Although I’ve hardly had time to think about it, Rosh Hashanah is, in fact, just over a week away. We have a couple of new-ish family traditions (we’re a new-ish family after all); I make my mother’s Jewish apple cake with the apples from the trees in our yard, and we have a picnic at the park on the second day with a few other families. I lead the tot service at our shul, and sometimes that’s as much shul as I attend, and while I’m not complaining about that per se, I can’t say I’ve replaced adult synagogue attendance with anything particularly meaningful.
This year, we are trying something different. Inspired by the book Apples and Pomegranates, published by Kar-Ben, we’re going to have a Rosh Hashanah seder. What’s that? Well, like a Passover seder, it involves ritual foods, some singing, and some story telling. (Thankfully, there’s no matzah or sponge “cake.”)  Instead, the symbolic foods include pomegranates, dates, green beans, pumpkins, leeks and of course, apples and honey. The book includes stories related to the foods, some of which are suitable for my 4 and 6 year old, and some we’ll skip. Although a list of the foods and blessings can be found in most traditional prayer books, I’m happy to have this “haggadah” to help spark our creativity.
Many people include the head of a fish on their rosh hashanah table, but I’m thinking it would spoil my daughters’ appetites. But I am looking for creative recipes using some of the other foods – anyone have any great (and easy) pumpkin bread or leek soup?