What a lovely Pesach holiday it’s been so far! We’ve been blessed to have my mom and all of our married children with us this year – a far cry from last year, when we had the strictest quarantine of the year in place.

Two ingredients for a wonderful holiday are a very nice group of compatible people combined with lots of yummy food! Watching and being part of the interactions of all these people is extremely heartwarming.

As far as the food – it’s always a big project! It seemed like the food shopping before Pesach would never end. Though I bought a lot, I know it will get used up remarkably fast.

I bought a case of onions, seventy+ pounds of potatoes, thirty pounds of carrots, a case of fennel, a case of sweet potatoes, a case of napa cabbage, 1/2 case of kohlrabi, some butternut squash, 25 pounds fresh garlic, loads of cucumber and tomatoes, and lots of clementines and pears for snacking. There were also cases of chicken and meat, and lots of dairy (mostly cheese and cottage cheese), as well as eight trays (30 each) of eggs.

Initially when I wrote out my menu before Pesach, I listed various cakes and kugels that looked appealing. Then I looked at what I had written and considered how much more appreciated a more basic menu would be. That means going heavier on the vegetables and light on the cakes and kugels.

Friday night dinner: soup, roast chicken, carrot fries, potato saute’, fennel-orange salad, kohlrabi tomato salad, chocolate chip cake

Shabbos lunch: salmon, cholent with yaptzug (basically a potato kugel mixture poured on top of boiling cholent and left to cook on the blech), kishke, beet salad (with fresh parsley and garlic), marinated carrot salad, macaroons

Saturday night- Seder night: naturally lots of matza! Charoses. Soup, meat, chicken, potato kugel, marinated kohlrabi carrot salad,

Sunday lunch: roasted garlic, onion dip, tomato cucumber salad, mint napa salad (with fennel, zucchini, kohlrabi and oranges) – I made a huge amount of these two fresh that morning and it was almost all eaten – beet salad, marinated carrot salad, potato kugel, kishke, chicken, marble cake

I noticed something interesting about the salads – the size and shape of the pieces of the vegetables seem to determine how much is eaten. The one salad that really didn’t go over well was the marinated carrots, which I thought was pretty. The carrots were thinly crinkle cut, with a blended olive oil/lemon juice/parsley dressing. It was hardly touched. My daughter said she thought if the pieces were smaller, it would have gone fast. I like to have a variety of shapes and sizes so every salad doesn’t look like a repeat of the next, but in any case I don’t serve all the salads at one meal so that really isn’t an issue.

For chol hamoed I’m loosely planning for two big meals each day – we’ll see if that actually works out! I find that keeping a huge pot of cooked potatoes and a pan of baked sweet potatoes on hand is very helpful.

brunch: fresh fruit, eggs, matza brei, fritatatas, matza lasagna, dairy, fresh salad

main meal: shepherd’s pie, hot dogs with sauteed napa, peppers and onion, vegetable meat loaf, chicken and potatoes, baked fish

I won’t be planning the meals for the end of the holiday until we’re closer to that point. Somehow it feels like too much for me to plan all of that at this point. I’ll see what we’ve eaten in the course of this week and from there, determine what kind of dishes will be most appreciated.

Avivah