34 healthy passover recipes

The Passover story is a pretty dramatic affair. According to the Bible, Jews were slaves to the Egyptian Pharaoh until the prophet Moses came to set them free, and God sent 10 horrendous plagues to punish the Egyptian taskmasters. There were frogs, vicious hailstorms, and locusts that destroyed all the crops. When the Jews finally got the okay to leave Egypt after the plagues hit, they had to pack up so quickly that they didn’t have time to finish baking, and so they took their unleavened bread with them.

To commemorate that experience, Jews today observe Passover by avoiding bread products for a solid eight days. Personally, I’ve always thought of the no-bread thing as the 11th plague, since to me a week without cereal, cookies, bagels, or granola bars is something akin to torture. Beyond the unbearable cravings, a stomach full of matzo, eggs, potatoes, and oil is rarely a happy one.

But Passover doesn't have to be so stressful. In fact, the holiday's a great opportunity to experiment in the kitchen, finding new kinds of easy, healthy, and — most importantly — tasty recipes that meet the kosher-for-Passover criteria. To help you out, we've rounded up 34 Passover recipes, from matzo brei with veggies to quinoa almond butter cookies, sure to please those observing Passover and even those who aren't.

MATZO

1. Homemade Matzoh
First off, we'd like to let everyone know that it's possible to make your own matzo instead of chowing on the store-bought variety. It's pretty simple, too: The recipe below calls for just flour and water, plus a little mixing, cutting, rolling, and baking. And nothing tastes better than the satisfaction of knowing you're an awesome homesteader.

For 34 recipes for breakfast and brunch, veggies and side dishes, meats and main dishes and desserts, go to Greatist.com.