Pesach 2012 Wrap-up

It was the first day of Chol Hamoed. I was sitting on a bench, watching my kids practicing their golf swing and contemplating everything that had transpired. I did not know what the date was anymore – I could barely make out what day it was. Pesach was like being on a roundabout and it was spinning rather fast.

I have since compiled notes on this year’s Pesach experience in the hopes that I will be able to reference them the next time I need to.

The Seder nights: At my in-laws’ house, the seder is always beautiful. The first night is always punctual as we try to eat the afikomen by chatzos. It finished at a reasonable hour – for a seder. The second night, there were many more participants and it was extremely late. I could barely keep my eyes open. It was about 3:30AM by the time we got home and we hadn’t even stayed until they finished all the singing. If I can send myself advice for next time, it would be to make our own seder at home for the second night.

What I learned from the entire Pesach-making experience: Don’t try to do it again on my ownwithout cleaning help. It is especially important to have help the week before Pesach when the kitchen needs to be changed over!

At least I can relax at the thought that next time will be easier. We already have the pots and pans, oven and other small appliances nicely packed away in storage. Hopefully that will ease the difficulty of ‘limbo week’ like this first year where the kitchen was finally changed over, but the pots still needed toivelling; the pots were toivelled, but we didn’t yet buy the food processor; something was always holding something back…

Next time should also be cheaper now that we already laid out the initial expense of purchasing the basics.

We ended up buying pots and pans, flatware for fleishigs, mugs for hot drinks, a hot water urn, more mixing bowls than originally anticipated, a stainless steel becher, a matza cover, sharp knives for pareve and dairy (we never found the blue knife I thought we had), table clothes, dish towels, sink inserts, a new EZ filter, new stove knobs, a broom, a dustpan, a countertop oven, a mixer and a food processor.

We saved money (and my sanity) by using disposable plates and cups (I really appreciated having less to wash up) and plastic cutlery for breakfasts and lunches. We also saved where we least expected it. As mentioned previously, we used a gift card obtained by our credit card points for purchasing much of our kitchen basics. We made the order online. The next morning, I happened to check back on the store’s website and discovered that one of the pots sets was now on sale! I called up customer service after realizing that three of the items on my invoice were now less expensive. It was a modest amount, something like $30 difference, which I was calling about, but I wanted a price adjustment. Well, to my amazement, not only did I get an adjustment, the customer service representative refunded the ENTIRE cost of those three items! These were not cheap items. (One was the counter-top oven!) Wow.

All in all, the experience of making Pesach leaves me with a much greater appreciation for moving into our parents’ place for the holiday. (BTW, I get first dibs on going to my parents’ house for next year.)

Things I do not need to buy the next time I make Pesach:

1-Potato starch. (I have almost 3 full containers left out of the 4 I bought. Hey, it was on sale for cheap!)

2- Less plastic cutlery (no need for soup spoons. Buy a much smaller pack of knives.)

3-Sticky contact paper. (It is such a pain to change and also to lay down neatly on shelves.)

What else I learned: Do not switch on the Shabbos button on the hot water urn for Yom Tov. (The water was already cold by the first day of Yom Tov morning.)

What we’ll need to buy:

- New plastic boards and heavy foil for covering the counter tops (DH made the kids a clubhouse out of the used plastic board).

- Dishes if we’re going to be home for a seder meal.

- Glasses or goblets? (Same reason as dishes.)

To remember: My milchig pots set is all pareve expect for the frying pan and spatula. I cooked the gefilte fish in the big pot and the eggs in the middle-sized pot.

Food notes: My husband ended up bringing home 5 lbs. of matza. Add that to my 2 lbs. and we had just a little too much. We left 2 lbs. at my in-laws’ when we were eating there. Of the remaining boxes, we opened up 3 lbs. The last 2 lb. box was never even opened.

We had lots of grapefruits and the kids loved them. We went through almost the entire case of grape juice. Next time we have to buy more orange juice because we ran out in the middle and had to buy more.

DH made two very large jars of chrain, one of which we left at his parents’. It tasted just like store-bought!

We went through much of the case of eggs that DH brought home.

We used ¼ of a sack of potatoes (we gave away half the sack.)

I did not need baking powder. I was unable to make some yummy-looking cookie and cupcake recipes from magazines due to too many missing ingredients (next time check the recipe BEFORE shopping!)

I made five cakes; one sponge and four chocolate. My daughter lived on the chocolate cake.

My husband made two batches of his heavenly Rosemarie cookies. (I wish I wasn’t allergic to Rosemarie. Oh well, more for him!)

For the last days of yom tov, I made a potato kugel that no one touched. (I made it very lateErev Yom Tov. It should have been prepared earlier and would have been gone like the kugel I made Erev Pesach that was a major hit, but I had to sit in the pediatrician’s waiting room all morning because my daughter caught strep. At least DH helped me cook when I got back. He made a beet salad and a cucumber salad. I think he thought he was making it for a larger family because we still have lots leftover! He also helped with the chicken, fish and soup.

More food notes:

No one really touched the apple compote except for me. Next time, make less.

The vegetable soup was not a hit. (Why can’t I get my kids to like vegetable soup?)

The boys LOVED the Pesach egg noodles DH made for the chicken soup.

These were the Chol Hamoed suppers that everyone enjoyed:

-Oven-baked salmon with mashed potatoes and cucumber salad.

-Meat broiled with onions and spiced-baked potatoes.

-Chicken cutlets fried with potato starch and eggs with mashed potatoes garnished with scallions.

The trips we went on this year:

Monday: Practice golf and Floyd Bennet’s Field for kite flying

Tuesday: 18^th Avenue Park, not as exciting as the Washington, DC or Williamsburg, VA trips some of my s-i-l’s invited us on, but we needed to stay local so we could be home for an important call. (As Murphy’s Law would have it, the call never came.)

Wednesday: Manhattan to the Museum of Natural History and Central Park.

Now that this project has been completed, I can report that I am so happy to have been able to stay home for Pesach this year! I learned a lot. Next time it can only get easier.

L’Shana Habbah b’Yerushalayim!

Reaching Bedikas Chometz

By now, things have finally calmed down somewhat. I can definitely breathe easier. I spent last night reading through all the entries from My Pesach Diary blog and was amazed at how the Pesach preparations train started off at such a slow pace, chugging along calmly until it picked up the pace and went faster and faster until it was the Orient Express!

The last week before Pesach was very hard. My bedtime was in the AM hours each night. The days merged into each other and I barely knew what day it was anymore.

Motzai Shabbos, I started attempting to change over my kitchen. My plan had been to start cooking by Monday. My husband looked around the kitchen and said there was no way I was going to be ready to change over that soon. I was not in the mood of his skepticism. What did I know? I’d never done this before! I really did not know what I was doing. I was afraid to ask him for help because he had been very adamant about not doing any actual cleaning because as far as he was concerned, I should have gotten a cleaning lady. As the hours went by, I felt like I was actually in Mitzrayim with all the slave labor, scrubbing the stove top and the oven, scrubbing the walls and whatever else needed to be cleaned. I cried bitter tears. I finally caved in and begged for help. Once there were two of us working, everything started taking shape much sooner. I was so grateful that I had cleaned out the fridge on Thursday. Still, Sunday arrived and the kitchen was not changed over.

I took the kids to the corner grocery store for some lunch and we ate it in the park. They enjoyed running around. My husband had to work really late. Sunday was kind of a disaster with regards to supper because by the time I got the kids out to the nearby Kosher Chinese restaurant, there were no tables left and a thirty minute wait. I was not in the mood of the pizza store. I was worn down and turned around straight home. We really did not have anything normal to eat, but I found them something in the house. I got everyone to bed and got to work. DH came home with hot shwarma sandwiches that the two of us ate carefully. One good benefit of not having yet changed over… He moved out the fridge and the stove and it was remarkable how much chometz had taken shelter beneath those appliances!

Monday was my daughter’s final day in playgroup before the vacation. I could choose to stay home and clean more or I could take a break and hop on the train to buy some makeup that I was out of. The alternative was to ride the train the next day with my daughter in her stroller. Was that really a choice? I went Monday. I took along a notebook and put together some lists on the train. (What to buy. What to do.) 34^th Street, Herald Square, here I come! It was good to relax a little after working so hard.

Although I had been hoping to be able to cook a normal Pesach supper Monday, the kitchen was in no way ready for that. DH came home earlier this time and we enjoyed takeout from the Chinese place we missed out on the night before. Yum!

Monday night, I stayed up late and DH stayed up later. I tried to help in whichever way I could, but my husband knew so much more about koshering a kitchen for Pesach than I did. I watched with interest to learn what I might. Still, I could barely function, feeling so wiped out from the last three very late nights, that I left him to his own devices.

The kids were amazed to enter the kitchen the next morning. Everything was covered in white like the first snow of the winter. The countertops were hidden behind thick white plastic boards, the table was covered in a thick white plastic sheet and the cupboards that were not being used for Pesach were taped shut. The stovetop was covered in foil, as was the faucet and knobs. The sink was concealed by white plastic inserts.

I felt like we had finally crossed the threshold, even though there was still much work to be done. We were finally on the other side. The kitchen was changed over!

I had bought a box of non-gebrocks Pesach cereal for this week. It was some sort of chocolate flavored cheerios. The kids tasted it and nearly gagged.

Tuesday morning, I cleaned out the coat closet. I found a pretzel and some chocolate rum balls among a marble and some other toys. Today was the day I was to cook my first Pesach supper! First, I had to take the pot and stirring utensil to toivel. We had boxes of things to be toiveled, but I could not schlepp that much without a car. DH would do that in the evening, after work. For now, I just had to toivel what I needed for the day so supper would be ready at a normal hour. Still, I was missing a lot of things. I took my daughter to Amazing Savings to buy some items we needed for Pesach. She fell in love with a pink frilly umbrella. Definitely not a Pesach item, but I decided to buy it to put it away for a prize she could earn. She threw a tantrum that lasted half an hour. She refused to eat lunch. Since deadlines were looming, I had to speak to the accountant since we had to take care of some papers. I ignored my toddler and locked myself into the office to call him back. I used the computer a bit while I was there. By the time I came out, she was no longer crying. The lunch that had been on her place at the kitchen table was eaten. She was playing with her toys. I was amazed.

I spent the afternoon washing the dining room table and chairs. It took two hours. I’m still not sure how it’s possible for such a job to take so long, but I’m not one to question it.

Time to cook the first Pesach food! Alas, nothing is ever so simple. I’d asked DH to take down our Pesach knife and peeler from the storage closet that I could not reach. He forgot. I had to wait until he came home before I could cook. We had a late supper. Meat and potatoes. It was still delicious.

At least by Wednesday, our new above-the-counter Pesach oven was ready to be used. The boys had only a half day of school. I was rushing, trying to get as much done as possible before they arrived. I washed the floors and cleaned the normal weekly necessities. I knew that by the time everyone would be home, this would be a next-to-impossible feat.

I attempted to bake my first Pesach cake with the kids in the kitchen. It probably took twice as long, but I insisted they could only watch and not touch. I made the easiest Pesach cake ever, a simple chocolate cake recipe that does not require separating the eggs. It came out scrumptious.

I made mashed potatoes and fried gefilte fish balls for supper, with a cucumber salad. At least it was earlier than the night before! Progress.

Wednesday night, I still had the kitchen garbage cans to clean. (With recycling, we have three in total.) Somehow, it felt like the work was never going to end! The laundry load just would not shrink, no matter how much time I devoted to it. The usual story…

Thursday morning, I felt like I was not getting very much done. Fortunately, DH took the day off and left on some errands with the boys. Yes, I ironed all the boys white shirts (that I’d neglected these past few weeks. Yes, I changed all the linens and washed more laundry. I found a lot of crumbs in my daughter’s bed.

That afternoon, I lay down for a nap and, two hours later, I still could not get up. I was exhausted. I still had flatware sitting in the sink from the day before when it had been toiveledand did not want to think about it. I still had to go over the strollers which had been vacuumed once, but needed a second go-over. There were plenty of things that had not been done – although most of these were not very important on my priority list. Some would classify these as ‘spring cleaning’. These were not going to get done before Pesach 2012…too bad.

Supper was not made and I had no strength left. I called up DH and suggested we go out to eat. That is how we enjoyed our last chometzdik meal before Pesach. My seven-year-old son who is the world’s pickiest eater polished off his entire burger and fries. I could not believe it. I had a hot pastrami sub. The protein helped restart my batteries. Tonight was Bedikas Chometz! I cleaned out my purse. (I’d bought a new purse this winter and saved it for Pesach. I just had to transfer the contents and throw the old, fraying one out.)

Could our vacuum cleaner have picked a better time to break? There was so much to be vacuumed before bedikas chometz. What were we going to do? We had just replaced our vacuum some two years ago when our first one was finished. Vacuum number two had been bought using points. (I’m telling you, It pays to use credit cards!)

I looked at the time. It was eight. The store was open until nine. We still had ample gift cards left from our credit card points. My husband ran out. He got our third vacuum with a five year warranty. The house was vacuumed. The strollers were vacuumed. Whatever else needed was, too. We could now do bedikas chometz. We could barely believe we had come to this point!