Pesah Meals

On long holidays that are full of meals I prefer to make what I call a "selection menu" as opposed to a menu of dishes for each meal. This gives me more leeway when we aren't feeling up to a full (read giant) meal or when something isn't appealing. 

Here's my list for Pesah:

Salads  Israeli, beets, carrots, romaine with dates and oranges, cucumber and mint, matbucha and fresh fava bean salad

Fish   Moroccan fish, marinated fried fish, fried gefilte fish, baked salmon 

Mains   lamb tagine with prunes and apricots, honey chicken, spiced chicken, meatballs, maguina

Desserts   brownies, mandlebrot, tishpishti, chocolate mousse cake, fresh fruit

Other items   rolls, cream cheese, lunch meat, cottage cheese, charoset, harissa, eggs, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash

The only meal I know for a fact I'm serving is the lamb tajine, potatoes, maguina, moroccan fish and an assortment of salads and fruit for the second seder. Even though we have guests for other meals, I'm able to leave the menu up in the air because I've prepared and frozen all of the mains, three fishes and the desserts minus the fresh fruit. 

This is the third holiday I've cooked this way and I can tell you that we eat less and waste less food. My packed freezer will likely last through mid-May.

Kitchen Goals for March

Its time to share kitchen-related goals over at Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

I usually catch these (and pretty much all) memes a bit too late to join in, but this one I caught perfectly and I have a fair amount of stuff to do in the kitchen this month with Purim and Pesah looming. 

Am I the only person stuck in limbo between not stressing over Pesah and panicking that I'm behind? I blame the leap year.

1) Get Mishlot Manot done by March 15th. By done I mean baked and in the freezer with all the packing material at the house so we can take the week to pack.

2) Make menus and shopping lists for Pesah. This means I need to dig out "Pesah box #1" from the depths of my garage and retreive the binder with my notes from last year. Think I can con Aba into doing that for me?

3) Clean out and condense cabinets. Not that hard really. I've been doing this since we returned from Israel as I use up supplies. 

4) Buy my items from my "doesn't need KLP hashgacha" list. I almost started this on Sunday as I walked past the salt in Whole Foods. 

5) Mail mixer back for repair. Its only been boxed up since mid-November. Why hurry?

6) Have Pesah cleaning schedule determined. Start March 28. Schedule extra cleaning help throughout April.

Have I mentioned that the girls' fifth birthday is the first night this year? And they've been asking about their party already. April will be a fun month!