This is just a quick reminder that now is a great time to make yourself some notes for next year’s Pesach.
What recipes worked? Which ones flopped? Make a note.
Did you pack away any unopened food stuffs for next year? Are you taping up and packing away your KLP spices or tea bags? Make a note.
Maybe you realized that you really needed a new whisk, knife or ladle. Make a “to-buy” list for yourself.
Tip: If you have a smart phone, that’s a great place to keep your shopping list. That way, the next time you spy a housewares clearance sale, you’ll know exactly which bargains to scoop up.
I like to save all my Passover notes in Google calendar, where I set an alert for myself about three weeks before NEXT Pesach. That way when I’m starting to get that “panicky Pesach” feeling, I’ll have my voice of reason to calm me down!
One thing I noted last year was that I wanted a “Passover pantry”. We had seen it at a friends’ house and I thought it was such a brilliant idea. Well, not three weeks after Pesach, I found this one on sale at Aldi for $30 – a third of the cost at Home Depot!
It sat in my garage, unassembled, until a few weeks before this Pesach. During chag, it resided in my dining room, in a niche that remarkably is just the right size for it. I LOVED HAVING IT.
If you can’t stand the counters being covered with Pesach food, dishes and pots and pans — and you don’t have the room in (or inclination to rearrange) your kitchen cupboards, this pantry is a wonderful solution. Keep an eye out for a sale over the next 11 months!
Did you leave yourself Pesach notes? What do you have in yours?
where are you going to put it now?
Mara, I was planning to email you and thank you for sharing this tip last year! I had never even tried to use Google calendar, but I followed your suggestion last year. It was truly wonderful! Right around the time I started to get nervous, I got an email from Google calendar. I had completely forgotten that I had entered anything on the calendar. There was my shopping list!!! I wrote down quantities we used up (how many eggs, for instance) and items we would need to have on hand. I set my list to repeat every day for a week. What a fantastic tip! Of course I’m doing this again–it’s brilliant!! Thank you! As for the pesach cabinet–I used to put up a metal storage shelf in my dining room for pesach. A few years ago my husband built floor-to-ceiling shelves into a small alcove off our kitchen. Now our pesach items stay there year round. It makes pesach so much easier if you can figure out a way to do this; we eliminated a lot of shlepping.
I’ve been doing this for a few years already, and it saves me so much time, frustration and second-guessing! I keep it all in Word Documents–how much I bought of each item; where I bought it and what it cost; how much we had left over and what we ran out of and needed more of before the end of Pesach; and what I have enough of for next year (paper goods, for example) so I don’t buy things I don’t need. I appreciate your suggestion of putting my to-buy list on my iPod so I can buy those items when I find them on sale!
What surprises me still is that it took me at least 15 Passovers to discover this trick! Now (and for the last 20 years or more) I start a “Notes for —-(next year)” page in my Passover manila folder that is stuffed with recipes. In addition to noting what I put away, I note the things I usually put away that have been used up (e.g. spices), and whether I bought too much or too little of something. Very low-tech! But I do keep a master shopping list, all my menus, and my pre-Pesach “chore list” in Word.
this was my first Pesach cooking and this tip will save me a tremendous amount of time and money! Thank you!
In addition to a “what we put away list”, I use Google Drive to save recipes. They never get wet or torn and I can share them with whomever. Also I save menus from both Succos and Pesach, which also helps to keep the shopping more focused.
I keep mine in an excel doc, including menus, shopping lists, what we eat (or didn’t!), and a wishlist for the next year. That way, when deals come up, I know what I want to add!