Seder hosting (notes)

[magid]

I hosted a seder the second night, and learned a number of things.

• If I want to serve salad, it has to be made before starting the seder, even if that means starting a few minutes later; I won't take the time at the meal.
  
• Minimum two trays of any kind of roasted vegetable; I hate running out of food.
  
• The new hot water urn keeps water far hotter than the old one.
  
• The chocolate-covered fruit gel prisms are not nearly as good as the Trader Joe's ones; not worth buying.
  
• Having my parents at the seder does make it more stressful for some reason.
  
• It would be good to have a couple more plain haggadot, but without typos in the English.
  
• No haggadah seems to put the teeth in the wicked son paragraph.
  
• Buy more ground horseradish than I think I'll need.
  
• I'm still feeling my way in balancing the amount of Hebrew and English (or doing things twice, once in each language), especially when it comes to singing some parts, since I tend to have guests with a wide range of backgrounds. I don't have any idea where the right balance point is, either.
  
• I still don't know why most of the songs at the end got appended to the haggada.
  
• Chicken with lemon, black pepper, spinach, mushrooms, and garlic chips is a good thing.
  
• The Moscato di Carmel went over well amongst those who drank wine.
  
• Nana tea is not decaffeinated as I'd thought, being a blend of black and mint teas, rather than just mint.
  
• The hand shmurah matza is a nice contrast to the regular machine matzah, but when only three start out whole, it makes me think I might consider getting machine shmurah for the seder instead.
  
• Far too many haggadot don't include counting the omer, and it's surprising which ones skip it.
  
• Oh, and having a choice of boiled tiny potatoes and/or scallion for karpas is something I want to do again.

Thanks to everyone who came to the seder.

Comments

[arfur]

The new hot water urn keeps water far hotter than the old one.
Yay! New hot water urn!

Chicken with lemon, black pepper, spinach, mushrooms, and garlic chips is a good thing.

Good thing bullets are good, in and of themselves. :-)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Urn: having two days when I'd be having people over finally gave me the impetus to replace the old one. It's an uglier shape, but apparently hotter water, so I suppose it's a decent trade-off :-)

"Good thing bullets" brings weird images to my mind...

[cnoocy]

We had that Moscato at jadelennox's folks' Seder. It was quite tasty.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Cool.
I rarely remember which random bottles of wine I get turned out to be worth repeating intentionally; hopefully this many people liking it will remind me (along with the large leaf on the label :-).

[fj.livejournal.com]

Having my parents at the seder does make it more stressful for some reason.

Shocker.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well...
To be fair, it was a lot less stress than it might've been; the anticipatory stress was worse than the during-the-seder stress...

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

No haggadah seems to put the teeth in the wicked son paragraph.

I'm not getting what you mean by this...want to expand?

[magid.livejournal.com]

In the Hebrew, the wicked son paragraph includes the phrasing "hakhe et shinav", which might be translated "blunt his teeth", or, as my host the first night translated, "hit his teeth" ('cause then he'll listen to what you have to say. Riiiight.). But all the translations I saw this Passover said things like "retort", which is some of the emotional tone, perhaps, but lacks the same color and... teeth!

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Apparently the original Hebrew for the four sons includes, as part of the Wicked Son paragraph, the injunction for you to hit/punch him in the teeth. That sentence wasn't translated in any Hagaddah at the Seder, and we had a lot of different ones.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Jinx! You owe me a non-carbonated beverage!
;-)

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

I admit, the timing was remarkable ;-)

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[magid.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! I was very glad you could come.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

You forgot to mention your little brother is still obnoxious.

The potato and scallion bit was very good.

I'm fond of the parents, but they do seem to want to take over leadership of most any bit from their kids.

Was it really so much better to have me sing the FiveFour questions? Merely curious.

My own suggestion on the Hebrew/English balance: English should be used with the telling of stories, even if some of it is also in Hebrew, because English is the usual language used for conversation and it's supposed to be A Good Thing to discuss the stories. I don't think the English should be used to repeat the brachot, however, unless somebody really doesn't know what it means - and if somebody doesn't know what it means, it's probably best to take a minute to explain it after giving the translation. All my own two cents, of course.

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Knew I forgot to mention something:

I had a good time. Thank you for inviting me (and Tigerlily) over. I'd be honored to come again - providing you can cope with your bratty little brother that is.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good time :-).
If I make another seder, you're welcome to be part of it.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I (deliberately) forgot to mention a haircut.
Not as obnoxious as you'd think :-).

4 questions: yes.

In re brachot: I think I tend to give intros to things rather than explanations after. Somehow that flows better for me, though I forgot a number of things I might've mentioned. Next year...
I think I want to ask someone whose Hebrew is rather non-existant for an opinion on the language balance as well.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Even though the only Hebrew I could pick out was (were?) the names of various people, I enjoyed the only-in-Hebrew parts (though of course I'm not sure how many of those were also done in English). And the singing. I liked the singing.

Thank you!

[magid.livejournal.com]

OK, more singing :-).
And I'll try to make it clearer when the English is translation of the Hebrew just read.

I'm glad you could make it.

[gingicat]

Actually, the Nechama Leibowitz haggadah did have the teeth in.

It was a great seder; I think you're too down on yourself.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Aha! Good to know there were teeth somewhere (well, other than the sets of teeth around the table :-).

I thought the seder went pretty well, actually. But there are things I could improve, and things I should think about in advance rather than winging it, which would make me less stressed during, and therefore able to pay more attention rather than feeling like my brain is fragmented, juggling all the different things it wants to pay attention to at once.