three bowls

So I am a little late with following up with the results for the Passover Lemon Cheesecake I made from my friend Sarah's Seder last week.  While it had a lot to compete with...

...I think it turned out pretty well and that people were happy with it.  I think it was the first cheesecake I've ever made, or if I have made one before, I've obviously lost track of it.  The almond/matzo crust was delicious, and the filling was a solidly tasty cheesecake fillilng.  As I mentioned earlier, I doubled the zest and added a splash of lemon extract, and I am glad I did; I don't know if the cake would have tasted discernibly lemon without it.

The table is groaning under the weight of all that dessert, as you can imagine.  In addition to the cheesecake, Sarah's friend Tonya also brought a flourless chocolate cake and a special chocolate-matzo layer cake that is a recipe handed down from her mom.  Sarah also set out a chocolate Seder plate, which was cute, but nowhere as pretty as her real Seder plate.

Our friend and fellow book clubber Robin led the Seder, which was shorter, I gather, than most, but still special.  Much of the group has been celebrating together for several years, and one of their traditions is to have everyone say something that they would like to be free of in the next year.  It was touching to see how honest and open people were, even those, like Sarah's partner's older parents, who were experiencing this for the first time. Answers ran the gamut from the light-hearted (procrastination, a George Bush presidency) to the abstract (imbalance) to the very personal (self-doubt, needless suffering). 

Another book clubber, Shauna, and her fiance Brennan had tracked down a couple of funny Passover props - bags of plagues.  One bag had masks designed to represent each plague (darkness was a black mask, with little slits for the eyes, that was shaped like a cloud blocking a little orange sun peeking out the corner; boils, was, as you might imagine, a plain mask with red and pink polka dots - the first choice of the three-year-old girl in attendance).  The other had gag-type gifts, a squirting frog, a plastic cow with a disturbingly melted face.  It also had two little foam balls that represented hail.  However, we actually didn't need the prop; we happened to have hail that very day.

Driving over to Sarah's in the early part of the day, with the cool weather and happy anticipation of a festive event, it felt like driving to a Thxgiving or Xmas dinner, a feeling I normally don't have the chance to experience in mid-April.  The day was a good reminder of an extra bonus to having friendships with people of different backgrounds, religions, etc: more holidays to celebrate, more new food to try.