jeblucas's Journal: Pesach Pesach Pesach

Pesach (that's Passover to ye olde English speakers) is a crazy holiday. Craaaazy. So crazy, the rabbis forbid you to make fun of how crazy other people get about Pesach. You can smirk at yourself, though. We cannot own, benefit, or even see (if we can help it) chometz. Chometz is leavened flour made from these five grains: wheat, oats, barley, rye, and spelt (buckwheat). Because it written in the Torah that we can't screw this up, we are extra super mega duper tnt guns-of-navarone careful to clean the chometz out of the house and sell anything we want to keep and nullify anything we didn't find. What does this entail?

• Boil water over in all the pots we want to use.
• While boiling the water, drop any utensils we want to use into the boiling water as well.
• Don't use anything that has anything plastic on it--even a handle--plastic cannot be de-chometz'd.
• Pour said boiling water over any exposed counter top and the sink.
• Seal the counters, tables, rangetop with aluminum foil.
• Have the stove blowtorched until it's red-hot. (If it's self-cleaning, you can just run a cleaning cycle--twice).
• Wash all the towels, dishrags, etc.
• Wash the floors, search the other rooms of the house for any bits of food--crumbs even!
• Seal any cabinets that have not been cleaned.
• Clean the cars (we ate in there).
• Seal off the dishwasher (plastic inside).

There's more, but this gives you an idea. Also, we aren't very strict--some of our friends won't eat here over the holiday.

Chag Kasher v'Sameach!