With Pesah just around the corner, it’s time to share some favorite recipes.

I am including my mom’s Keftes di Prassa, leek patties, and Megina, Passover meat quajado.

What Seder would be complete without Haroset. Here is our family’s favorite, my cousin Sarita’s Haroset.

We have some delicious dessert recipes in our community. Check out our recipes for some of my mom’s best: ashuplados, mustachudos (a nut confection) , masa di vino (wine cookies), and marochinos (almond macaroons).

While you’re cooking, listen to Yehoram Gaon singing Un Cavritico. For the seder, we’ve included some of the Ladino lyrics for songs from our family favorites and one we’ve re-introduced, Mos Abastava,  the Ladino version of ‘Dayanu.’

As with all things Passover…..enjoy the opportunity to be with family and friends. Document your family recipes and traditions, cook together, enjoy the time. With each dish we serve and each traditional song we sing, we recall lovingly those family members who are no longer with us, whose recipes and memories are present at our table, and whose names we mention at various time throughout the evening (and throughout our many family gatherings).

As we retell the Passover story, so too, we retell our family stories. I love the fact that our grown sons “know” and talk about family members, several who passed away years before the boys were born…..but whose life lessons and stories are still very much a part of our family gatherings. Memories live on!

We would love to share some of your family stories with “Bendichas Manos” readers…..please feel free to send them on to us or share them with us on Facebook at Bendichas Manos!  Most important, share them at your seders. This keeps our histories and our stories alive!

Cook up all their favorites.  Enjoy the holiday.  May your hands always be blessed!

~’Bendichas Manos’