My mother-in-law and sister-in-law arrived last night from the United States, along with two of my married sons and grandchildren. My mom lives locally and will be coming this afternoon to stay with us for Shabbos and the first day of Pesach – thank G-d, the house is full!

Everyone who has come so far has been very impressed by all of the changes we’ve made to our house. I really love it! The kitchen is a pleasure to work in; even with lots of people around I don’t feel crowded and there’s space for others to work alongside me without anyone getting in anyone else’s space. I’ve been exclaiming a few times a day, “Have I said how much I love this kitchen!?!” – and then I describe another benefit that I’ve noticed.

It’s really wonderful and though I’ve always appreciated the spaciousness of my home and outdoor space, I’ve never especially liked the main area of my home, and now love how it feels.

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Since there’s so much to do and I have four children who need a lot of interaction and supervision during their waking hours, I’ve gotten up around 4:30 am the last three mornings to get things done. I’m taking a quick break now to share my Pesach menu with you before they wake up. Usually I write down my holiday lists, but then am so busy I don’t have time to post it and then what’s the point of posting after the holiday? So here you go!

Today – Friday – for breakfast- shakshuka; lunch – beef borscht soup, baked potato knishes

It’s really important to keep everyone well fed in the midst of my cooking marathons. When everyone has food, everyone is much calmer and happier.

For the holiday, I’ll list what is planned in categories.

Fish – tilapia, salmon

Soup – chicken

Dips – fresh tomato , matbucha, mock liver, avocado, homemade mayonnaise

Salads – tomato salsa, pickled peppers, marinated salad, tomato-cucumber, lemony dill carrot, marinated kohlrabi and carrots, fennel and orange

Sides – butternut squash kugel, onion kugel, vegetable kugel, potato kugel, potato squash saute, sweet potato carrot bake, roasted root vegetables

Mains – roast meat, baked chicken

Desserts – citrus compote, walnut chocolate chip bars, macaroons, blondies

My house is overflowing with fresh produce and it looks excessive to see the cases stacked up, but I know how fast it all goes with so many people eating three meals a day. I used 25 kilos of potatoes the first day and a half, before Pesach even started. My son told me that doesn’t make sense, but that’s actually what we used so far. That includes the baked potato knishes for lunch today, but doesn’t include anything for the holiday yet.

I wasn’t able to find cocoa in the stores, and a staple dessert that I make on Pesach is brownies. I haven’t yet decided what to make as the cake for my nineteen year old’s birthday circle the first day of Pesach; I might use the blondies. The dessert isn’t really the main point, the birthday circle is, and it’s always nice to have more family members to share in the circle.

I’m planning to double the kugels and freeze half for the last part of Pesach, and I’m doing the same with the marinated salads that will stay fresh in the fridge for the week. Cook once, eat twice. 🙂

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There’s so much to do and so much of that isn’t seen – the endless loads of laundry this entire week, hanging, folding, putting away. Shopping for clothing for everyone. Buying and putting away all of the food. Cooking all of the food. Cleaning for Pesach. Taking care of the younger kids. Giving them all haircuts. But even if these aren’t consciously noticed, these things all contribute to a nice environment for everyone.

I have a cabinet where I put all of the items needing sewing repairs, and this week I fixed most of those. For today I have a couple of new pairs of suit pants to hem.

This year we had all of the renovations on top of everything else and I made seemingly endless trips to the hardware store. The kitchen backsplash is now tiled, though not yet grouted. The floor in the old kitchen area where the plumbing was has been tiled.

On the mini homestead front, I sold a lot of chicks last week. I give ds17 and ds15 the profits remaining after paying for the chick feed since they do all of the incubating and caring for the new chicks. They thought I should keep part of the money, but I consider the chickens we keep as my payment. We started incubating a new batch of Brahma eggs that will be ready after Pesach. Seeing all of those new chicks caused a number of our hens to go broody (to want to hatch their own eggs); we now have six broody hens sitting together on one batch of eggs; it will be interesting when the chicks hatch to see how they coparent!

I previously held back two roosters when we processed all of our roosters, but it turns out that one chicken that we thought was a hen has revealed himself as a rooster. I decided that one rooster for the main flock is enough, so I sold two roosters earlier this week. It’s not worth it for us to take two chickens for shechita and I didn’t want all of the extra work processing them right now. The people who bought them are very happy and two days later called me wanting more. Now I have a good way to sell all of my roosters in the future that we don’t want, which is very nice.

This week we brought in a male goat for breeding purposes but he wasn’t letting my does eat and the older doe kept looking at me from a distance and bleating at me to help her. The first morning I took the other goats out to graze when he was on the other side of the pen; I didn’t think that would be an issue since they weren’t a bonded group. He charged at the door of the pen and began breaking it open. That was frightening for me since I was on the other side of the door. It was six am but I quickly woke up my husband and son so they could help me since I was in over my head dealing with him.

They put the other goats back in and he calmed down, but that really stressed me. We brought him since we hoped it might marginally be the end of breeding season but obviously nothing was happening on that front; maybe with time that would have changed but at this time I didn’t want to wait a few weeks since it would negatively impact my holiday. Usually the animals are a source of relaxation for me that but with this buck here that wasn’t the case. I want our grandchildren to be able to interact with the goats if they want to, which they can’t do if he’s here, so yesterday we took him back. We’ll try again after Sukkos.

We ordered hay and this year it was clover; last year it was wheat hay and it was a huge issue to deal with for Pesach. We ordered cracked corn for the chickens for Pesach and started fermenting it yesterday to increase the nutritional value for them, so it will be ready for them by Sunday. Meanwhile, they’re eating up all of our chametz!

I wish you all a deeply enjoyable Pesach!

Avivah