Passover Food

It is early in the Passover week, and I am enjoying the food (soon, I will be missing legumes and grains and dreading matzah). Some foods we never have except for at Passover--like gefilte fish, and some things we eat occasionally through out the year--like matzah ball soup and deviled eggs, but they always remind me of Passover. I have leftover gefilte fish for lunch, look forward to heating up leftover matza ball soup when I get home, and am dissapointed when we finish off the last leftover deviled egg. Then it is time to start cooking--but the longer we put it off the longer it is before I realize that matzah really isn't very good. There is a reason we call it the bread of affliction.

While Pesach is officially the holiday without bread, unofficially it is the holiday of the egg. Not only do we serve eggs at the seder, but all foods that I make during Passover require oodles of eggs. Popovers require an egg for every three popovers. I probably make 6-8 dozen popoevers during the week, so that is 2-3 dozen eggs. Passover is the holiday that allows me to have the knowledge that my two soup pots hold 5 dozen eggs for hard boiling. At no other time during the year do I need to have this knowledge. All Passover desserts seem to take an inordinate number of eggs. I save my egg whites from through out the year (carbonara sauce is a favorite at my house, as is alfredo, and both generate their fair share of leftover egg whites) and ask my friend Dina to create dozens of fanciful merengue cookies. It is almost the only time I open my refridgerator, see 10 dozen eggs lined up on the shelf and wonder "Do I need more eggs?".