Background: Lila is my best friend from high school. She has a tradition with her dad, Jon, and her younger sister, Sydney, to hand make apple pies for Thanksgiving together. They also have a tradition of making gefilte fish together for Passover in the springtime.

Context: I called Lila over FaceTime because she attends Drexel University in Philadelphia. I recorded our conversation and transcribed it below. She described this gefilte fish tradition in succession to her family’s pie tradition, published under the title “Hanish Family Pie Tradition”.

“So I feel like it’s pretty similar to our apple pie thing for our family. Every year my family hosts the Passover seder. We do all the cooking. It’s been a tradition for as long as I can remember that we make the gefilte fish with my dad. I feel like my dad really values having these little traditions with us that he can count on even as we get older. The apple pies and the gefilte fish. It’s honestly super disgusting and I hate it, but it’s just something we do every year so I’ve learned to deal with it. This one we have friends over for less, because friends don’t often want to rub their different fishes together with their bare hands, you know? There is something satisfying about it in a certain way.. that makes me sound so weird and creepy wow.”

I then asked Lila if she could elaborate on what gefilte fish is. This was her response.

“It’s like a traditional Passover, Jewish food. It’s Ashkenazi, I think. It looks like a matzah ball but it tastes like fishy fish. When we first started I think my dad got the different types of fish. But now he goes to a butcher that gives him the combination of the fish. We only make it for passover. We would NEVER make it any other time of year. That’s just gross and weird. My mom will do most of the other cooking for the seder, but this is the thing that the three of us take care of. It’s always on the first night, never second night, always first night. This tradition originated with my dad, I know he didn’t do this with his family growing up.”