Have a Sustainable Passover

I grew up in a religious Jewish family. Every other day, it seemed, was a holiday requiring me to either stay home from school and stare at the ceiling or get dressed up and walk the mile to Temple (in heels, which I hated and now looking back seems like child abuse) to atone for my sins. Depending on the holiday I would find myself starving all day or consuming piles of prune danish.

Passover was different, involving two amazing feasts prepared by my grandmother, each one attended by at least 20 relatives who I saw only annually or at the occasional funeral. It was always fun to see my cousins--especially one who got fatter every year and his skinny brother who was most likely binging and purging, and another who was two years older than I and handsome and who I secretly had a crush on. The older generation was also a hoot, starring nutty Aunt Harriet who, born a spinster, brought me the same gift each year: a bunch of rubber-banded colored pencils she stole from her bookkeeping job at a Brooklyn deli. Uncle Lefty was another oddball who always told the exact same jokes, sometimes in the same evening, and expected you to laugh anew when you hadn't even laughed the first time.

But the true star of the show was the food, the likes of which has never been seen since my grandmother died, and replaced with a trendier, more sustainable Passover seder featuring grass-fed this, organic that and fair-trade the other. Hey, if there's no artery-clogging brisket or matzoh ball soup with fat globules floating on top, I am simply not interested!

Tonight my husband and I--alone now, since all the elders who ran the show are dead--will celebrate the holiday as best we can. Clinging to the past, Mitch wants me to roast a chicken, but I'm pushing for sushi. Either way, in a bow to tradition we will surely drink a lot of red wine, recline sometime during Mitch's endless homily about our ancestors' escape from Egypt, and pray that we won't burn in Hell forever for not selling all our bread for a penny.

To all my Jewish friends: Have a zissen Pesach!