My kids were craving something sweet. Normally, we always have fresh, baked goodies in the house. With Passover, we eliminate from our diet, anything made from the five major grains (wheat, rye, barley, oats and spelt). Some traditional Jews avoid rice, corn, peanuts and legumes. All of these items have been used to make bread. I am not super strict (I have let the kids have chips and a family member gave them some gummy bears which have corn syrup) and I don’t clean out my house of all grains nor do I change out my dishes.
Personally, I want my children to have an understanding of what the holiday means and have some sort of discipline. With that said, they are missing the baked treats that normally adorn our home. I haven’t made this particular recipe in a few years and felt that this was the perfect solution to their sweet craving. Sometimes I toast some pecans or almonds and sprinkle them on the top, but this time I opted to chop up some of the homemde candied orange peels I had in the freezer. The scent and the taste of the orange made all the difference in the world.
I hate matzoh. There, I've said it. I may be Jewish but matzoh sure feels like penance to me. It was bad enough my ancestors had to wander through the desert for forty years, but adding insult to injury, they had to eat crumbly crackers with all the flavor of cardboard. I know there are some people who claim to love eating matzoh, but frankly, I don't buy it.
Passover is essentially a gluten free holiday. With the absence of wheat, rye, barley, spelt, and oats for 8 nights, creates limited choices. Protein and veggies are easy. It’s the carbs, the desserts, actually the stuff that most of us crave, thus find satisfying become absent. What I have found in creating a gluten free household is that mealtime as well as snack time is every bit as tasty, if not tastier than how we previously ate.
It probably never would have happened had it not been for the fact that we were trapped in Studio 8H for camera blocking for hours on end which was business as usual. A group of us were sitting around the Green Room, which was next to Lorne’s office on the 9th floor overlooking the studio stage.
It’s tradition that you create a Seder meal the first two nights of Passover. Like most holiday’s, Passover is a time to gather with family, honor our heritage and traditional foods, and show gratitude to those that sacrificed before us. In the past, Passover was the holiday dreaded by my boys. Giving up foods, for one week, was almost as bad as shutting off the satellite for two weeks (yes, I really did that). Since giving up gluten, Passover is much less of a challenge than it has been in years past.