Passover: The Story So Far

After composing The Ultimate Passover Guide for Vegetarians and Vegans and featuring a guest post about nut-based Passover cuisine, I was ready for Passover.

For the second straight year, I spent the first seder with the NYC Jewish Veg*ns MeetUp group. (Click here to read last year's post.) The host, who did a Herculean job preparing most of the food for 21 people, was busy in the kitchen most of the night, so I wound up leading the seder. It proved a good opportunity to promote heebnvegan! The entirely vegan and kosher-for-Passover menu featured matzoh ball soup, mushroom-walnut pate, charoset, salad, potato/kale/onion kugel, sweet-potato/carrot/currant kugel, broccoli "cheese" casserole with matzoh stuffing (the only dish to feature a kitniyot-based product), grilled vegetables with spicy tomato sauce, five varieties of macaroons, seven-layer chocolate matzoh cake, and Rescue Chocolate's "Don't Passover Me" Bark.

Last night, I went to a cousin's seder with about 17 other relatives. As my video comparison suggests, the family seder (click here to watch the family version of "Chad Gad Ya") was more traditional than the MeetUp seder (click here to watch the MeetUp version of "Chad Gad Ya"). My mom had made the Passover Nutloaf featured in last week's guest post, and it seemed fitting to have nut-based food at the forefront of my meal. After all, nuts have a long history as the center of my family's seders, through a family tradition called the Nut Game, which is essentially bocce with hazelnuts:



I'm responsible for all my vegan, kosher-for-Passover food preparation for the next six days, and I'm not at all intimidated about this. I was already excited to cook with all the fresh vegetables, fruit, and soybeans (still in the pods) I bought at the Union Square Greenmarket. I also found myriad vegan, kosher-for-Passover goodies at a kosher supermarket on the Upper West Side called Supersol, including mango sorbet, matbucha, cashew butter, mini-croutons, hot cereal, and rotelle and shells pasta.