Meal and cooking essentials. Please double-check guides for what needs KfP certification and what doesn’t. As I add recipes I’m going to cross-check and make sure that all ingredients get listed on her in the Additional section at the bottom. And we’re going to deal with quantities at the end of this post
IMPORTANT NOTE – if you plan to cook on Chag, have your recipes written down or printed out! I’ve made that mistake before:
Protein Fish, chicken, and meat
Vegetables Potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, lettuce
Fruit If you put out fruit for karpas, like we do, focus on the following ha'adamah foods; bananas, watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe. Challenge your kids to see what they come up with. If you don’t do this, feel free to ignore this section 😊
Dairy Eggs, cream cheese, milk(s), butter
Misc
Remember with spices that different people have different minhagim of what’s kitniyot, so if you see something on this post that you don’t eat, please make a note of that! Salt, Pam, pepper, olive oil, vegetable oil, potato starch, matzah meal, tea, coffee, sugar, paprika, rosemary, basil, vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder Additional:
Canned tuna, gefilte fish Tomatoes, avocado, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, eggplant, pepper Apples, oranges, berries, melon, banana Yogurt, Leben, cottage cheese, farmer’s cheese, shredded cheese, string cheese, ice cream Tomato sauce, applesauce, cocoa powder, cake flour, almond flour, juice, sorbet Other extracts, cumin, garlic powder, coriander, cinnamon, etc
Non-food items Tinfoil, Ziploc bags
So – how much do I need to buy?
This is where meal planning comes in. Start by writing down the number of people eating at each meal. Then plan your meals as simply as you can. When we have a small Seder I like to make a large chicken soup and serve the soup as an appetizer and use the chicken as one of my mains. It’s efficient and cuts down a little on the slam of getting ready for Seder.
Here’s a rundown of what my process looks like:
Breakfast – 8 morning, 4 children, assuming 1.5 yogurts/child = some combination of 48 yogurts. I then also buy a case of 20-24 Leben on top of that so I know we’re covered. Add 2 dozen eggs to your overall calculation to cover scrambled eggs and matza brei. I never buy the cereals, but I do buy chocolate syrup and a small selection of candy.
Seder 1 Wednesday night 1 loaf of gefilte fish, chicken soup, chicken, 2-3 pounds of meat of some sort, kugel, salad, and vegetables. Sorbet for dessert
Lunch 1 Thursday Yogurt, vegetable kugel, fish. Ice cream. Seder 2 Thursday night 1 loaf of gefilte fish, chicken soup, chicken, 2-3 pounds of a different meat, different kugel, salad, and different vegetables. Sorbet for dessert
Lunch 2 Friday Blintz souffle, yogurt, eggs. Ice cream.
Friday night Gefilte fish, baked chicken, leftover kugel + a new one, roasted vegetables. Sorbet.
Shabbat lunch Shnitzel, kugel, salad. Sorbet.
Dinner 4 Saturday night - this is probably still going to be Shabbat for your younger kids! Yogurt, cream cheese and matza, tuna fish, egg salad, cheese. If you made matza meal rolls, this is the time to pull them out!
Lunch 4 Sunday Matza pizza, cauliflower au vodka, eggs, anything easy.
Dinner 5 Sunday night Rinse and repeat from Sunday lunch.
Lunch 5 Monday Matza lasagna
Dinner 6 Monday night Blintzes
Lunch 6 Tuesday Matzah and cream cheese, matza pizza, eggs, whetever
Dinner 7 Tuesday night Soup, meatballs, kugel, salad
Lunch 7 Wednesday Sweet milchik kugel, eggs, yogurt
Dinner 8 Wednesday night Chicken, salad, kugel
Lunch 8 Thursday Vegetable kugel, fish, any leftovers they want
Dinner 9 Thursday night – feed everyone before chag ends so you have energy to switch over tonight.
Leftovers, matza pizza, eggs, whatever’s easy!
Once you have your meal plan you can start to slot in the recipes you’ll be using. WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. I have a journal I use where I write what I’m making, when, how many people it serves, the recipes, and how much food I need to buy for each thing. I have one page in the back where I jot down everything in each recipe as a base shopping list and a second page where I total the items from each recipe together for my main shopping list. Does this sound like a huge undertaking? Yes. But the years I tried to do it on the fly were not only stressful but way more expensive as I overbought.
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