Kosher Blog

Do-It-Yourself Pesach Strategies

This year, we have the auspicious responsibility to host our family’s seders, as we’ll be the only ones with an entirely Kosher-for-Passover home. Since neither of us have ever done an honest-to-goodness, spic-and-span, soup-to-nuts Pesach on our own, we’re at the mercy of of our shul’s annual Pesach guide and Blu Greenberg’s How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household (a treasured gift from my high school Spanish teacher). Unfortunately, all the usual family guests will not be able to attend due to Pesach’s mid-week calendar appearance… fortunately, it makes our first do-it-yourself Passover a little easier to coordinate.

For one, we don’t have a huge dining room table (seats six comfortably). Plus, we don’t know how much of anything we need to buy, or exactly which pots, pans, and other utensils we’ll need. As such, we’re convinced we need to start out on the right foot this year to make life easier in the future. We’ve adopted the following strategies:

1. Detailed Inventory of All Passover Kitchenware
It’s hard to maneuver our one extra closet, so we’re assembling a detailed list of all our stuff, and we’ll keep track of how much we use each item and what additional items we might want for next year.

2. Detailed Inventory of All Passover Food
Slightly more elaborate is our food inventory. I’ve set up an Excel spreadsheet listing every Peasch foodstuff we purchase, where it was purchased, in what quantity, and for what price. After Pesach, I’ll add information on how much was actually used/enjoyed, to aid next year’s shopping.

3. Bargain Shopping

We bought quite a bit of our Passover kitchenware at Target last week, and tonight, I explored an old family favorite, Cirelli Foods of Middleborough (formerly of Brockton). Cirelli’s is a “foodservice distributor” which runs a wholesale store open to the public. My family has always used it for bulk party food and supplies but they also have a full line of (relatively inexpensive) commercial kitchen tools. I visited tonight with my mother to get Pesach supplies, and made out well with foil trays, plastic serving platters, heavy-duty plastic containers for freezing bulk food (brisket, chicken soup, etc.), salad tongs. For the rest of the year, they have great, bulk Kosher food products like cakes, pies, cookie dough, dairy and “non-dairy” items, egg substitute, snacks, soda, alcohol, fresh produce, condiments… perfect for large families, parties, barbeques… and without the traffic and membership fees of the mainstream Wholesale Clubs.

4. Pre-Preparation & Freezing
A week or two before the holiday, we’ll kasher our kitchen (not entirely sure how yet), and, with the help of our mothers, we’ll prepare in advance everything we can. Right now, it may just be all our chicken soup and brisket, but even that will help ease the pre-yomtov rush.

5. Chol HaMoed Shopping
One thing most people don’t seem to remember is that stores are open during Chol HaMoed. You don’t need to stock up like crazy before the holiday, because you can always run out for a box of Matzah should the need arise.