K for P to the nth degree

Your weighty questions, finally answered: Is quinoa kosher for passover, that crazy crumbly holiday where the jews walk around malnourished and grumpy for 8 days, made crazy by the realization that, despite themselves, they're probably breaking half the obscure rules by accident?

Yes.

Sweet! Now if only it tasted better.

My mother, bless her heart, put on two jam-packed seders: 25 people at the first one, 20 at the second. Since this Passover was the first major holiday to be celebrated in the new apartment, it was necessarily bittersweet. But she made excellent food in army-type quantities and no one spilled anything major on the new white carpet and even when a picture fell off the wall onto a pile of china plates, only one of the plates broke. And even that one was careful to split perfectly down the middle, so it can be repaired. We were blessed.

Still, it is BEYOND time to replace the crazy haggadahs my family's been using for as long as I can remember. It's all "mankind" this and "forefathers" that. The only woman in the whole book is "the barren woman that God makes a happy mother with children -- hallelujah!" It's even the "men" who couldn't wait for bread to rise. Sure, cuz I so believe men were doing all the slaving over a stove. I'm sure there was the occasional BCE Emeril, but in general? Come on.

Worse is the section that precedes the Ten Plagues. As you may know, during the seder, we take ten drops of wine out of our glasses, one for each of the plagues God visited upon the Egyptians, because as great as it was for the Hebrews to be able to escape from slavery, it's not nice to glory in other people's downfall and defeat. In our haggadah, however, this part is totally disingenuous. You can hear the authors rolling their eyes as they say, "Yes, it was THEIR FAULT and THEY ASKED FOR IT but we're SO COOL that we'll feel a tiny bit sorry for them anyway. Except not really. Love, the unspoken authorities. PS - they deserved it!"

On the other hand, I have to admit I love all the dipping. I made the haroset this year, and I threw in craisins. Mmmmm. And we found awesome hardcore horseradish at Whole Foods. It's a very comforting holiday, somehow, overall, and I was glad to be home for it.