4th of Nisan

Passover or Pesach, this year, starts on the night of April 12th to the 20th. I’m going to do it this year. The seder and ‘diet’ during the holiday. Ashkenazi Jews have a more restrictive diet than Sephardi Jews during the holiday. In addition to no leavening (from 5 types of grains: wheat, barley, oats, rye, and spelt), which is chametz, we don’t eat kitniyot. Kitniyot (lit. ‘small things’) are legumes, rice, corn, and other foods considered similar to grains. Even mustard is on the list. I try to keep it as close as I can. There’s a surprising amount of corn products in things.

Seder lit. means ‘order’, it’s a ritual dinner that goes in a certain order. I didn’t do a seder for a couple of years after my fall and cancer diagnosis. I think this is my 3rd year getting back into it. I’ll be the leader at our family one. It’ll just be my parent and I. It’s a bit sadder when it’s just me. (Had that for a couple of years.) We used to go to a friends’ place for the 2nd night. Most people do (or go to) seders on the 1st 2 nights. The hostess had an accident (I don’t remember exactly what happened) and got brain damage from it. So, they haven’t hosted one since. They might have stopped it when Covid came around, too. I kind of miss their seders. There were a lot of people. I got to see their dogs. There was interesting food. I usually was the youngest one, so I had to ‘search’ for the afikoman. Afikoman is a piece of matzo (cracker like unleavened bread) that’s been hidden. The kids have to find it. They usually get a prize of some sort. The best present I got, I think, was an illustrated Hebrew dictionary. (Most of the time it’s like $1 or something small.) The seder can’t end unless everyone eats a piece of the afikoman. It’s also the last thing that’s eaten. I think some strict families don’t sing or listen to music after.

I decided on the actual dinner things for ours. We’ll have the usual hard-boiled eggs and gefilte fish first. I got 2 jars of the fish, which will be nice to have during the week. Then, matzo ball soup. I got 2 jars of this. We’ll probably use all of the 1st jar that night. My parent wanted to make the roasted chicken. The last couple of years we’ve gotten it from one of the markets. It might be even better made at home. I thought having a salad would be a good side. Probably get a spring mix. I can put a few leaves from it on the seder plate. I was hoping to mix in shredded carrots and shredded cabbage. I think Safeway used to have those already prepared. I’m hoping they’ll still have that. Craisins or dried cranberries would be great in the salad, too. I already found a good looking dressing and got it. It’s a garlic vinaigrette. I got quite a collection of desserts. Double dipped chocolate macaroons, almond macaroons, fruit slices (candy), chocolate seder plate (it looks impressive to me. Hopefully it’s in one piece), and Osem's chocolate chip Pesach cake (they make amazing Pesach cakes. I think they crushed this one, sadly). I bought 2 boxes of matzo. Even though I’m the only one that will eat it after the seder, I’m going to use it a lot. Matzo pizzas, matzo with charoset (fruit, nut, and wine mix, which the one I bought is like a jam) on it for a snack, matzo sandwiches (almond butter and charoset, egg salad, and tuna salad), and more. I decided not to try to roast an egg this year for the seder plate. I’ll just put a hard-boiled egg on it. I’m not sure how many hard-boiled eggs I’ll need for sandwiches for the week. Safeway has a couple of brands, and they all have 6 to a bag. Maybe if I want more I can just go back to get more then. We’ll put an orange on the seder plate again. It represents marginalized Jews. Like LGBTQ+ Jews, Jews of color, etc. We’ll have to get parsley for the plate, too. I noticed we have ‘extra hot’ horseradish. We could use that for the plate and the little matzo sandwich we have during the seder part just before dinner. I hope I can handle a tiny piece of it. I’ll get sparkling grape juice for my 4 cups. I don’t drink alcohol. I think I’ll get 2 bottles. I can have the rest during the holiday.

I got 3 bags of Pesach noodles. They didn’t have any at the markets, and they only came in 3s on Amazon. (I got most of the Pesach stuff from there.) I love those noodles. It’ll definitely last longer than the holiday. I’m going to try and find a good pasta sauce to have with it. Kind of hard to find without soy or corn products. I’ll have some cheese with it as well. I’ll use both the sauce and cheese with the matzo pizzas and noodles. I also found a premade roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots boxed meal. They say it can be used for camping. They say they’re kosher for Pesach. I might try more of them in the future, if I like it. I got bbq potato chips. That would be a nice snack. I got an herbal tea sampler. Most teas are kosher year round, but it was on sale in Amazon’s Pesach section. Hopefully it’ll be good. I thought a sampler would be nice. I can try a variety of them. This holiday is one of my faves, but it takes quite a bit of planning.

The main picture on the Jewish calendar is of an old French seder plate. It has the spots for each thing, each one is also in Hebrew and French. The outer part of the plate has all the sections of the seder in both Hebrew and French. That’s kind of cool to see. Most seder plates don’t do that. The other (secular) calendar has someplace in Scotland, I think. It has the Scottish flag. It’s of a sunset around some ruins.

I downloaded my ancestry . com data, and uploaded it to MyTrueAncestry. They supposedly do a deeper dive into how far back they go. My parent did it before me, and it looked interesting. It only took less than 10 minutes. It was free, although they show more if you pay for it. Not sure how accurate it is. A big percentage were Illyrians. I still don’t know much about them after looking them up. I’ll look at the other groups at some point. (A lot of them I don’t know much about.) Another big percentage were the Romans. I’m surprised by this one, but they got around, like the Vikings. I didn’t see any Viking in there, oddly. It had an era circle of what percentage of people were for each era. They also have a map, so you can see where they travelled around in certain eras. My parent also recently tried another DNA thing. Something that sequences your whole genome. I might be able to do that when they have a sale. It takes a while.

Went to Kettlefish for the first time on Saturday. There’s only 3 entrees I can have there: fish and chips, cod tacos, or Caesar salad with cod pieces. I got their cod tacos with coleslaw. The fish was really good. There were way too many things in the tacos, so most of it fell out. Even with eating the fish first, it was still too much. The pico de gallo tasted like it had curry spices. Interesting. The tacos also had too much lettuce. The coleslaw was interesting and good. They also had ice cream. I got a chocolate eclair bar. Reminded me of the strawberry shortcake bars. Just with chocolate. I might try their fish and chips next time.

I ordered quite a bit of meds lately. My primary doc’s ‘team’ also ordered 400 mg gabapentin. They want me to take it once 3 times a day. They think it might help me more than the 300 mg once 3 times a day dose. I had been waiting for my morphine 60 mg pills. I’d run out by Friday morning. (I take it 3 times a day.) I was so happy to get it today. It really cut it close. I also got the gabapentin. It was 90 days worth. I wanted it to be a 30 day one. I ended up with 4 huge full bottles of it. Too much. I barely had space for it and the other meds I got. (There were a few more.) I think the gabapentin was $16, but I wasn’t charged for the others. I thought it’d all be a lot more expensive. Maybe I’ve already hit the deductible or whatever it is.

Today I didn’t miss any of the Spanish sentences on Duolingo. Did 3 lessons. Finished a unit and my Spanish number went up to 62. Hit a milestone for my daily streak, which was 1,250 days. Finished all the quests for today. I’m 5th in the league. 

Someone tried to basically harass me on Shabbat . com. He sent weird messages and tried friending me twice. He seemed to only be there to look for a wife. He made quite a few false assumptions about me. I eventually just blocked him. Oddly, I noticed I haven't used that app for 3 years. I might get back to it. It's kind of like a Facebook for Jews. Including part of it where you can find places to stay and host Shabbat dinners. They got a dating part of it, which I never really used. Most people on there have been nice.

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19th of Adar

Had a fun weekend. Went to a new place called McCloud’s for dinner on Friday. Their menu is huge! There were so many good sounding desserts on their specials menu. We shared fried pickle fries. They come with ranch. They were kind of in a nifty shape. I thought they were pretty good. I got their bbq combo. I chose the brisket, mashed potatoes, and potato salad. It comes with cornbread. The brisket was very fatty, but the rest of it was decent. The sauce was interesting. The mashed potatoes didn’t look very normal. It needed more salt. The potato salad was just ok. Cornbread was just ok. I ate close to half of everything, and had the rest (including pickle fries) for lunch on Sunday. The mashed potatoes were much better after I added a lot more salt at home. Maybe the rest of their entrees/sides will be better. I had their toffee caramel bundt cake. It was amazing! I ended up eating it all.

We went to Burger King on Saturday for lunch. Been a while since I had been there. I got a whopper with cheese without onions with onion rings and a vanilla cream soda. It was great!

After that, we got pedicures. I decided to get those instead of going to the podiatrist just to get my toenails clipped. I got the same ‘package’ as my parent. The signature one. They do a few different massages in addition to the actual pedicure part. They also add in putting on nail polish. I didn’t want the nail polish. I wasn’t sure if it would make my toenails worse. They almost didn’t understand that I didn’t want it. They don’t know very much English. I think I might have it next time. Something sparkly. I guess it’s ok to try and see what it does. They didn’t trim my nails much. That was my main thing. Next time I’ll ask them to trim them shorter. Hopefully they’ll be able to trim both my big toes’ nails. They’re the weird looking ones. They were still pretty short this time, so it was understandable that they didn’t do much with them. The skin on my legs and feet still feels really soft from all that stuff they did. I think I’ll get their basic thing next time. That still has a couple of massages. (And they still apply lotion and such.) Nail polish is included in it, too. I had worn my slippers so I can easily slip in and out of them. They tried helping me put them on afterwards. They were really nice.

We went home so I could get my socks and shoes on. My feet/legs felt naked and cold on the way home. We went to Starbucks for a snack after that. I got an iced lavender cream oatmilk matcha latte and coffee cake. The latte was new, and it had kind of a fun taste. The coffee cake was good, but very crumbly.

Went to my haircut appointment at 4:30pm. My stylist and the receptionist were the only other people in the store. It was a little weird. I got another buzzcut. It feels like she cut it even shorter than usual. I think the 6-week thing worked out more. It wasn’t getting too crazy before the haircut like it had been. The only issue is I had to make an appointment for more than 6 weeks out. It’s going to get funky again. I guess I can wear a hat if it gets bad. I brought up Rosie passing away. She suggested we get another pet. To fill the void, and that many pets need good homes. It’s hard. I don’t think I want to get attached like that to another pet and then deal with their death again. It hurts. She talked about her new chihuahua puppy. I was thinking a while ago about getting a chihuahua. (Long before Rosie passed away.) A nice small dog. Again, I don’t think I want to deal with that again. Unless maybe if I won the lottery and had my own house. (I might get both a dog and cat.) That’s a big maybe, though. Anyways, it looked like a lot of hair was on the floor when she was done. I didn’t think my hair was that long.

My parent made our usual St Patrick’s Day dinner on Sunday. It’s easier to cook like that during the weekend. There were corned beef, potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. They were all boiled together with a little spices. I had the corned beef with a little maple mustard. It was great without it, but it elevated it a little more. It was all great. Shared soda bread for my last snack. Another fave.

This month’s Universal Yums is on Colombia. (Got it on Monday.) I don’t think Treats covered Colombia. It’s pretty new to me that way. Should be interesting to see what emails I’ll get on it from them. So far, there was a recipe for Sancocho Colombiano. Apparently, a huge stew with beef and vegetables. They usually add a sauce on top of it. They might have rice or avocado as sides. Went through the booklet. I can have the 2 recipes in it. I think 1 of them looked really good. Cheese in hot chocolate is apparently a thing. The music playlist wasn’t great. I thought they’d have traditional music. Instead it was pop, rap, and hip-hop. Looks like fun and different snacks this time. There’s one I can’t have. It’s bacon and lime potato chips. My parent said she might have that one.

I’ve tried the cheese rings with cassava powder. They were pretty good, just had a strange aftertaste. Had some of the Chew n Crunch Stix. They weren’t great. Very interesting that it had specks of candy inside. I noticed there was gelatin in it. I don’t know if that’s from pork, beef, fish, or plants. (I can’t have pork products.) The uncertainty scared me and they weren’t good, so I threw the rest out. Had one of the passion fruit flavored lollipops with bubblegum in the center. The candy part was really good. Very flavorful. You could smell it, too. I’m not sure if I’ve had passion fruit before. It looked like it had seeds, but I think they made the candy have bumps and colored them in to make them look like seeds. The gum wasn’t very good. Didn’t last long. It was an experience, though. Today, I had a little bit of the coconut caramel stick candy. It was awful. It also had gelatin. It wasn’t worth having the whole stick. I threw the rest of it out, too. I also had the coffee cake that actually has coffee in it. It was really good. Seemed like it was steamed. It was nice and moist. Had a little strange aftertaste. Not sure what that was. I gave it 3.5 hearts. I gave the coconut caramel sticks 0 hearts. So, today had both the lowest and highest ratings so far. There are lime potato chips from the same brand that did the bacon and lime potato chips. It sounds interesting. I’ve had lime tortilla chips, but not potato chips. There’s also mayo potato chips. To me, that could be good or bad. All depends on how it’s done. There are garlic plantain chips. I’ve tried plantains a couple of times and didn’t like it. Maybe I’ll like it in a different form? There’s a gummy thing. I’ll try a little bit, but it also has gelatin. If it’s good, I might eat more of it. There are lemon cream sandwich cookies, a peanut chocolate bar, and a wafer chocolate bar. Those seem ‘normal’.

Yesterday I had a meatloaf meal from Safeway for dinner. It also had green beans and mashed potatoes. Their meatloaf only has beef, which is great. They use a ketchup-based sauce, which reminds me of what my mom did with her meatloaves. It didn’t have the garlic and herb butter for the green beans/potatoes this time. I like that usually. It still was good. I had a slice of their Biscoff cookie butter cake for my last snack. It’s one of the best cakes they have. Super popular. They didn’t have it for a while. It was the last one. I’m so happy I got to have it. It was amazing! I had Amy’s broccoli cheddar bake for dinner tonight. It’s a frozen meal. One of my faves. I had an oatmeal raisin cookie for dessert. It was pretty tasty. For my last snack, I’ll have cheddar pretzels and either the last of the s’mores chocolate or the beef and cheese sticks. I love the beef and cheese sticks. Another thing I haven’t seen in a while. It might be best to have that then.

I’ve decided to get most of my Passover food from Amazon. They have a good selection. The QFC in Seattle disappointed me last year. They really didn’t have much. They used to be impressive with a huge selection. They actually have a section for it on Amazon. I looked at it last year and it had pretty much everything I needed. Even the jarred charoset and actual choices of cereal. I’ll check it out again soon. The holiday starts the night of April 12th. I have a little while.

I finished my little project of listening through the decades on Spotify. I didn’t find much in the 2010s and 2020s. I added a little over 330 songs to my liked playlist with that. Now I’m listening to my liked playlist on shuffle with their ‘new’ recommendations mixed in. I’ve added quite a bit more that way. I’m still not used to listening to music throughout the day again. It’s another experience. I used to do it all the time, but I stopped it at some point. Probably after my fall 5 years ago and cancer stuff.

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