Happy Mazto!

This afternoon, Scott said something to me I can't say I ever expected to hear. Really. Never expected. Absolutely shocking. And those words were "Would you just go watch some Oprah and relax?" He actually requested that I go watch Oprah. Possibly because I was frantically preparing for tonight's seder and doing things like filling the ice bucket three hours before anyone was supposed to show up. Admittedly, it didn't make a whole lot of sense, because the ice probably would have melted before anyone got here.
So we had all this ready before Oprah

And somehow it was relaxing to watch 30 minutes of Oprah, even though I was sure it would stress me out even more...
Holiday dinners are nice, because they are a good excuse to use some of those nice wedding gifts...

We had a great menu, which included homemade gefilte fish, hard boiled egg, Chicken Soup with Matzoh Balls (seen here in progress)

Traditional Haroset

and a yemenite haroset made with figs and dates, and flavored with ginger and cayenne pepper.

For the main course, we had braised lamb shoulder, asparagus and roasted root vegetables. And the dessert consisted of homemade macaroons

and matzo crunch, which is possibly one of the easiest recipes ever, but oh so decadent.
So it was a very nice seder, with a small crowd of six, including us, my mom and Marsha, Sam and my Aunt Angela. And even though the final NCAA game was poorly scheduled to coincide, we're now watching instead of contending with this mess...

Oh, and if Florida wins (and it seems to be looking that way!) I move up to 4th place in the office pool. Fourth place! Sure its out of the money, but certainly good enough for bragging rights. And a nice comeback, I might add, from the start of the tourney!