Food, “family,” fun and fellowship

While the children played in the living room, the six adults sat around the table for the Passover reading from the Haggadah sponsored by Maxwell House.

It’s an old family Haggadah is what I’m trying to say.

Our hosts’ older child read The Four Questions, and someone joked that if we were following it to the letter, we’d probably all be pretty hammered drinking four full glasses of wine.

I stuck to grape juice, myself. It’s really sweet. That and the mango took the edge off the bitter herbs and the horseradish.

“Do you tell her how much you like her soup?” my mother asked me last week.

“Only every year,” I replied.

And then we ate. Our friends not only have people over for Passover and the Jewish holidays, but birthday parties for their two little ones, and there’s always enough food for a medium-size, if not a large army.

As always, the only problem with the chicken matzo ball soup is that there wasn’t a pail of it sitting directly in front of me.

“Do you tell her how much you like her soup?” my mother asked me last week.

“Only every year,” I replied.

There was brisket that fell apart at the touch, two kinds of noodle kugel, potato kugel and about five different kinds of desserts. It was probably a mistake to put the little cakes within arm’s length. I think I ate about eight of them.

What didn’t matter was that only one of us is Jewish.

What did is that, as one of our hosts said, we’re “family.”

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