This year Rosh Hashana is immediately followed by Shabbos, making it a three day holiday.  Although you’re allowed to cook on Rosh Hashana, my preference is not to because then my entire holiday becomes cooking, setting up for the meal, serving, cleaning up, and cooking some more.  That doesn’t allow for me to feel the spirit of the day, so I try to prepare everything in advance.

Below is a list of the foods we’ll be making for Rosh Hashana.  Some are old standbys, some are new for this year.

• Round challahs
• hummus (chickpea and white bean dip)
• matbucha (spicy cooked tomato dip)
• dill dip
• simanim salad for Rosh Hashana night meals
• pomegranate salad
• red cabbage salad
• cucumber salad
• cabbage salad with peanut butter dressing
• corn salad
• tomato salad
• bisli salad
• Moroccan carrot salad
• apple spoon kugel
• onion kugel
• sweet and sour pineapple beets
• ratatouille
• chef salad (I’m still considering if this should be a main course for the second day meal of Rosh Hashana)
• baked fish
• roast chicken
• baked sweet potato rounds
• oatmeal cookies
• brownies
• two tone honey marble cake
• birthday cake for ds6

When there are so many festive meals, it’s easy to feel weighed down by so much food.  I’ve found by having lots of salads and not so many starchy side dishes that everyone feels comfortably full but not weighed down by the food.

Usually I make a number of dishes for the simanim (symbolic foods), and this year decided to do something different and have a big salad that will incorporate as many of these foods as possible – I think I should be able to get just about everything except the fish in.   This idea has never appealed to me before, but now it does – it feels much simpler and I think everyone will like it just as much as what I’ve previously done.

If there’s a recipe you want to see, please let me know  – things are really busy  so I make no promises but I’ll try to put it up in time for Rosh Hashana!

Avivah