Now that Purim is behind us...

Now that Purim is behind us, it is officially time to consider the impending arrival of doom, er, I mean Pesach.

Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy Pesach when I can manage to escape from my kitchen! And after all the cleaning, kashering, planning, and shopping is done too...
That actually leaves me very little time to enjoy the chag, but this year I'm hoping to do better.

So starting now, I'm doing a mostly pantry challenge month. I want to stay out of the supermarkets and not buy anything extra - just fresh produce and milk, if at all possible. That way, when the time comes to do that outrageously expensive Pesach shopping (Hello, shmurah matzah for 18 for the seder, anyone?! Gasp! What was I thinking inviting 12 guests for seder?!), I'll hopefully be able to more or less stick to budget.

And as far as the Pesach prep goes, I'm happy to say that we've pretty much enforced a no-food on the second floor rule since we moved into our home, so I'm not worried about Pesach cleaning upstairs (just regular cleaning, which is hard enough!), and the downstairs shouldn't be so bad once we have the kitchen cabinets finished, and then we'll have a place to actually unpack our Pesach dishes into! I was hoping to have new counters, but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for pre-pesach, so we'll just have to kasher what we have (yes, they are granite, but just not the kind I really want). I'm hoping to get away without staying up too many late nights or rubbing my knuckles raw, what are the chances?

And as it gets closer, I really hope to come up with some no-fuss menus that will let me enjoy the chag and stick to all of our various food restrictions and avoiding allergens (aah, pesach with an egg allergic child and a nut allergic me. what fun!)...

I'm planning to be the one at the shuk buying everything I can for 2 shekels/kg at closing time. And then we'll eat a lot of vegetables.

Who else is doing a pantry clean-out now? Let's share some menu ideas!