April 7, 2012

Spring Break Bloggy!

Yay! Spring break is here! Except for me... it's just four days... Apparently our school thinks we need to jump right back in to education while other districts have nearly ten days of spring break. Oh well.

So, this weekend is Easter Sunday! I believe from what I know, Easter Sunday is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the Christian belief. He was crucified on a cross on Good Friday and died. That Sunday, people claimed they saw Jesus's soul and he was resurrected. At this point, many believed he was the messiah.

Ironically, I'm Jewish as you all are WELL aware of if you have read my last couple of posts. Easter falls on a day during Passover, a Jewish holiday. Passover is a holiday that comes from a story from Exodus. In Exodus, it tells us how Israelite slaves in Egypt were freed by pharaoh. Have you ever heard the saying, "let my people go"? This is where that saying is derived from. After ten plagues on Egypt, the Israelites were freed by Pharaoh. As the Israelites were being led by Moses out of Egypt, they did not have time to properly bake bread to eat. So, on the go, they carried dough on their back which turned in to unleavened bread. Unleavened bread today is called matzah. Matzot (plural of matzah) is eaten during the week of Passover. Passover lasts for 7-8 days and during those 7-8 days, Jews cannot eat anything that isn't kosher unless matzah is used. NO bread products. Only matzah. So, instead of a nice, PB&J sandwich, we must eat PB$J on hard, crunchy, breakable, flaky unleavened bread. It's like this for a whole week. The point is to show how others suffered. Also, you can't have anything with corn syrup, no chips, no pasta, the list goes on and on.

However, with this holiday, I've found a loophole. Matzah meal is a product you can buy from a store which is basically kosher "flour" that you are allowed to use during Passover. I've figured out by reading the ingredients on the side of the container that matzah meal is just very finely crushed matzot. So, I save our family about $30 every year now by making my own matzah meal for our family to use. With this, we can make nearly anything. In fact, last year, I made kosher brownies for Passover and they were BETTER than regular brownies! Very chocolatey and delicious! So, this loophole has completely changed how our family celebrates Passover. Hopefully, what I am doing is still kosher.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Passover-Brownies/


Here is the recipe for the brownies that we made:

Ingredients
  • 4 eggs
  • 2 cups white sugar
  • 1 cup butter, melted
  • 6 tablespoons matzo meal
  • 1 cup cocoa powder
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
  • 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, melted
  • 1 tablespoon butter, softened
  • 1/8 teaspoon water

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.
  2. In a medium-size mixing bowl, blend eggs, sugar, and butter. Mix in matzo meal, cocoa powder and walnuts (if desired). Transfer batter to prepared baking pan.
  3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes.
  4. In a small mixing bowl, blend chocolate, butter or margarine and water. Spread over cooled brownies.               
  5. Makes 16. Enjoy!


These are really messy.

So my question of the week...

Do you think you could last a week during Passover?

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