Tag #119922 - Interview #87379 (Marim Haller)

Mother had separate dishes for Passover, it was stored separately, in the attic. That was the custom. And when Passover approached, she would take the dishes down from the attic, wash them, prepare them, go to the hakham to have the fowl sacrificed, start preparing the food. She recited a prayer, and I believe she used to throw the small morsels of leftover bread into the fire. We didn’t eat bread, flour, or pasta. Everything made from flour was removed from inside the house, a prayer was recited, and we had a room that we didn’t use, that’s where everything was stored, and it was retrieved 8 days later.

Ussually, on Passover she cooked soup and ‘parjoale’ – meatballs with onion and garlic – it depends, she cooked all kinds of dishes. The food on Passover was almost the same as on all other days. Meaning that the difference wasn’t that great. We didn’t eat bread, we ate matzah, keisal [keyzl], latkes. Keisal is a pudding made from eggs and matzah flour, which is cooked in the oven and then sliced. It isn’t sweet. You eat it with meat, if you cooked anything that involved a sauce. People cooked borsch with meatballs. The borsch was made from beet, you prepared it in advance. You placed the beet in a jar and you made borsch for Passover. Water turned sour. You took the beet and left it to macerate in water. And it turned sour. And you used that to make the borsch sour. After boiling the greens and vegetables for the borsch [for the soup], you added that to the mix. And you also used the borsch to prepare the meatballs. Either that or lemon. Lemon was allowed. You gave it a sour taste by using lemon juice.