I like to eat but I need Spiritual Nourishment, too.

I don't like to spend the month of Tishrei talking non stop about the cooking and the shopping. I'd like to spend it talking about Teshuva, about renewal, about spiritual growth. I'd like to share insights and thoughts of Gedolim and Meforshim, not recipes by Susie Fishbein. I'd like to spend the weeks after the kids go back to school talking about the new seforim I have read, not the new way to use shallots or the great find from Loehmann's.
But we have eat, we have to be clothed, the house needs to be in order.

So I go shopping and see the cashiers more than I see my parents. I replenish the kirbies and peppers and brown rice and sweet potatoes and diet drinks from Israel. I peruse my cookbooks and use up our yearly quota of red meat within three weeks of meals.

But I hurry through the isles at the grocery stores, and try not to chat about the contents of my shopping cart.

And I think- I am providing an environment for my family where Yomtov is special, it is exciting to prepare for, we do (or eat) special things, but the focus is not the food- it is growth, introspection, development of middos.
I hope my children take that away from the Yomtov table.