Despite what many people think, Passover doesn’t sneak up on you, it just feels like it does. Well, here is your alert….
IT’S COMING!!!!!! The first evening is March 30!!!!!!!
Loud enough for you? Good. Now, let’s get down to business. The dietary rules of Passover are strict, much stricter than even the everyday kosher rules. Families often end up spending a lot of money on last-minute replacing their pantries with kosher for Passover goods. It’s not only avoiding anything bread-like but anything that can rise or leaven. Many people include corn on that list, which means no corn syrup. If you want to know more, you can check out my Passover post from a couple of years ago: How to budget for Passover
Well, here is where advanced planning is to your advantage. Now is the time to start gathering your Passover groceries.
The main thing is matzah. Get it now. Not kidding, go now. Most stores have it on sale now and will remove the sale prices on Passover, hoping that people will have forgotten to plan ahead and will have to buy at their regular price. You can wait a little while to see how cheap it will go, but don’t wait too long, the price will start going up soon.
Now that you know that it’s coming, start keeping an eye out for sales on meats and produce. If you wait until Passover starts, you will have to pay whatever the price in the store is. When you plan ahead, you can get them now (or whenever they’re on sale over the next six weeks) You have the next six weeks to buy stuff as it goes on sale and store it. The same goes for produce. Since a lot of Passover meals are made fresh, you might want to see if any frozen fruits and veggies go on sale or buy fresh things on sale and freeze, can, dry, or otherwise store them yourself. You would be surprised how easy it is to do yourself, there’s a lot of sites that explain how to do it, check them out.
And speaking of cooking fresh, to avoid the panic of having time to cook during Passover, you now have six weeks to make a meal or two to freeze in your spare time. Now, I’m not suggesting casseroles for eight days straight. It’s bad enough to go without both pasta and cake. Besides casseroles, you can make up veggie and meat mixes to freeze now and toss in the crockpot later. Ok, you don’t need to pre-prepare every meal but having at least a couple ready to thaw is a great way to avoid stress if you need to work late or just are too tired (from lack of carbs and yummy desserts) to make a huge meal.
I’m going to be using the next six weeks to plan my Passover too. The Passover will be the first time I will be feeding not only myself but my boyfriend and his kids too so it will be a learning curve for all of us. I’ll be posting my planning, shopping, and preparing so stay tuned.
