If you’re not familiar with Passover or with Seders, Passover aka Pesach, is a very important, super holy Jewish holiday (super holy as in, the first two and last two days of the holiday are like the Sabbath, during which you do not work) that takes place at home and with a full-on epic crap ton of food. Following the traditional Jewish holiday structure of ‘They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat,’ Passover is a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt told with food. And wine. And more food. And more wine. And more of both.

You might have guessed that this is one of my favorite holidays.

Passover also means that for eight days, those who observe the holiday do not eat leavened bread. You’ll see matzoh in stores in biiiig packages. That’ll last about the week, maybe a little more. Some folks also clean out the house and remove every leavened bread product, then sweep the shelves and kitchen counters with a feather to make sure not one speck of chametz remains.

Passover is also among my favorite holidays because you celebrate at home with family. This will be the first year we’ve hosted a seder, and I’m very excited… and overwhelmed.

So, do you have a favorite recipe that you love during Passover? Would you share? Toda raba!

Mexican Casserole:

Ingredients:

2 lbs hamburger/ground beef

1 can Rotel tomatoes

1 can Pinto beans

1 can chopped/diced green chiles, drained

1 jar queso (or a can of nacho cheese soup)

1 can sliced black olives

1 2-cup bag of mexican cheese or cheddar cheese

4 burrito size tortillas

1. Fry the hamburger thoroughly. While you’re doing that, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

2. Once hamburger is fried, add to it a can of Rotel tomatoes (or just petite diced tomatoes, if you prefer less spicy…but why would you?), 1 can Pinto beans (again, optional), 1 can chopped green chiles, and the jar of queso or can of nacho cheese soup. Heat through.

3. Spray a casserole dish (I used my enamel cast iron heavy oven instead) with Pam. In the bottom, put 1/2 cup of the mixture. It won’t cover it, just spread it around, it’s to keep the first layer of tortilla from sticking to the bottom. So go ahead and put that tortilla down. Now, dividing the mixture into thirds, put 1/3 of mixture down, sprinkle with olives, put down a tortilla and repeat. End with a tortilla on top and cover with cheese and sprinkle last of black olives on top.

4. Bake the casserole, uncovered, for approximately 30 minutes. Turn it on broil for the last few minutes to get the cheese just right. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 to 10 minutes. Slice like a pie and serve. The end.

Can be served with corn bread, a salad, Spanish rice or nothing at all if you’re lazy like me.

So this is the weekly menu listing for this week:

Monday: Whole Chicken in the Slow Cooker.
I already prepped this one, and it’s cooking now so I presume that’s what I’m having for dinner: Slow Cooker Whole Chicken.

Whole chickens were on sale at the grocery store when I placed my order online on Saturday night, so with this recipe, I’ll have chicken for dinner, then I’ll use the leftovers to make chicken soup one night this week.

One note: the recipe says to put the chicken in the slow cooker breast side up, but the pictures are breast side down. I left mine boobs-up but we’ll see what happens. Recipe below for easy printing:

Whole Chicken in the Slow Cooker.

1 broiler/fryer chicken (3.5-4 lbs)
2 Tbsp Paprika
1 1/2 tsp onion powder
2 Tbsp garlic powder or 3 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
Place all of your ingredients in a small bowl and stir in water by the teaspoon until a paste forms. Spray your slow cooker with cooking spray and place the chicken in, breast side up. I hate the look and feel of raw chicken, but trust me- it will be good when it’s done!

Coat the chicken inside and out with the paste. Cover and cook on low 6-7 hours or on high 3.5-4.5 hours. Make sure the thickest part of the thigh registers at 180 degrees.

The rest of the week we have some flexibility. One night, either Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m going to make a big pile of rice in Poseidon, my rice cooker, and make Cashew Chicken. I’ve made this recipe before and holy smoke is it good. You have to stir up the sauce that collects under the chicken as you serve, though – that’s where all the good flavor is.

Cashew Chicken
Everyday Food (September 2009)

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons dry sherry (or cooking wine, or leave out)
2 tsp. minced, peeled, fresh ginger
3 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
coarse salt
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2/3 cup unsalted cashews, toasted
2 green onions, white and green parts separated and thinly sliced

Directions

In a medium bowl, toss chicken with sherry, ginger, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch; season with salt. Refrigerate 30 minutes. In another bowl, combine broth, soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, and 2 teaspoons cornstarch. Set sauce aside.

In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Add half the chicken and cook until golden and cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer chicken to a covered plate. Add 1 teaspoon oil to skillet and cook remaining chicken (reduce heat if chicken is over-browning). Transfer to plate.

To same skillet, add 1 teaspoon oil, garlic, cashews, and green onion whites. Cook, stirring constantly, until garlic begins to soften, about 30 seconds. Whisk sauce and add to skillet along with chicken. Cook until sauce thickens, about 30 seconds. Top with green onion greens and serve with rice or noodles.

We also have some halibut in the freezer, and Hubby is going to make halibut tacos. He owes you a write-up of his guacamole recipe, so I’ll ask him to write this one up, too.

As I mentioned, another night we’ll have the leftover chicken, probably as a soup, and then Friday is family dinner night, and usually when we do some takeout. I’ll be heading to central Jersey for the Liberty States Fiction Writers conference, so I probably won’t cook anything majestic that night.

So, what’s on your menu this week? Where do you like to go recipe hunting?

My mother in law, Charlene, turned 60 this past week. She’s awesome, and she’s been having a shitty few months. She was let go from her job of 9 years, and she’s spent literally her entire life in Jewish camping administration. If you’re Jewish in the US, chances are you went to camp, or all of your friends did. Summer camp is part of my husband’s family as much as all the Jewish holidays, the tv, and the actual people who make up the family itself. I met Hubby in high school, but we got together at a summer camp in West Virginia, and we’ll take our family there for summer Family Camp weekend in August. My mother in law devoted most of her professional life to camp development and administration.

Her signature file, if you received an email from her, was so freaking long I can’t even tell you. Ridiculous. It had the required crap from the not-for-profit she worked for, along with whatever event they were promoting, plus a quote:

“A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove…but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.” -Forest Witcraft

After my mother in law was let go from her job, I think she began to wonder if she’d really made a difference – which is crazy because I can’t count high enough to quantify the number of lives she’s touched in her years in camping. So with the help of my sister in law, I decided to make a video of everyone I could get on tape telling her how much of a difference she made. My sister in law, J, and I used Facebook to reach out to everyone we know – she has, like, 14,567,785 friends on Facebook, I swear – and we set up a Gmail account to collect the video submissions.

We ended up with video from people she knew 20 years ago, people she grew up with, people she worked with, and her family and her grandchildren, all telling her how much of a difference she made in our lives, and how important she is. And it was a LOT of video to mine through.

I used iMovie to edit it, and if you haven’t seen iMovie, it’s idiot proof wonderful. I grabbed clips from the different submissions, edited down the ones that were too long and rambly, used this really cool scrap book transition where one video would end and the screen would zoom out and move to another still on a corkboard layout, zoom in, and the next video would play. It was amazing how fun it was.

It was hugely time consuming – it took me hours to edit together every clip, add music for background and make sure the audio was balanced. My sister in law had problems formatting hers and sending it, so I had to reshoot her using a Flip video camera, and then I had to format to DVD and burn it – which took about half an hour while we had dinner with her on her birthday (nothing like the last minute, right?).

But when we showed her the finished product, 30 minutes of different people from all over the world, from the past 60 years telling her how much she’d made a difference – she cried and laughed and was totally surprised. That was the biggest shock, that we’d managed to keep it a secret. J and I were SURE she’d find out.

I wish I could show you the finished product, but it would take six years to upload and I do not have releases from all of the people who sent me video. It was longer than I liked, and some people rambled, but my mother in law loved it, and I think she got the impression that there were a lot of people all over the world who were changed for the better for having met her.

It wasn’t a high-cost gift, and I didn’t sew or cook it. It cost me time on my laptop (late at night when the Olympics were on) and some time guiding some folks through file transfer procedures, but it was a gift that I think meant the world to Charlene, and helped her realize that she’d definitely made a difference in the lives of many, many people. So if you’re thinking of gift ideas for people, consider the pictures and videos and other people that have been affected positively by the person whom you want to feel special – and make sure to include lots of gratuitous shots of adorable children.

And since I have no links, here are some More Different Other Things to look at:

I Love you More than Twitter greeting cards.

Keep Calm and Tweet On (I so want one of these for my home office).

Tweet: the jewelry (looks like Jello, seriously!)

Chicken bog:

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter
• 1 medium onion
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 1 package Hillshire Farms beef smoked sausage (the sausage that’s one big link, in case you’re not sure! Cut the link in half lengthwise–so it’s laid open, then in half lengthwise again so you’d be cutting each “round” into quarters)
• 3 cups leftover chicken (or turkey) or cooked chicken breast diced
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 4 tsp chicken base
• 8 cups water
• 4 cups minute rice
• fresh ground pepper to taste
• hot sauce (optional)

Directions:

1. Melt butter in large stockpot. While butter is melting, finely chop onions and garlic. Saute until onion is tender.

2. Add diced sausage and chicken and saute for a minute to heat through

3. Add half the water, the chicken base and the cream of mushroom soup, fresh ground pepper and simmer for 15 minutes (to allow sausage/chicken flavor to get into water)

4. Add rest of water, bring to a boil. Now take out about a cup of water and reserve this. You’ll save this for helping to moisten the bog when you reheat leftovers.

5. Add minute rice to boiling liquid, stir, remove from heat and cover with lid. Let sit until liquid is absorbed and rice is cooked.

6. Serve. Each person can optionally sprinkle their bog with hot sauce.

That’s the simple version of bog. My mother-in-law makes a version that involves boiling a whole chicken, but I prefer to roast a chicken and have that for dinner one night, then use the leftovers for bog. Let me know if you have questions!

So in lieu of a weekly menu, instead I’m going to share a few of the places Jane, Sarah and I have plans to eat at.

Sunday: when we get into town it’s lunch at Sapporo. This is a small noodle restaurant that the doctor who did my lasik mentioned. I went when I was there last week and it was wonderful. The Sapporo special is a rather massive bowl of ramen noodles with some lovely vegetables and meat in it. SO good. We’re going to go enjoy the noodles and the gyoza!

Sunday night we’ll be heading to a friend’s apartment where she’s cooking us dinner (nice, no?) Sarah tells me she bought wine, including a sweet Riesling for me (little does she know that I’ll drink regular whites as long as they’re not TOO dry or oaky. Apparently my palate is…improving?)

Monday: I don’t know where Sarah and Jane are having lunch, they have plans without me (I know, shocking, right?) but I plan to have lunch at Ruby Foo’s. They have the best pineapple chicken fried rice.

Monday night: We haven’t chosen a place yet, hmmm, how did we miss that?

Tuesday lunch: No plans for lunch because this is presentation day. Sarah, Jane and I are doing a presentation together in the afternoon. I also have one in the morning and Sarah has a second in the afternoon.

Tuesday dinner: A quiet dinner with some of my favorite people at Il Gattopardo (Italian, yum!)

Tuesday tweetup: If you’re in NYC and you’re interested in publishing, why not head to the Tweetup from 8-11pm at  Hill Country NYC (live band karaoke? The mind shudders!) we’ll be heading out there after dinner. LOVE the tweetups.

Wednesday lunch: I’ll be having lunch near the Harlequin offices, though no restaurant has been chosen yet!

Wednesday dinner: Sarah and I are heading out sans Jane (she made plans with a friend) with some other friends of ours to Fig and Olive

Thursday morning I’ll be eating in the Philly airport. I know, that’s the one you’re most jealous of, right? So…what’s on your menu this week?

The Challenge: The designers had to create a garment for girls from the ages of 6-8.  The budget is $50.00 which is a lot of money for kids clothes because you just don’t need much fabric for a dress.  The most expensive thing I’ve ever made for the tot has been the winter coats because that fabric can be quite expensive, although at cost and at Mood, I would probably pay only a quarter of what I spent on those fabrics.   On the next day, Tim tells them that they have to make a corresponding look for an adult. They will get $100.

The Winner: Seth Aaron was the winner.  I didn’t mind him winning but I didn’t find his children’s clothing to be innovative. There are dozens of patterns for hoodies and even zipped sleeveless hoodies.  Ottobre had one in the Autumn 2004 issue and another in the Autumn 2006 issue.

I thought Jay’s was the most interesting and most high concept.  I had hoped he would win.  I HATED the asymmetrical dress.  It looked horrible, in my opinion.  I would constantly be trying to adjust the dress.

The Loser: Janeane was out. I wasn’t sorry to see her go.  Her garment was uninspired.  It was essentially the same thing as Jay’s look, only low rent.

Additional thoughts:  Apparently, if there is no tits or ass, the designers are stumped. Please, spare me. Like models have any tits or ass.  For the most part, I thought that the designs were completely uninspired and there was nothing new or fashion forward about them.

But pretty little dresses is all that they can think of?

I hated Ben’s kid’s dress. That purple hankerchief look wasn’t in style even 20 years ago.  I felt that the designers had no sense of scale for the kids.  I liked the concept of the yellow dress, but it was too big.  Emilio’s model looked like she was wearing some kind of dress you could buy at any discounter.

I also disliked that they criticized the clothes with the kids standing there. I think its hard for the kids to separate the criticism of the clothes from criticism of them.  I wished that they had just not done that.

Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:
*4 cups water
*2 tsp chicken base (if you don’t have chicken base, substitute 2 cups chicken broth for 2 of the cups of chicken broth)
*1 can cream of celery soup
*1 can cream of chicken soup
*I medium onion finely chopped.
* 1 1/2 cups frozen peas
*1 1/2 cups chopped frozen carrots
*2 lbs cubed chicken (small pieces) (this is also a good recipe for leftover roasted chicken or turkey)
*1 can refrigerated biscuits (don’t buy the butter style, you’ll make your dish greasy). I used a can of the grands, but it doesn’t matter what size the biscuits are, really, just buy a can of biscuits.
*salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
1. Saute the chicken in a minimal amount of oil in a large stockpan. While sauteing, season with desired amount of salt and pepper. Skip this step if you’re using leftover chicken. Or canned chicken.
2. When chicken is nearly done, add finely chopped onions and saute.
3. Once chicken and onions are cooked through, add peas and carrots and saute for a few minutes, just to take the chill off.
4. To the chicken and veggies, add the water, chicken base (or broth), both cans of soup. Bring to a boil.
5. Once the mixture is boiling and well mixed, separate the biscuits. Tear them into small pieces (1 inch pieces) and flatten slightly. I usually take one biscuit, flatten it in my hands, and then tear it into pieces. Throw the pieces into the pot as you tear them. Once all the biscuits are in (don’t worry, it might be a little crowded), mix it up a bit, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Serve. Yum!

You can adapt this recipe by adding finely minced garlic with the onions, using celery or other veggies. I thought it was good kept simple, and my family liked it, but there’s nothing wrong with experimenting!

Most garden centers around me stock similar things: rhododendrons, azaleas, and hydrangeas in 2 colors. And assored annuals. I love hydrangeas and azaleas and rhododendrons – but I want more than the usual plants that are so ubercommon here in northern New Jersey.

According to the National Gardening Association, (their website is awesome!) my USDA zone is 6A. And I’m hoping to stock that garden area with mostly perennials that flower and are not high maintenance diva plants. Deer resistence would be good, as would mutiple colors and sizes of plants. I’m aiming for big and lush and flowering. I don’t think I can do a

vegetable garden in the terrace that easily, as there’s so much tree shade as the summer progresses – and there’s those pesky deer and squirrels and other vegetation-nomming habitants of my yard.

I also need a climbing plant – and I’m thinking climbing roses, though I don’t want to attract too many bees since we also eat and play on the patio.

Dude. Gardens are hard.

Here are some plants I’m looking at – what else do you suggest? What garden plants are your absolute favorites?

I love all the colors that Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) comes in, especially the ones tinged with pink and red.

We had a bleeding heart plant at our old home in Jersey City, and I miss it. I definitely want to get another one. I covet this bright red one called ‘Burning Hearts.’

I definitely want old English roses, the big frilly fragrant ones. Thanks to Sarah Frantz, I have an unhealthy love for the collection at David Austin Roses.

And, here’s one more cool thing: if you’re working with a (very intimidating) blank slate like me, you can play with Garden Puzzle to design your own garden.Warning: SERIOUS ADDICTIVE TIME SUCK AHOY.

Sunday: Today for V-day we had grilled steak, steamed shrimp and Pioneer Woman’s crash potatoes (with dried herbs instead of fresh because my rosemary bush is under several feet of snow).

Monday: leftovers

Tuesday: spaghetti and meatballs (you might notice we have spaghetti a lot. It’s my and Brianna’s favorite meal)

Wednesday: Roast chicken w/bread

Thursday: Chicken bog

Friday: Parent’s Night Out free babysitting at the YMCA. Date night! (rescheduled from last week due to snow. Bleh)

Saturday: I’m leaving this open. It seems like I often don’t do what I plan on Saturdays so I may stop planning for Saturday.

How about you, what’s on your menu?