This year in Brooklyn...

So all of this packing has me a bit behind in the blogging, but here's a quick run down of our big seder. On the menu, lots of old favorites - brisket, mini potato knishes, Ariel's famous charoset (which I have to say was at its finest this year), matzoh ball soup with a horseradish pastou (that's a sauce, I didn't know either, until I found the recipe in Food and Wine), roasted asparagus and cauliflower, a big green salad (California style thanks to Nina), and for dessert chocolate covered macaroons and Susan Berson's chocolate chip kosher for Passover chocolate chip pudding cake.

The pudding cake, moist, delicious, SO addictive

Chocolate macaroons; I can never believe how easy these little guys are to make

I was pleased with it all, although there were moments of nerves and anxiety (especially when the cake, which Susan prepares in mile high Denver, took about 30 minutes longer to set than the recipe called for) and when I ran out of ingredients for the brisket sauce and had to run from store to store to find them.

But over all I felt calmer than I had in years past and it was so, so lovely to be with the whole gang as we didn't have a Brooklyn seder last year and with the move to California, next year is bound to be a little different. So, at the risk, of sounding sentimental, it was a very special night. But then there was the clean up -

Only a fraction of the aftermath