Despite my optimistic hope of several days ago that the vegetables I bought would be sufficient for the week of Passover, they weren’t!  I do have some things left, like onions and potatoes, but most of the salad vegetables except for avocado were finished.  Yesterday I went to the vegetable store for yet another order – I’ve spent 50% of my monthly food budget on vegetables in less than two weeks!

Here’s what I bought:

• 3.7 kg zucchini
• 2.7 kg cabbage
• 2.5 kg fennel
• 2 kg red cabbage
• 8 kg cucumbers
• 4 kg kohlrabi
• 8 kg red and orange peppers
• 5 kg Granny Smith apples
• 30 kg carrots
• 24 kg tomatoes

So now I hope that we’ll have enough to get through the rest of Pesach!

Now I’ll share what we’re making, and it will immediately be obvious why we go through so many vegetables.  I’m breaking the list below into main and side dishes, which will all be supplemented with a variety of salads (we usually have a selection of 5 – 7 for each meal).  Here’s what we’ll be having for the next couple of days:

Thursday night dinner:

• chicken soup
• meat stew with carrots, kohlrabi and zucchini (we also made this for seder night)
• mashed potatoes and gravy
• selection of salads

• roast chicken
• cauliflower kugel
• variety of salads

• chicken soup
• roast turkey
• roast vegetables
• roast potatoes
• variety of salads

• chicken and cabbage stew
• vegetable matza kugel
• variety of salads

• pickled radish salad
• Moroccan carrot salad
• beet salad
• tomato mint salad
• carrot and pineapple salad
• cucumber salad

I don’t have enough containers to make in advance all the salads we’ll be having, and some salads are better made fresh, anyway! We’re planning to prepare different salads when we need to.  These will include some of the following:

• Persian tomato cucumber salad and/or Israeli salad
• guacamole (great to spread on matza!)
• pepper olive salad
• cauliflower salad
• fennel orange avocado salad
• tomato avocado salad
• fresh salad
• coleslaw

You may have noticed that we don’t have desserts listed.  Usually I make a lot of kugels, baked goods, and homemade ice cream for Pesach.  This year we discussed it and decided that although it’s nice, it doesn’t enhance our holiday enough to do consume that much sugar. 🙂  We bought some fresh fruit and dried dates; my husband gives the dates as treats to the kids when they answer holiday related questions, and we serve the fruits for dessert on the lunch meals (at night it’s so late that it’s excessive).   It’s worked out nicely so far!

Avivah