Passover yields overabundance of charoset, cold veal and herbs by Erica Meyer Rauzin Jewish Bulletin of Northern California The days of Passover are no time to diet, but as I've been dieting since Rosh Hashanah, I'm sort of on a roll. Unfortunately, we can't have any rolls during Pesach, but I am making do. Actually, there is nothing to eat in my house at all during the week of Passover, unless you count seder leftovers and Pesachdik breakfast cereal. This is OK if you feel like cold veal breast or gluey tsimmes, again, or if you are 7 years old and live on cereal anyway. It is not OK if you follow any kind of rules-- beyond kashrut, which continues in good health -- about what you eat. On my particular diet (cheers for Dr. Atkins!), I can eat protein, a little fat and a few vegetables. I cannot eat carbohydrates. But although we have no chametz, Passover could be the National Holiday of Carbs: matzah, matzah balls, matzah stuffing and potatoes in every conceivable form, from mashed to minced, from baked to broiled to boiled. For a holiday with a restriction on starches, we're not having any trouble locating bland white stuff that tastes better with butter. Having eaten all the veal I can stand, I am reduced to eating chicken or cheese for every meal. I don't really mind: That's what I've been eating for months. But it doesn't feel particularly festive. My husband is lactose intolerant: so much for cream cheese or butter or sour cream, all things that make Passover dining worthwhile. My oldest daughter has low blood sugar, which means forget about the chocolate matzah candy, the chocolate-covered almond candy, the marshmallows in coconut, the macaroons, the chocolate triangular lollipops or the maple syrup over matzah brei. So the three of us stand in front of the refrigerator. We know we want something. We suspect that the fridge does contain things we could supposedly eat, but our search has peculiar results. We find that we have cornered the world market on horseradish. It would be possible to conduct five or six more seders and not use up the supply of horseradish we have accumulated. We have enough horseradish to eat nothing but gefilte fish for months -- but, of course, we are already out of gefilte fish. We also continue to own, but not eat, an amazingly massive amount of parsley. For an herb, it's a hardy thing, but once I've thrown a handful into the soup and decorated a couple of fruit cups, I really don't have much need for it. Most of the other seder things have gone the way of the wind. I pitched the salt water and the lamb bones; no utility there. We ate the eggs on the spot, as well as the newly ceremonial orange -- added to the plate to commemorate the role of women in the Exodus sage. We finished the other odds and ends, but I still have a vat of charoset. Just one short week before Passover, the charoset was the most novel, best-tasting substance in the world. I made two enormous bowls of it as soon as the kitchen was Pesachdik, and I had to keep my kiddy helpers from scarfing it all on the spot. Wrong again, Mommy-O. I should have given them soup spoons and told them to dig in and eat up, because now I have enough charoset to mortar a mile-long sidewalk. I could mold it into cupcake shapes and try to pass it off as small bits of a very moist fruitcake. We could eat charoset for breakfast, lunch and dinner until Shavuot and, I think, there would still be some left. I am beginning to believe that it multiplies in the night when no one is looking. And on top of that, the darned stuff won't spoil. It isn't soggy. It still smells great. Soon it will take on a separate identity as an individual life form, and commandeer the house. Next year, I won't start with two dozen apples. Next year, I'll start with two apples. But that's what I said last year. Let me pause to note that this is humor. How fortunate we are, how blessed, to have enough extra food to make jokes about. How aware we are that this is the reason we can't bring ourselves to throw anything out. At this holiday of freedom, we do appreciate how wonderful it is to celebrate liberation from want and hunger. But now that I have acknowledged the obvious, help me out. Have a little piece of veal with a big dollop of horseradish. Take a bowl of this dreadful cereal. Take two. And while you're at it, eat some charoset. Source: http://www.jewishsf.com/bk970425/etdance.htm