Happy Passover!

Every year I do look forward to passover. I don't know why. Maybe its the fact that you are suppose to clean out your kitchen for a fresh start. Maybe its the fact that you eat different food. Yes it is harder food-wise because you can't have any leavened bread, no rice or yeast products. So it does make it interesting if you want to go out to dinner or you pretty much have to bring your lunch all week. I have basically spent the past three days cooking so that we have food for the week. Friday I made Seth matzoh almond brittle and I also made chocolate toffee covered matzoh. Saturday I made an apple cake for Passover dinner with the family and I also made Seth's honey sponge cake. Today, Sunday, I made a 14lb turkey, my banana sponge cake that I will be eating for breakfast in the morning, sweet n sour meatballs and I also made a spinach bake side dish. This will hold us over for a few days. I still need to make a sweet potato dish and also a keugel and put the salad together, but I'm spent right now.

 almond brittle

 chocolate toffee matzoh

 apple cake before I cooked it

 all the meatballs.

 banana sponge

spinach bake


Here are some pictures from dinner at Seth's brother's house.

 

Gingerbread House Time

In continuing with the tradition my randfather sent us a gingerbread house. We received one last year and being a novice at building one I didn;t wait long enough for the frosting to harden so the walls kind of started to slide inside the house. This year I got smart and we waited until the frosting had hardened on each part before going onto the next part. i.e. I did the sides first and then when that was hard I put the roof on. And I even went back and reinforced all the seams with extra frosting.

With the house sitting there staring at him in the face Aiden kept asking me when he could decorate his house. I had planned on doing it Sunday, but then he came down with a fever so I didn't think that it was appropriate for him to be "playing" with food when he was not feeling so great. Today he stayed home from daycare and of course when I got home from an interview I had this morning he immediately asked me if he could decorate his house. Other then the temp and a lack of appetite he was doing pretty good so hey, what the heck. He did have fun building it and it came out looking really good. A lot of frosting was eaten in the process as well. 

 sampling the candy before decorating.

 details to the roof

Admiring his work.

Aiden wanted to take his own picture of the house.

 The final product.

25 days of Christmas- days 1 & 2

Since I'm starting a day late there will 2 pictures in this post.

 Day 1- our Santa countdown

Day 2- looking at the tree all lit up.

Fall? Really? Why yes!

Did you go outside this morning? You did!!!! So did I!! And what did you find outside? Of course the sun was out, but what did you say? You found crisp fall air? You found cool fall temps? Yup I found that too!!! Sooo excited for the fall weather to be here and this weekend is only suppose to be in the low 60s. Perfect weather for apple picking. And that also means that we will be opening the windows up more to get that cool fresh air into the house. It also means that this is the beginning of the craziness. The craziness that makes the rest of the year fly by and you look back and wonder, "what just happened? How is it January already?" The next 2 months are already jammed packed for us. This is just a sample

Sept 17- apple picking
Sept 18 Raynham Fair
Sept 24- possible playdate for the kids
Sept 25- birthday brunch for Seth
Sept 30- Rosh Hashanah
Oct 2- two birthday parties
Oct 8- Yom Kippur
Oct 16- 1 probably 2 birthday parties
Oct 29- Halloween Hayride at Smith Farm.

Honestly November and December are looking pretty mellow right now. Which is a good thing, but I am still looking forward to them this year since it's Rebecca's first.