Matzo Education Continues.

My down the hall neighbor just introduced me to matzos with candy coating and chocolate frosting. Move over, Cadbury mini-eggs. Happy Passover!

Passover Surprise!

I am Greek Orthodox and from Iowa. Despite these facts, I love matzos (pronounced "matzas"). They are right up there with other joyful signs of spring, like black jellybeans, motorcycles, and people in shorts wearing winter coats. I like them with butter, or jelly. I like them right out of the box. I even like that they leave little rounded crumbs everywhere. I'm not sure when or how this love affair started. When was it that my Catholic but multi-culti mom (she was a Unitarian at one point) bought one of the six Manischewitz boxes at the grocery store? Only one store had them, at the seasonal end of an aisle, along with the three jars of gefilte fish that they pulled out of storage each year. In Iowa City, the Jews (of which there were approximately nine) did not buy their gefilte at EconoFoods. I suspect they had a Passover hook-up somewhere legit, like New York, or Chicago, or Moline. So apparently I was the only person buying those matzos, which further means that I was probably eating and enjoying last year's matzos and that is all OK.

So, naturally, I was shocked by a few things when I moved to New York. First, it is possible to buy an industrial-sized lot of matzos at Fairway. It must have approximately 100 matzos, 5 boxes of 20 wrapped in plastic wrap. You would have to decide between this and toilet paper if you were taking the bus or booked too late and got one of the small crappy zip cars. This is heavy. This is double-bagged. This is the door-buster sale of passover.

Furthermore, one can buy regular, low-salt, whole-wheat, spelt, egg, onion, egg & onion, thin salted, thin unsalted, thin tea, yolk-free and everything varieties. I am told they come in chocolate-covered, but I haven't seen those lately.

My second shock was that Jews don't like matzos. It is apparently part of their cultural heritage to point out that matzos taste like cardboard. No they don't! They just look like cardboard! I understand that they are missing out on the joy of matzos because matzos are mandatory and they can't eat bagels and pizza. OK I will buy that. I get that they symbolize hardship. OK. All I'm saying is, appreciate what you have. They aren't that bad. It could be worse. You could have peeps.