Category Archives: Pesach

Shop early to reduce the financial pressure of the holidays

frugal strategies, homemaking, Pesach

This is an expensive time in the Jewish calendar, with Purim being followed soon after by Pesach.

I’ve wanted to write on this for a while and realize I’m a bit tardy in sharing thoughts on navigating this, but hopefully you can still utilize some aspect of the strategies I’m sharing.

When all of the expenses pile up at once, it can be overwhelming. For the week of Pesach, we usually spend 5000 shekels on food – an amount that’s close to our usual monthly total. Then there are the clothing related expenses and that adds several thousands more. Adding in nine or ten thousand shekels of expenses is quite a bit to swallow in one month.

So we don’t.

I space out major purchases so it doesn’t feel overwhelming to pay for everything within a two or three week period.

I wanted to buy the four older boys (14, 16, 17, 21) new suits, and new hats for three of them. That’s a nice chunk of change to spend at once, but I made my purchases before Purim. There were several benefits to doing this: 1) the money for this was spent six weeks before Pesach and not on top of all the other Pesach expenses.

2) I don’t like shopping or vacationing or driving in crowds. That’s not to say I can’t tolerate it, but I’d rather have more peace and quiet in my life, and doing as much as I can do off-season adds to my serenity. In two weeks, every yeshiva bochur in the country will have vacation and will be Pesach suit shopping, together with his younger brothers and father – can you guess what the clothing stores are going to be like?

By shopping early, we had the store and staff to ourselves, with plenty of personal attention and assistance. It’s so much more relaxing and enjoyable to shop like this, rather than having to work hard to get the attention of someone who many other customers simultaneously want help from.

3) I really appreciate getting things that can be done ahead of time taken care of. My life is really full – whose isn’t? – and I would be fooling myself to push off tasks while thinking wishfully that it will be easier at a later time. It’s never easier later. There’s just as much to do later on, plus all the things that were pushed off! This is one thing that has been critical to me staying on top of all that I need to do – I try to minimize procrastination (although dealing with paperwork for Israeli bureaucracy is my weakness). There’s enough to do that can’t be scheduled in advance, so why leave this to a time when there’s so much to do?

So the clothing purchases were all finished by the beginning of March.

Now about food shopping. For our family, our biggest expenses are matza and meat. When I’ve gone to the store in recent weeks, I’ve been dismayed to see that the freezer section is very thin and the prices are very high – to me, shockingly high.

Since I buy meat by the case, I don’t need to shop at the supermarket more than once every four to six weeks. The rise in prices caught me off guard because when I last bought a case of meat two or three months ago, everything was normal. Every section in the meat freezers were full and if the sales weren’t amazing, they were nonetheless regular and the prices were fairly steady.

My infrequent shopping trips meant I didn’t see the meat slowing emptying out and the prices going up. I’ve gone every week for the last three or four weeks, and every week looks worse than the week before. I asked the person in charge of the meat section what is going on, and he said that there’s a supply issue. I asked if they expect the weekly orders to fill the gap and they said they’re making their usual orders but many items aren’t coming in. They’re hoping that some ships will come in with more supplies.

That wasn’t reassuring for me, particularly not with Pesach so close on the horizon. Even when there aren’t supply issues, prices go up for Pesach. None of this is a surprise and what’s good about that is you can plan around it. It really makes a difference to think ahead and plan ahead.

To mediate the effect of the high prices I utilize a strategy that I’ve written about in the past: stock up when the items you want are on sale. I buy my meat ahead of time when there are still bargains to be found in the meat sections; the closer it gets to the holiday, the fewer good buys there are.

I haven’t been able to buy the cuts I prefer for quite a long time, so three weeks ago I decided to buy twenty kilos of ground meat since there was plenty of that. When I went back the next week, it was yet another empty space in the freezer section with everything cleaned out – the woman working there remembered that I had bought a lot and told me how smart it was to do that.

The next week they had beef tongue at a thirty percent discount, though it wasn’t marked as being on sale – I only knew because I directly asked the person in charge of the meat section. While I usually buy a small quantity of tongue, this time I bought a much larger amount. (I used to buy brisket (#3) and chuck (#10) because they were the most affordable but several months ago I discovered flanken (#9) when it was on sale for the same price as brisket. Flanken is now my absolute favorite because it’s so much fattier than brisket; animal fat is not only delicious, but very important for body and brain function and is even beneficial for your skin!)

It’s not too late to spread out your expenses even though Pesach is just a month away. Think about what your anticipated Pesach expenses are. Are there items you can buy now? I don’t buy groceries in advance because I prefer to have my home clean for Pesach before bringing in food items (other than meat), but maybe getting your Pesach staples now would work for you. What about housewares? Do you need another pot or set of silverware? (I bought two new sets of silverware for Pesach a couple of months ago when they were on sale and put them in my Pesach cabinet.) Go ahead and do some early shopping!

How do you keep your Pesach spending from becoming overwhelming? I’d love to see your tips!

Avivah

Pesach menu 2021

menu plans, Pesach

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

Letting go of things that hold us back from who we’re meant to be..and what we’re changing in our home

homeschooling, parenting, Pesach

It’s so easy to get busy, busy, busy with all of the physical preparations for Pesach – the cooking and cleaning and cooking and cleaning and yet more cooking and cleaning…that we often don’t have time and energy left to consider the deeper messages of this holiday. The physical act of getting rid of the chametz (leavened foods) in our homes is intended to be a reflection of releasing the spiritual and emotional ‘chametz’ – those unwanted activities or attitudes in our lives that are holding us back from developing ourselves fully.

The Pesach seder is an incredibly powerful spiritual time when we create the space to acknowledge what holds us back, who we have the potential to be, and being willing to release whatever it is that we’re holding onto that is keeping us from being that person.   I’ve told you already that part of my preparations for the seder are taking a long nap erev Pesach; another thing is to take the time to contemplate before the seder

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I recently finished reading Hatchet together with our boys, the fictional story of a teen who survives a plane crash and is left to alone in the Canadian wilderness. Slowly and with great effort Brian learns to survive- to make a shelter, create a fire and find food.

Almost two months after the crash, he is able to retrieve the survival pack from the plane. In it he finds lots of items that will make his survival much easier – including a gun and matches. Previously he had to learn to make a fire using natural materials and had to understand animal habits in order to hunt them.  After taking out each of these two items, he immediately felt different, removed from the world he had worked so hard to understand in order to survive – and he wasn’t sure he liked how that difference made him feel.

I thought of Brian when I read this article,  in which the advent of the smartphone is compared to the development of the phonetic alphabet or the newspaper in its momentousness. “I don’t think people realize how radically different it is to be a human being with a phone in your pocket,” Dugoni said.

Kind of like how Brian felt different with the tools of civilization in his hand, tools that served to separate him from the level of consciousness he had developed without them.

There is an increasing awareness of the ways that the internet and more specifically, smartphones are changing our lives as a society. I’m not referencing this from a religious perspective, but a place of concern about what these changes mean for the emotional and social development of individuals, families and our entire culture.  (Here’s a worthwhile read sharing a number of thought-provoking points: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?)

I don’t have a smartphone – but my internet usage has often been something I’ve felt uncomfortable with.  It’s convenient and there are definitely pluses – a huge one for me has been the ability to connect with many people irrespective of distance. However, ironically, though I joined Facebook since it was suggested as a way to reach more people – and yet as a direct result of being on social media, my time spent writing  dropped significantly! There are a few reasons for that – one is that it’s much easier to be a passive consumer of someone else’s sound bites than to take the time and effort to compose my own thoughts.

But despite my awareness that my online use isn’t always beneficial to me, it’s so compelling that often-  very often – I continue browsing longer than serves a productive purpose. It’s not surprising and I’m not unusual in that regard – it’s a medium that was developed to be addictive, to create the desire for just a little more and a little more, to just keep scrolling down just one more time….

I’m not talking about viewing things that are inappropriate or offensive – even with wholesome internet use like mine, one’s time can easily slip away without being fully aware of it. And I have to admit that my online activity displaces time that could be spent on other things, things that would be of more benefit to me and those around me.

So I’ve had to ask myself some hard questions, about who I want to be, what I want my family to look like, and is my online time aligned with that? My husband and I have been discussing this in recent weeks, and here are some changes we’re in the process of implementing.

First of all, my husband (who was given a smartphone by his employer over a year ago) decided to buy a simple cell phone and stopped using his smartphone. (It’s relevant to note that he was judicious in his use of his phone, consistently turning it off for hours every day. ) It took only one day for him to feel to express how freeing it has been to not have the smartphone in his pocket – it has a real presence.

Our family screen time policy is conservative by most accounts – our kids don’t independently use the internet, and when they do they do use the internet, the main thing that they do is listen to classical or frum music or audiobooks (borrowed from the US library we are still members of).  Sometimes I will show them short clips that I think will be of interest to them – sometimes something cute or touching, sometimes something educational. Is that so bad? No, it’s not.

But when I asked myself, ‘do I want my children to associate computer use with being the central source of entertainment?’, I felt uncomfortable.

I want my children to have time and space to connect with themselves, with others, to kick around a ball, get lots of fresh air and outdoor time. I don’t want them inside holed up around a screen, even if they’re listening to something of educational value that is enriching in some ways.

While I’d love to eliminate the internet from my home and have seriously considered it a number of times (I would have it in my office, which is outside my home), since I use an online program that is an important language support for ds5, I can’t get rid of it entirely. However, we’ve made a move toward dramatically reducing screen time for our kids. Their computer time increased in recent months when I was busy planning two weddings back to back, and they weren’t excited about our decision to cut their online time.

However, we didn’t just say no and take it away without any replacement of some sort. Ds12 and ds10 both got mp3s, which have been loaded with lots of Torah stories and music. It’s been especially nice to listen to these stories together – I love how they are filling their minds with valuable concepts and information at the same time they’re having fun!

And now for me. Sigh. I’m the most challenged in this regard. I try to keep the computer turned off during the day, because once it’s on, it’s easy for me to browse online. Then when I go online – usually once every day or two, I try to have an idea of what I want to accomplish and to have a time limit. Like I said, I’m trying! I can’t say that I just stopped cold turkey and it was easy. It’s not easy at all, but recognizing this is a habit that isn’t serving me in living my life as fully as I’d like makes it easier to move toward something better.

So far, I’m getting more sleep (well, usually – I have to admit that I’m writing this at 3 am after being up late cooking for the seder!), I’ve read more books, my kitchen is cleaner and when my kids speak to me, I am much less likely to ask them to repeat themselves after not hearing them fully the first time because my mind was somewhere else. 🙂

It’s a process. It’s not about perfection. I’m doing what I can to move in the direction I’d like to go, and there will be missteps and sometimes steps backward, but hopefully we can continue moving forward overall!

So that’s a bit about some of my spiritual chametz, something that has been constricting and limiting, and now we’re trying to root it out and release it!

Avivah

Getting into the Pesach spirit

homemaking, Pesach

A neighbor knocked at my door a few days ago to offer us a food that isn’t kosher for Pesach, explaining that they had turned over their kitchen for Pesach (over a full week before the holiday begins). Hearing this, my younger kids were alarmed – “What?! Already?” And I knew they were wondering, ‘how can they be finished when we’ve hardly gotten started?’

Every year we have this issue of someone in our family wondering why we’re not getting stressed out. After all, everywhere you turn are people rushing to and fro, with a sense of purposeful energy gushing as they turn their homes upside down and then right side out again!

I don’t do that. I used to think something was wrong with me, and wondered what everyone else was doing that I wasn’t doing. Finally I realized that I wasn’t neglecting any important preparations; while there are plenty of people who do much more spring cleaning than I do, I actually do a good bit of that as well. It’s just that I don’t get too worked up about it.

I try to be relaxed when preparing for Pesach, as I don’t want the preparations to overshadow the spirit of the holiday for me or for my family members.

After the two weddings back to back this year, I’ve been really tired. And as a result I thought I wasn’t very effective in getting the kids at home to get involved in Pesach preparations. It takes head space to assign tasks, and I just didn’t want to think about it. Finally I sat down to make a list of what needed to be done so that the boys can choose jobs they want to do, and I realized there really isn’t that much left to do! (The boys have even found time for some nice extras, like painting the living room/dining room area, in addition to doing their bedrooms and helping with the various tasks I’ve asked them about.)

So why am I feeling like I haven’t done anything for Pesach yet?? I realized that for me, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything for Pesach until I turn over the kitchen.

Pesach begins Friday night, so we’ll do the kitchen on Weds. That will give me time to shop and get all the laundry done without pressure, and on Thursday and Friday I can do the cooking. Plenty of time to get ready, and most importantly, to take a nap on Friday so that everyone (including me!) is awake and able to enjoy the seder.

The moms in my current parenting workshop asked me for my tips for the seder night, and my most important one is: be rested. You can make a simpler menu, you can do less spring cleaning, but the most important part of Pesach is the seder and everyone should be able to enjoy it!

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This year I wanted to reach out to single women who might appreciate an invitation for seder night and posted on our community Facebook group to let them know they could be in touch with me. So far I got rainchecks for next year though none for this year, but as I told a friend, even if the only thing posting my offer accomplished was that someone might feel cared about even if she didn’t join us, that’s also worthwhile.

She responded that she felt my offer did more than that – she said that it made her consider who might she know that could be in need of a place and reach out to them, and she thinks others had the same response. If that’s true, I’m happy to be part of the cycle of making our community a more connected place!

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Last night someone knocked on our door in need of financial assistance. After giving her some money, I invited her in for a drink and something to eat. I asked her if she had children, and when she responded that she did, I asked if I could send some cake for them. (I thought it might be burdensome for her to have to carry it the rest of the evening until she got home.)

Lest you think I always happen to have fresh cakes available to give away on the spur of the moment, the answer is not at all! We baked a cake to send to someone I thought would appreciate it, but then my kids were sick and no one was able to deliver it….

I thought it was a shame for it to go to waste, but Hashem clearly had a different plan than mine for who would benefit- and sent that person right to my door!

I packed up the cake and chatted with this woman a bit. I shared with her that we’ve also been through very difficult financial periods and I know how hard it can be.

She was so appreciative- yes, for the money and cake – but it seemed that the bit of conversation and warm wishes and hug on her way out meant even more. It is so difficult to maintain a positive sense of yourself when you’re struggling financially and need to ask for help, and it means a lot to know that you’re still viewed as a valuable human being.

I read recently that it’s been documented that doing mitzvos shifts your aura, and I felt that last night. I had such a warm feeling when she left. We think we’re doing those in need a favor by helping them, but I really felt that I had been the one who was helped by being able to give to someone else.

And that was a very nice way to get into the holiday spirit.

Avivah

Easy as 1-2-3 Macaroons

Pesach, recipes

This is a super easy and really yummy recipe for coconut macaroons that we’re all enjoying this year. It’s moist and I think it tastes pretty close to the store-bought macaroons that I grew up with in the US (think Maneshewitz brand).   It has just four ingredients and doesn’t require beating any egg whites.

Easy As 1-2-3 Macaroons

  • 1 c. sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 c. coconut
  • 1 pkg vanilla sugar (can leave this out if you don’t have it)

Mix all ingredients thoroughly.  Form into balls and bake on an ungreased pan at 350 degrees until the tops are just hardly browned.  Take out of oven and let cool to solidify.

coconut macaroons

For our family I quadruple this recipe to make one batch.  It’s a good thing I bought a 50 lb bag of shredded coconut before Pesach because these are so good, so easy and thanks to being gluten free, something all the kids can enjoy – we’ve made a bunch!

Enjoy!

Avivah

Staying centered in the midst of my pre-Pesach baking fiasco

personal development, Pesach

My goal for the late afternoon today was to get a significant chunk of the Pesach cooking and baking done.  But sometimes, you can do your best and things just don’t seem to cooperate!

I started with a new marble cake recipe.  I cooked up a chocolate syrup to use for the marbling, made the entire cake and put it in the oven.  I thought it looked like a small recipe.  Maybe it would rise once it was baking? I wondered.  Well, on to the brownies.

As I made the brownies, I noticed the package of potato starch was still closed. I looked around, knowing I had just used it for the marble cake. Oh, no, it seems I must have forgotten that. That’s why the recipe looked so small.  I pulled the pan out of the oven (fortunately I hadn’t yet started to bake it), mixed in the potato starch and then my marble cake became a pale chocolate cake.  But it will still taste good, right?

I finished mixing the brownies and after pouring it into the baking pan, asked ds17 to taste it just to make sure it was okay and jokingly said, “Just to make sure I didn’t forget the sugar or something!”  He tasted it and said, “It needs more sugar”.  No, that’s not what he was supposed to say!

I looked at the recipe, and then saw that when I copied it, I didn’t write in the sugar!  Instead of writing 1 3/4 c. cup sugar, 3/4 c. potato starch, I wrote – 1 3/4 c. potato starch.  Yes, I followed the recipe perfectly but the recipe was imperfectly written so it didn’t matter!

I was able to add the missing sugar but had already added more than double the amount of potato starch.  That didn’t bode well for a good consistency, but hopefully it would still taste good.

Next I put a large pan of coconut macaroons in the oven – it was a new recipe that I slightly adapted, much easier than ones that I’ve made in the past and they have a really nice taste and moistness.  I’ll try to post it for you before Pesach begins.

Then the power blew.  Months ago when time this happened it was because there was a malfunction with the stove thermostat.  But we had the malfunctioning part replaced so why was it happening now?  Then the power went back on and the stove did, too, so I was reassured that there was nothing to worry about.

I took out the perfectly browned macaroons and put in a large pan of Pesach granola. Right after that we started bedikas chametz (search for leavened bread), which is done the night before Pesach.  Ds6, ds8 and ds10 had a great time hiding the well-wrapped pieces of chametz with the supervision of an older sibling – this time ds22.

Dh is great at making mitzvos enjoyable for the kids and he really gets them into it.  They were laughing and giving him clues (“warmer, warmer, no colder – very cold”) when he got close to where they hid the pieces for him to find.  I went to stir the granola so it wouldn’t burn but it didn’t seem to be cooking very quickly.  After another couple of times when I checked it, I started to think it wasn’t cooking at all.  And then I noticed that the oven was just warm and the delicious smells that had been emanating from my oven were no longer present.

Well.  My oven wasn’t working and I still had the bulk of my cooking to do!  Ds17 said, ‘Isn’t this a big problem for you right now?  Why aren’t you worried?”  I told him not to think that my lack of emotional reaction was because I wasn’t going to do something about it.  I would, when we finished bedikas chametz, but we could take care of it without getting uptight about it.

Even if you put effort into personal development, it’s hard to be aware of how you’ve grown since real change takes place slowly and over a long period of time.  When ds made this comment, my lack of anxiety about the broken stove in the middle of my baking marathon juxtaposed with the comparison to how I would have reacted to this years ago.  That flash of clarity as to how far I’ve come was really a gift to me.

We finished bedikas chametz and dh called the electrician who had come in the past.  It’s so nice when you have someone competent and reliable and responsible who you already have a relationship with and trust, who can help you out in a situation like this!

I was anticipating the oven being speedily repaired – maybe he would even come within an hour or so!

Um, not quite. Actually, he notified us that he isn’t working anymore before Pesach.  No, not for anyone.  No, not even for us.  🙂  And he’s not working until after Pesach.  Dh asked him if he knew electricians who would be working.  No, he didn’t.  That definitely changes my plans for Pesach baking!

It was right after this I received my delivery of 20 dozen eggs.   Usually I use half of that for a week but because of my plans to do a lot of Pesach baking, I didn’t want to run short.  But by the time they arrived, I already had to adjust my plans for what I would be making.  Good thing my family likes eggs!

I was so grateful to have made what I did before my oven broke:

  • The marble-cake- turned- chocolate cake turned out great.
  • Rather than being dry and overly dense due to my mistake with the potato starch, the brownies were gooey – probably because the heating element blew before they were completely finished baking.  I think once they cool off and set they’ll be perfect but if they’re still loose, we’ll freeze them and serve them as a frozen dessert.
  • The macaroons baked completely and well.
  • The granola was easily completed by toasting it in a frying pan.

Since I’m now ovenless, I’m going to be doing the rest of my Pesach cooking on my stovetop this year.  This week I invested in several new pots which I bought for a marvelously discounted price, to supplement the two Pesach pots that I had.  I already felt very abundant about this addition to my Pesach kitchen, but how amazingly timely and helpful it is that with the help of these pots I’ll now be able to more easily compensate for the lack of an oven!

thats-ok

Often life doesn’t go according to my plan (and I bet often it doesn’t go according to yours, either!), but when I adjust myself to life instead of fighting it or fuming about why things don’t go my way, life is so much more enjoyable.

Happy Pesach to you all!

Avivah

 

 

Pesach is coming – are you taking care of yourself?

homemaking, parenting, Pesach

As soon as Purim ended, there was a palpable sense in the air that Pesach was on its way.  Going into a major supermarket just a few days later, one could already sense the atmosphere shift and as Pesach gets closer, you can feel the tension and stress and anxiety building.

A couple of weeks ago I co-led a workshop on how to go into Pesach without stressing yourself out.  The point about planning ahead won’t be of much value now, a few days before Pesach. But the other ideas are still applicable.

1) Perspective – what does Pesach mean to you? What kind of atmosphere do you want to have in your house? A person can get so busy doing the preparatory work that they don’t even think about why they’re doing it all!

My goal is to go into Pesach calmly and pleasantly. I want my family members to have positive associations for this time of year.  I want to be awake and fully able to enjoy the seder along with every other person in my family. I want to remember the spiritual messages of this time of year and feel inspired and connected to myself and to G-d.

2) Know what is chometz – Differentiate between spring cleaning and Pesach cleaning. Dirt is not chometz.  I’ll repeat that. Dirt is not chometz.  Here in Israel it’s beautiful to see families everywhere getting ready for Pesach but seeing others doing things you don’t do can easily lead you to feel inadequate if you’re not doing the same things on the same schedule.  Remember your goals and choose what to do accordingly.

3) Sleep – don’t think that you’re getting ahead by sleeping less to get more cleaning done.  No, no, no.  At the most potentially stressful times it’s more important than ever to get enough sleep. Everything in life looks better and more manageable with adequate sleep.  When I start to feel negative, it’s almost always related to being overtired and I need to get myself into bed, pronto!

I’m trying to drum this into my older kids in their late teens and early twenties, who are all very busy right now with work and school.  I remind them that when they’re rested they can get much more done the next day.  Do they take my advice?  Well, they tell me theoretically they agree with it! 🙂  And they also tell me they appreciate my encouragement to take it easy, do less and sleep more.

It’s so much easier to be a nice person to live with when you’re rested.  My priority for this week is to get to sleep at a regular time every day, take a nap daily, and to eat well.  I schedule it into my planner at the beginning of each day and make these things a priority before anything else. Really.

4) Nutrition – if you’re keeping yourself going on caffeine and grabbing whatever quick carbs you can to get through the day, your blood sugar is going to be all over the place and you’re not going to feel emotionally stable.  You’re going to crash. Make time to physically refuel with good quality foods.  I know, you don’t have time for this, right?  You deserve to make time for this because you are worthy of being taken care of lovingly.  And it doesn’t have to take a long time.  An egg with butter and vegetables  will keep your keep you full and your blood sugar stable.

For kids, too, make sure they’re getting protein at every meal and at snack time.  So much misbehavior is because kids get too hungry and out of sorts.  Don’t fall prey to the Pesach snacks that are everywhere – this will almost guarantee that your kids will be more reactive and less responsive to your requests.  Sandwiches with sweet spreads, cookies and chips won’t give your child’s brain the building blocks they need to stay calm and positive.

Keep it simple – hard boiled eggs, some carrot sticks and hummus makes an easy lunch.  Peanut butter on celery sticks, cheese or nuts make easy snacks.  I keep lots of vegetables and some fruits on hand for the kids to snack on as well.

5) Music – music is your ally in creating a cheerful and upbeat atmosphere!  There is so much great Pesach music that will enhance your home environment while getting your kids prepared for the seder by knowing the songs that are sung that night.

6) Connect – Take time to connect with your kids before they misbehave. Being proactive on this front will make a big difference.  Again, I know it seems like there’s not enough time but believe me, your children will make themselves heard and you will need to take time to deal with whatever behavior and conflicts come up.  Investing the time upfront to preempt the issues is a very wise use of your time.

Most of all – be kind to yourself.  Don’t set high standards that will lead you to feel inadequate.  Keep it simple.  If your house doesn’t sparkle, your home can still be ready for Pesach.  If your menus are simple, your family can still enjoy.  When you treat yourself kindly, it transfers to how you treat everyone around you.

This is not the mother you want to be!
This is not the mother you want to be!

Taking care of yourself is the absolute highest priority at this time. Give yourself the emotional and physical support that you need to feel good. A happy mother is a gift to the entire family!

Avivah

Menu plan for final days of Pesach

menu plans, Pesach

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
Friday lunch:
  • roast chicken
  • cauliflower kugel
  • variety of salads
Friday night: 
  • chicken soup
  • roast turkey
  • roast vegetables
  • roast potatoes
  • variety of salads
Shabbos/Saturday lunch: 
  • chicken and cabbage stew
  • vegetable matza kugel
  • variety of salads
Here are the salads that we’ve made so far:
  • 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

Pesach family outing to Park Hagalil

aliyah, Pesach

Today is the first day of chol hamoed Pesach in Israel, the intermediary days of Passover that have the status of a semi-holiday.  (In the US, the first day of chol hamoed will be Monday – we get five days instead of four!)  All of the schools here have vacation, and in Israel it’s a time of family trips and activities across the nation.

We went to a local park with most of our family members as well as our lovely guest who came from Jerusalem to spend the weekend with us.  Dh needed to work and ds18 was supposed to meet us there later (though since it’s such a large park and he didn’t know which section we were in, he couldn’t find us when he got there).  The park we went to is called Park Hagalil; it’s a huge park that includes a very nice playground, an ampitheater, a waterfall, and lots of other stuff.  There’s no admission fee and it’s just a ten minute walk from my house.

It’s a really nice play to go, whether you’re a kid or an adult – the first time I went to the waterfall, I had fantasies of taking a regular early morning walk and then sitting there for some quiet time before I started my day each morning.  But I’m not an early riser so it’s remained wishful thinking.   I find the waterfall area very restful and calming, and thought we’d start off at there and then go to different areas since the kids would get bored after a while, but I was wrong – we spent almost four hours there and no one wanted to leave.

Most of our family next to the waterfall pool

There’s a small path to the right of the main pond behind some rushes that the kids spent loads of time at – there were frogs, tadpoles, and little fish there that kept them interested for ages.  I didn’t actually go over to look at it, since I was happy to plop myself on the grass in a shady spot and watch everyone while chatting with our guest and the older kids.

(l-r) Ds9, ds6, ds4, ds2 cooling their legs opposite the waterfall

Ds13 quickly got soaked under the waterfall, then he and the other middles  enjoyed hiking up the hills surrounding the waterfall.

Ds13 and dd11

Ds13 had brought his baseball equipment with the intent to play with ds18.  But the area we were in was hilly and ds18 wasn’t there, so he played catch with all of his younger brothers instead.

Ds13 playing catch with the littles

 

Ds2.5 very excited about throwing a baseball

Ds4 retrieving the baseball that rolled down the hill into the pool

At one point, a huge flock of large birds flew over us.  It was an unusual sight because they weren’t birds we had seen before.  Our guest is an amateur birdwatcher, and had her binoculars and bird guide book there, so she was able to look them up and tell us what we’d seen.   They were some kind of stork migrating to their summer homes; learning about them from the guidebook made it more interesting for everyone.

Flock of migrating storks flying overhead

It was a lovely day out!

Avivah

Vegetable shopping for Pesach

frugal strategies, Pesach

Today I did my vegetable shopping for Pesach.  The store was very crowded and I was exhausted when I came home.  But I’ll never fail to be anything but enthusiastic about this store’s delivery service- the more I buy, the happier it makes me to know that someone else is bringing it into my house instead of me.

I took the picture below so you can see the amount of vegetables a family our size buys for Pesach, and why I’m happy not to have to bring it up a flight of stairs.  🙂  (You’ll probably need to double click it to see it up close to realize how much is there since the boxes contain so much of it – my kids saw the picture and all said, ‘that doesn’t look like so much!)  To be clear: this is not what bulk shopping looks like for us – that would be way, way more!

Here’s what I got, from the top left, clockwise to the right.  My receipt is in kg, so if you mentally want to convert the numbers I list, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

  • first box, top left – three 10 kg bags of carrots (last week we blew through one of these in 2.5 days)
  • box to the right of carrots (fruit box)- 16 kg oranges
  • two kg strawberries
  • 3 kg melon
  • 1 kg apples
  • (next box to the right – green leafy vegetables) – 4 huge heads of romaine lettuce
  • 3 bunches of fresh parsley
  • 1 bunch of fresh mint
  • (to the right slightly down) – 2 large sacks of potatoes (can’t remember how many kg is in each one – I think 18 or 20) – I actually have three sacks but started putting things away before I took the picture and didn’t want to drag it back out
  • (to left of potatoes) 10 kg cucumbers
  • 4.5 kg beets
  • 250 grams fresh garlic
  • 200 grams horseradish root
  • (next box to left) -5.5 kg  kohlrabi
  • 2.5 kg fennel
  • 7 kg cauliflower
  • 3.5 kg green cabbage
  • 2.5 kg red cabbage
  • (bags to the left) 8 kg onions
  • 12 kg red and orange peppers (also another bag in a different box)
  • 15 kg tomatoes
  • 1.5 kg radishes
  • (center right) 12 kg avocados
If you’re wondering about prices, everything was between 2 – 4 shekels a kilo, except for the avocado (5.99), apple (6.99), strawberries (9.99)  and horseradish (31.99 kg).  I get what is seasonal and most affordable; that’s why I can’t prepare my menu until I go shopping and see what I ended up buying!

I also have a box of turnips and some zucchini left from last week’s shopping (which are only left because no one snacks on them, unlike almost everything else).  Since we watched Hungry for Change last week, dd17 and ds13 are eating only/mostly raw (dd17 0nly, ds13 mostly) and you should see how we’re burning through the vegetables!  Also when the weather gets warm, we eat more fresh salads with our meals instead of cooked vegetables that are part of a soup or dish.  It’s a good thing, but it’s not cheap to drastically up your vegetable intake for a family our size.  On Friday afternoon I spent almost 300 shekels on vegetables – it was four boxes full – and on Sunday afternoon almost everything was gone.  Usually that amount can last for a week.  The amount in the picture would usually be enough for two weeks, but for Pesach we use a lot more fresh produce.  As it is, I’ll have to be a bit restrictive of the kids because they love fresh produce and would be happy to snack their way through most of what I got (even raw kohlrabi – they really like it!)

I didn’t get as much fruit as I would have liked, but I was spending so much for Pesach that I felt I needed to be more careful in this area.  I’ve spent half of our monthly allotted food budget so far just for this coming week, plus there are a number of expenses due to not having any Pesach supplies (dishes, pots, silverware, etc) here.  To be fair, I also got more grape juice, extra virgin olive oil and palm oil than I need for the week or even the month, since they’re on sale now.  This is something I always try to do, be sure I have money available to buy staple items when they are on sale.  (You can see in the background of the above picture a couple of boxes with some of those other miscellaneous things – a sink insert and electric hot water pot are on top, some disposable dishes and non perishable food items are underneath.)

For the first time ever, we kashered three pots that we use during the year as well as our silverware, and though it was a lot of work to get the bottoms of the pots spotless, it was nice that I didn’t have to buy these things!  We also kashered a stainless steel salad bowl and a couple of serving utensils.  An additional benefit of kashering these things is that it minimizes the storage space I’ll need for Pesach items for the rest of the year – I’ll just go back to using them during the year.

Now I need to go back out and do some more shopping for the things I couldn’t get this morning –  I ran out of energy after the three stores I went to (the vegetables were just one stop).  So I’m going to rest for a short bit and then go spend more money.  🙂

Avivah