You've Got To See What's On Mayim Bialik's Grocery List
Mayim Bialik had no idea her Instagram post would blow up as big as it did. It wasn't the kind of photo you'd expect to go viral - she didn't announce a pregnancy with a photo shoot (she's not, btw) or accidentally make public an, ahem, private pic - yet the image sparked multiple stories online and dozens of comments, prompting her to write her own blog post in response.
It was her Passover prep list - a one-page piece of paper from an accounting ledger, divvied into columns noting the days of the week, with tiny square Post-Its denoting every single thing she needed to do before Seder on Monday, April 10. (Why Post-Its? Because they're easier to move, should you fall behind schedule, of course.) It had the kind of detail you'd expect from an engineering team's scrum list. Or, perhaps, a scientist - which Bialik happens to be, in addition to playing one on Big Bang Theory.
Just looking at the 'gram could make you exhausted, especially as Bialik starts to break down the tasks for each day. First, every surface of her home has to be cleaned of leaveners (or crumbs from food that contains leavening agents, like cookies baked with baking soda) - down to the toothbrushes, depending on how serious you are - as part of a process known as removing chametz. The fridge, freezer, toaster, and oven are all scrubbed down too, and the everyday silverware and plates are swapped out for ones only used during the holiday. All that only covers the first two days of prep, which Bialik details in her blog post answering The Jewish Daily Forward's questions about her chart.
This isn't the first chart the Girling Up author has created for Passover, an eight-day period often called the "feast of unleavened bread," because (as you may have guessed) no leavened bread is eaten or stored in the house during the eight-day festival - not even a crumb.
"Some years it's a three-panel foldout," she says. "I take a clipboard to the supermarket. I'm that lady, so this fits really nicely on my clipboard," she explains, pulling out three more pages from an accounting ledger. Her grocery lists, it turns out, are even more detailed. There's one for dry goods, one for produce, and one for miscellany.
As she goes through recipes - some beet-stained, from years of use, others printouts from emails she sent to herself half a decade ago - she logs the ingredients in each of the lists, updating the quantities of each item, so she can see at a glance exactly how many boxes of matzoh to buy, or how many bottles of Kosher Coke to schlep home. (Short answer: At least one. Always.)
This year, she's pulling double duty, whipping up a second batch of her favorite recipes, like vegan matzoh ball soup, three types of casserole - leek, potato, and zucchini; eggplant farfel; onion and potato kugel - and a roasted bell pepper and eggplant salad, for a friend who recently underwent a masectomy.
"She just had surgery, so I asked her, 'Do you want me to cook for you?'" Bialik says, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper: "'Yes, I really do,' she told me, so I started cooking early."
Being vegan and gluten-free - the latter a new change to her diet - and cooking double the usual meals has put her organizational skills into overdrive. And prompted many, many trips to the CSA, supermarket, as well as placing orders on Amazon.
"You'd be surprised what you can find on Amazon," she says, moving bulging tote bags of groceries onto a tablecloth-covered counter (as part of the Passover tradition, she doesn't let the ingredients touch bare tabletops), to unpack her haul.
There were things you'd expect - several boxes of Matzoh, fresh vegetables, tapenade spreads, a vegan farfel - as well as a bunch you might not, but are every bit as essential for the mom of two, like vegan French dressing (her kids love to drizzle it on kale- and avocado-topped matzoh as a snack), quinoa (fair game during Passover, since it isn't a grain), and plenty of kosher snacks. There's faux Swedish fish, trail mix, chocolate bars, and Diddles, a potato crisp that comes in flavors like barbecue, onion garlic, and hot dog.
"It's very important to have lots of trashy sweets, so your kids don't complain they hate Passover," she jokes.
She also splurges on a two-liter of kosher Coke, which uses cane sugar instead of corn syrup, since the latter's off limits during Passover, and a bottle of Mayim Chaim, a soda that translates to "life water."
"I don't think my kids even like this soda that much, but they like the name," Bialik says.
There's one adults-only drink the actress always keeps at the table: a big bottle of Manischewitz. "It goes down just like grape juice, but with a kick," she explains. "Apparently, when Jews came to America, the vineyards that they were given were very, very sour, and they would over-sweeten the wine as an accident, but it became a tradition to have sweet, kosher wine."
Passover has become a huge tradition in Bialik's household ever since college, when she really started exploring her faith while attending UCLA. Though turning over her house and cooking for Passover may seem like a lot of work - because it is - it's also deeply satisfying.
"I really enjoyed observing all of the laws and rules that people have observed for thousands of years, because it really combined so much of my obsessive compulsive personality with my love of cooking and cleaning, and religious observance," she explains.
To learn even more about how Bialik prepares for Passover, check out the video above, or read her blog post at Grok Nation.
Follow Delish on Instagram.
You Might Also Like
