Hosting the Passover seder

Selective memory can be a beautiful thing.

First-night seder is an involved event -- ritual foods eaten during a prescribed course of blessings, actions, readings and the retelling of the Jews' flight from slavery in Egypt, along with an elegant four-course meal that's followed by more blessings, more readings and a lot of singing.

Not only does the food need to be kosher, but kosher for Passover, meaning nothing with leavening or grain that ferments.

We've hosted first-night seder before and know what a big undertaking it can be, even when your guests are bringing most of the meal.

I also suscribe to the philosophy that you can always fit a few more guests around your table.

So I didn't flinch when our Passover guest list grew to 19. No problem. We already planned to borrow our friends' low-to-the-floor 8-foot by 4-foot gaming table so we could recline during the seder. Factor in our dining room table for guests who couldn't sit on the floor and there would be plenty of room.

But two tables meant two seder plates, two sets of serving dishes and 16 (3 guests didn't show) small plates for the requisite seder foods. By the time our soup course was finished, my dishwasher was full.

The main entree was served buffet-style from the kitchen; dessert from the dining room built-in. Both required 16 more plates, 16 sets of silverware, 16 water glasses, 16 wine or juice glasses, and water pitchers for each table, not to mention the stockpot for matzoh ball soup and other pots and pans used to heat the food our guests brought.

First-night seder equates to a ton of dishes -- three dishwasher loads, four-plus dish drainers full of the delicate or bulky items that don't go in the dishwasher. A day-and-a-half after the festive meal, I finally am done doing dishes.

As I put my recipes and cookbooks away, I found a list of past seder menus. I actually hosted two consecutive seders -- in 2006 and 2007. My selective memory really must have been selective in 2006.

By the way, I'm off now to vacuum matzoh crumbs from the dining room and living room. And there's still that behemoth table and a few platters to return.