Passover

there is an old jewish joke that makes the rounds around the internet...

Short summary of every Jewish Holiday:

"They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat. "

 

unfortunately there is a lot of truth in the "let's eat" part....tonight starts the first major jewish food holiday since i got my band and hit restriction.   i am not too worried about sitting around the table and my food choices.  my plan is to enjoy a bite of every favorite food and i will be ok.   but the preparation for this holiday has me in that psycho-babble reflective mode today...

 

as i previously blogged about i am pretty sure my food addiction and obesity is directly connected to my need for closeness with my family.    i was the one in the family who my grandmother passed down all her traditional sephardic recipes to.   most of my childhood memories of my grandmother are actually in the kitchen.  and now that she has been gone for 12 years i have firmly placed myself as the holiday cook for the family.  in fact, last year when i flew up to new jersey for passover i took sephardic food on the plane with me since i was going straight to the seder from the airport.

 

so...last week my mom called me to ask me what "we" were doing for passover.   because i don't really obsess about what i am eating each day -- not to mention "next week" -- anymore i was kind of caught off guard.  of course, the question was what was i cooking at my house when i would host the seder.  when i told her i was really not thinking about passover this year she laid on the heavy jewish mother guilt.  try growing up with a greek jewish mother  -- she has the market on guilt....but i digress.... so, after we talked she talked to her good friend whose own horrible daughter was going to her mother-in-law's the first night --with the grandchildren to boot!  so we were able to finagle an invite to first night at my mom's friend house.  and i agreed to do second night at my house just for my parents.
 
well...you would think that would have gotten me off the hook from cooking every recipe of my grandmothers.  nope.   i have been asked to bring not one, but two sephardic pies tonight.  one is a spinach and feta pie and the other is an eggplant and feta pie (my favorite).   i told my mom that tomorrow night i am not making a big brisket and the traditional spehardic meat dishes.  usually i do a brisket, a meat/matzo pie, spinach and veal patties and leek and veal patties.   this year at my house i am only doing spinach patties, potato kugel and my grandmother's red rice (sephardim eat rice on passover).   i will also throw out a can of sardines as gefilite fish is not a traditional sephardic food (but a great protein rich and band friendly food -- btw). 
 
the point of this is not to go on and on about sephardic food porn but that i realize that food really is my connection to my family.  it is my "job" in the family.   and as i previously talked about both me and my parents are starting to feel that shift take place and, at least for me, it is very scary.   i talked about this in therapy last week.   one of my tasks this week is to try to find something else that will be our connection.  one of the ideas we talked about is maybe doing a family bowling night or something.  i don't know...bowling versus food...  lol.  i just don't know.
 
the next two days should be interesting as we sit around the table as a family....
 
oh and on another note...obviously god has it in for me this year.  i took today and tomorrow off work.   after the great weather this weekend i got all my prep cooking out of the way on saturday with the hope that i could go lay out by the pool this morning while the princess was at school.  nope.  not only did it rain...we had tornadoes in the area and flooding.   so now i am stuck in the house...lol... not funny.