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Wednesday 1 April 2015

Things to look forward to

1. Tomorrow, I'm going to bike the Cuckoo Trail. It's a disused railway, so excellent for biking. I've done it before, but now there's a new set of caches along it.

2. Saturday is Seder night. Yes, I'm an atheist, but gastronomically, I'm jewish. Or perhaps I should say, I'm a person of jewishness, because I know people set great store by the exact wording of such statements. We're going to sister.1, and she always makes a great spread - there will be chicken soup with kneidlach, and possibly lockshen too, followed by chopped liver, one of my absolute favourites (ladysolly hates it). And then the table will be filled with Sephardi dishes, because she married a Sephardi. The Sephardis were in Spain until the Spanish got unfriendly, then migrated to various places - my brother-in-law's family went to Asia. So there will be dishes that are a bit curried, and rice, and potatoes, and chicken, and so on and so on.

Yes, I know you're not allowed to drive a car on the Shabbas, but like I said, I'm an atheist.

3. Friday is another Seder night; there's two Seder nights. In Israel, there's one, but elsewhere there's two. Why is this? Because religion. Actually, on the Seder night you're supposed to ask the difficult questions like this, so I'll be putting this one to the assembled minds. We're going to ladysolly's brother.1, and ladysolly.brother.1.wife.1 does a first class chicken soup, I have great hopes of chopped liver again (because my preferences are well known) and this will be followed by a meal of Ashkenazi dishes; the Ashkenazis come from Central and Eastern Europe.

In my experience, no two seders are the same anyway, no two Haggadahs are the same, and every family has their own particular customs.

It's great fun! And you can have a seder even if you aren't a person of jewishness. Just make sure you include chopped liver.

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