Before every Passover I make a list of dinners I’ll make during the holiday. This year I had quite a nice list:
- Baked flounder over tomatoes
- Kale salad with Meyer lemon vinaigrette
- Cauliflower-crust pizza
- Cauliflower cous cous
- Quinoa-stuffed peppers
Which would have been fantastic if we hadn’t ended up eating matzah pizza every night.
This may explain why, when we visited my folks in New York over April vacation, we overindulged in the carbs (but maybe it doesn’t explain–I’d probably have eaten the same way even without Passover just ending). Our first day there, the kids and I started with bagels from Murray’s.
From there, we had a very special lunch at Sugar Sweet Sunshine. (No, there’s nothing other than cupcakes, pudding, and cookies on the menu. Why do you ask?)
For dessert we went to Economy Candy.
And for a snack we had bialys from Kossar’s.
Adam wasn’t with us during the day, but that evening he arrived, we ditched the kids, and went out for pasta.
Luckily, I made up for it all by… well, not exercising. The kids ran around a lot. We are big playground explorers in New York. But as for me, I meandered. And I ate. And I ate a little more.
(And come someone explain this phenomenon to me? No matter how much sidewalk there is–note the photo below–my son is compelled to walk in the plantings. This happens on the walk home from school when the sides are covered in snow, in the rainy season when there’s mud in the side patches, in gardens where there are fresh fragile plantings, in the streets where there’s plenty of traffic. No matter how much I yell at him to get back on the sidewalk, he gravitates toward the sides. This photo was snapped right after I told him to get out of the newly budding tulips.)
So the food intake hasn’t been great. Although I did finally get the perfect Peeps. A friend gave me Peeps during Passover, which I put away for after the holiday. And then the Tweedle Twirp gave me some Peeps. The key is opening both so they are stale. While I can’t resist eating the first box before they get properly stale, by the time I get to the next box (the next morning), the Peeps are perfect.
The Duchess and I have sworn we’ll get back to our healthy eating. We keep track of each other. And we will. Right after I get back from New Orleans…
1. Sorry about the carbs, but don’t feel too badly; after all, unless you hold by gebrokts*, matzah pizza is as ubiquitous on Passover as Maxwell House Haggadahs and macaroons.
2. Re: Kossar’s Bialys and Economy Candy: two underappreciated treasures of a NYC landscape that is fading into chain-store oblivion.
3. Re: walking through the plantings, mud, etc.: It’s genetics, plain and simple. My son did the same. All boys do it because we’re wired that way. Blame that pesky Y chromosome, if you’d like. Then again, what’s the point of a mud puddle if you can’t stomp through it?
*In a nutshell: You don’t let your matza get within a mile of anything wet for days 1-7. Some people (generally hassidim keep this custom) won’t even let matza sit on the table, so they keep it in ziploc bags for equine-style consumption only. So, you eat like Mr. Ed and (to add injury to insult) no matza balls or matza brei until the last day of the holiday. Feh.