Essay

This Passover, Play With your Food!

Avi­va Kanoff
April 6, 2012
Ear­li­er this week, Avi­va Kanoff wrote about quinoa, the super­food. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil and MyJew­ish­Learn­ing.

This year, you won’t have to bribe your kids to eat their veg­eta­bles. With so many col­or­ful and excit­ing foods out there, they’ll be beg­ging you for more! Can you blame them? With pic­tures of tri-col­or cau­li­flower, and danc­ing rain­bow car­rots, they’ll think din­ner was cre­at­ed by Dis­ney. Throw in easy-to-fol­low recipes and col­or­ful pic­tures and watch out, they may even be cook­ing you dinner!

Mag­ic Spaghet­ti Squash

What kid doesn’t love a good mag­ic trick?! Espe­cial­ly one they can per­form themselves!

And, for just under a dol­lar a pound, it’s real­ly a win-win sit­u­a­tion. If you haven’t already guessed from the title of this para­graph, I’m talk­ing about spaghet­ti squash, all nat­ur­al and so healthy! Kids love pas­ta (and this looks just like it), and com­bined with the fun of shred­ding it them­selves in under a minute, they won’t miss the 200 calo­ries they are sav­ing by avoid­ing the real thing.

Rata­toul­lie, the Dish, Not the Mouse.

Kids are famil­iar with the car­toon chef named Rata­toul­lie, but, lit­tle do they know, it’s also a healthy and deli­cious food! Maybe they can use a French accent while they are eat­ing it too!

Pop Goes the Quinoa

Chil­dren will watch in amaze­ment as the water dis­ap­pears and the quinoa pops out of its seed dur­ing the cook­ing process. A great source of pro­tein and fiber, and it’s also light and fluffy!

Please Eat the Flow­ers!

Who knew you could eat flow­ers? With recipes like stuffed zuc­chi­ni blos­soms and flow­er­ing chives, you can encour­age some­thing out of the ordi­nary and pro­vide a unique expe­ri­ence at the din­ner table. This will stim­u­late your child’s curios­i­ty and make them excit­ed and inter­est­ed about food they’re eat­ing.

Crayola’d Cau­li­flower


With cau­li­flower avail­able in col­ors like pur­ple and yel­low, your kids will think din­ner was brought to them by Dr. Seuss.

Danc­ing Rain­bow Car­rots


Add a touch of whim­sy to your table with these ire­sistable rain­bow baby car­rots. If that goes over well, you can intro­duce them to rain­bow chard too!

And Final­ly, for Dessert…

Meet kiki-riki, the tznius banana lady!


It’s not every day you see a lady with bananas on her head! Your kids will fall in love with this wild banana lady just like I did when I encoun­tered her in a Jamaican jun­gle as she chased me with her machete. My recipe for banana muffins is so easy and a great way to intro­duce kids to bak­ing. There’s no bet­ter way to incor­po­rate the impor­tance of Passover into their lives than through yum­my food and hands on, inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ences.

Cajun Car­rot Fries

Ingre­di­ents:
• 8 – 10 large car­rots, peeled and cut into thin slices, like ​“fries”
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• ¼ tsp. cayenne pep­per
• salt and black pep­per, to taste

Direc­tions:
1. Pre­heat your oven to 450°.
2. Grease and/​or line a large cook­ie sheet.
3. Toss the sliced car­rots with olive oil, cayenne pep­per, salt and black pep­per.
4. Arrange the fries in a sin­gle lay­er on your bak­ing sheet and bake for 15 min­utes, then flip the fries over and bake for anoth­er 10 – 15 min­utes, until crisp. Serve warm.

Egg­plant Parmi­giana

Ingre­di­ents:
• 2 cups toma­to sauce
• 1 large egg­plant, sliced into ½ inch thick round pieces
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup mat­zoh meal or ground wal­nut
(or half & half)
• 8 oz. moz­zarel­la cheese
• 3 ounces goat cheese (if unavail­able, sub­sti­tute with addi­tion­al moz­zarel­la)
• salt and pep­per

Direc­tions:
1. Pre­heat oven to 350°.
2. Salt egg­plant on both sides and leave for 30 min­utes until liq­uid is released.
3. Crack and mix eggs in one bowl, and pour mat­zoh meal and/​or ground wal­nuts and sea­son­ing into a sec­ond bowl.
4. Dip egg­plant slices of egg­plant first in eggs, then in mat­zoh meal and/​or ground wal­nuts.
5. Fry each slice in canola oil for 2 min­utes on each side until soft.
6. In a 9×12 inch pan, cre­ate lay­ers with egg­plant, goat cheese, and toma­to sauce (cre­ates about 3 lay­ers).
7. Top with moz­zarel­la cheese.
8. Bake, uncov­ered, for 20 min­utes or until moz­zarel­la cheese is melted.


Both recipes can be found in The No Pota­to Passover (Brio Books; 2012 Hard­cov­er $29.95)

Avi­va Kanoff paints, teach­es a mixed media art class, and dab­bles in pho­tog­ra­phy. Her cre­ative approach to life led her to artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion with food, and after years of cre­at­ing her own recipes and work­ing as a per­son­al chef, she wrote The No-Pota­to Passover.

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