Erev Pesach 5773 Report

The chametz has been burned; the haircuts have been given; and the charoset (aka the chumus of Pesach) has been made.

Now the only thing left to do is eat our standard Erev Pesach lunch (hint: Kashla”P potato chips are certain to play a prominent role), set the table for the Seder, and then take naps.

But first, YZG and I want to thank the wonderful Shiputzim kids for their incredible help this past week.

They cleaned, cooked, baked, ran errands, peeled mounds and mounds of potatoes, and mostly (seeing as how we’re talking the week before Pesach and all), washed and dried a never-ending stream of dishes.

Thanks, guys! We love you!

But what makes the Shiputzim kids’ help particularly remarkable and appreciated is that they managed to accomplish so much in spite of the fact that they recently expanded this year’s List of Justifications Perfectly Understandable Reasons For Getting Out of Pesach Preparations.

As always, the list included the annual pre-Pesach youth group outing (i.e. the Masa Pesach, for the Hebraically-oriented amongst you), studying for the bagruyot, and various and sundry yimei iyun (“study days” or day-long seminars – i.e. a chance for the teachers to cram several weeks’ worth of uncovered material into a few hours).

But this year, the talented Shiputzim kids were able to come up with two more creative ways to avoid working legitimate excuses to be elsewhere: sherut leumi and army service…

On a related note, Our Favorite Bat Sherut had the honor of being the first one to use our brand new Pesach electric hand mixer (our old one is now, um, functioning-challenged…) when she whipped up a batch of these yummy cookies:

Non-Gebrochts Chocolate Chip Cookies

Slightly adapted from here.

Ingredients

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar (The original recipe called for 2 cups of white sugar, but next time, we hope to try it this way.)
• 2 envelopes vanilla sugar
• 1 cup canola oil
• 2 eggs
• 400 grams very finely ground almonds
• 1 cup potato starch
• 1 package chocolate chips

Directions

Cream sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla sugar with the oil. Beat in the eggs. Add the almonds and the potato starch and mix well. Add the chocolate chips and mix through.

Put the batter in the freezer for about 10 minutes. Remove from the freezer and form small balls out of the dough. Place the balls on a baking-paper-lined cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until done.

Yield: 72 cookies (The original recipe indicated that it yielded only about 45 cookies, but apparently, we made much smaller cookies.)

!חג כשר ושמח

The entire Our Shiputzim staff wishes our readers a joyous and kosher Pesach.

May we all be privileged to eat in rebuilt Yerushalayim from the zevachim and from the pesachim, speedily and in our days. Amen.