The secret is out: Raw fruits and vegetables are all kosher for passover!!!
This recent Times article about the burgeoning kosher industry really makes me nuts. Like those complaining in this piece from 1992, paying huge mark-ups for the ever increasing list of kosher certified products is seriously pulling on everyone’s purse strings. Well, this Shamir has some advice for you this Passover – and for year round – STOP BUYING SO MUCH PACKAGED AND PROCESSED FOODS! Did you hear that?
Raw fruits and vegetables are KOSHER FOR PASSOVER AND KOSHER YEAR ROUND. Give ’em a good wash and ta da – you have kosher food. While you may still need to get your basics – matzah, cooking oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper- with a certified heksher, anyone can make delicious, nutritious meals simply with items from the produce isle of ANY GROCERY STORE.
Whether you’re looking to save money, reduce packaging, or just eat something that’s good for you, this Shamir has a challenge for you: this Passover, try eating at least one meal per day out of purely fresh ingredients. It’s easier than you think!
Okay, I bet you’re asking: but what about PROTEIN? First of all, fruits and vegetables actually contain protein. Some K for P suggestions with high protein content include asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, walnuts, almonds, and spinach. My personal favorites are pumpkin seeds and quinoa. Second, you can always supplement your amazing raw meal with dairy, eggs, fish or meat if those are a part of your regular diet anyway.
So, friends – quit your bitchin’ about the high expense the pareve ice cream and passover cereal – and take a simple stroll down the produce isle. And leave some comments on how it’s going!
**For some excellent vegetarian kosher for passover recipes (most of which can be adapted to be pareve), check out these suggestions from the Jew and the Carrot.
Thanks, Shamirpower– I have a general policy of not buying anything that’s specifically KFP, except for matzah, a few other staples, and. . . um. . . non-fair trade chocolate (it’s just once a year!) And no, I don’t eat kitniyot–I’ve never understood why Ashkenazi Jews (of which I am one) assume that potatoes are the only vegetables fit to serve at seder. I find the “would I eat this the rest of the year” test to be a good one for everything but matzah.
Some K for P suggestions with high protein content include asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, walnuts, almonds, and spinach.
I heard that cauliflower and broccoli might be kitniyot.
I heard that wheat is a problem, too. Buy my all-new no-wheat no-chshash matza!
When I was in Hebrew school, our teacher made it very clear that all fruits and vegetables were kosher all year round– I had no idea that she was letting us in on “a secret.” The irony of Ashkenazi thinking only potatoes are kosher for Pesach is that potatoes are not even indigenous to Europe– they’re from the Americas originally. (Something I realized one evening while making latkes.)
I’m fairly certain that Ashkenazim used turnips for everything in the days before potatoes.
Ew.
this is great, Shamir! I love that Passover gives us a chance to strip down to the basics and eat a little lighter (aside from the seders, of course). Hard boiled eggs, matzah, and fresh salads, and maybe a homemade macaroon or two – what more do you really need?
Thanks for the linky love to our recipes!
Then again, you might want to check out Kosher.org, where Rabbi Abadi shows how even Ashkenazim can eat most normal processed foods during Pesach.
He takes the sensible (and popular in Israel) notion that even if you don’t eat kitniyot, you can oil from kitniyot that comprise a minority of the food. So a little corn syrup doesn’t make something treif for Pesach.
It’s actually quite revolutionary for someone who had grown accustomed to the OU list. It will be quite a shock, to be honest, to see some of these foods in our house of Pesach. But I can’t in good conscience rely on the halachic rulings of the OU’s chief halachic authority, Rabbi Herschel Schachter.
So is “no gebrochts” simply a more formal way of expressing the value expressed in this post?