I used to feel a slight sense of failure as I deleted the fancy dishes that never materialized. Today, I look at it as a triumph of sorts
The same thing happens every year. A few days before Pesach, my oldest daughter and I create a menu. It takes the better part of the evening. First we browse through the new recipe supplements and the recipes we’ve clipped, and jot down the ones we’d like to try. Next, we look over menus from the past few years to remind ourselves of what went over well — and what didn’t.
Finally, I sit at the computer, and create a new menu using an old one as a base. My daughter tells me what she’d like to make and I slot it in, I fit in the new recipes I’d like to try, and then use old favorites to round out all the meals.
As I work, I stick makeshift bookmarks inside my huge binder of recipes to mark the ones I’ll be making, and finally, my daughter and I create a huge shopping list from all the recipes we’ll be making for the first few days.
That first day of cooking, we’re full of energy, excited to be in the gleaming kitchen with the still-shiny pots and sacks of produce. We start working our way through the list, chopping nuts, separating eggs (does anything sound more like Pesach than the high-pitched whirr of the hand mixer?), melting chocolate, squeezing citrus fruit, and peeling endless mounds of vegetables. Most of the menu for the first day unfolds exactly as planned.
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