a chutney, and I am going to see if any of the vegetarians in my lab like it. (What a tzimmes over nothing!)
The haroset came out pretty well (It's hard to mess up haroset) and we also had chicken and green beans.

For the seder, we had some great new props sent by Grammy and Grandpa Joe! After years of coveting Catherine's 10 plagues puppets, I have some of my own!

Joseph loved the soft Passover seder set!

We have a lovely glass Passover seder plate that we got at our neighbor's estate sale in CA, but now the kids have their own custom painted (with delicious blue matzoh) seder plate.

Here is video of Joseph asking the Passover questions. I should have given the camera to Danny so that I could answer the questions myself, but I didn't think of it at the time.

Here is a two-part video of the plagues part of the seder, complete with finger puppets!