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.

Job Searching Poet.

I need to find a metaphor,
Or simile is better,
To illustrate the agony
Of drafting cover letters.

In other things I write,
I sometimes have some luck.
When it comes to cover letters,
I just can't give a darn.

Big-boy bed.

$500
Sleep next to it on the floor
Should have bought a tent

Sydney's Question

The city is really a fright.
A toddler summed up the sight;
My little friend said,
With a tilt of her head,
Mommy, I thought snow was white?

Pita.

This fall I suddenly decided I needed to learn how to make cheese pie (the family calls this “pita”) and spinach pie. I compiled the recipes from YiaYia, Nouna Frances, and Thespina. Or, more accurately, they were compiled for me by Thespina, on the phone with me, while YiaYia and Fran helped compile in the background. Nouna Frances said she was the first in the family to use cream cheese. YiaYia seemed unconvinced about the cream cheese, and at the time I never thought she would try it. I’m not sure if she has yet.

So far I have made one pita and one spinach pie, with some success. I find it very relaxing to put down each phyllo layer, smooth it out. It’s cool and smooth and fragile. Go too fast and you break it. But if you do break it, no problem, just paint a little extra butter on the cracks. And also on the bubbles and the holes. But always, always remember to save a perfect layer for the top. And you should probably paint that one with extra butter too.

Making pita transforms me into an exacting person who wears aprons and uses pastry brushes. And it closes the gap between my family “Out East” and my Iowa childhood, where the only Greek words I knew were nicknames for cookies (KBs, melos, koulouria) and “ela,” which means “get over here.” (This is also a good word to know if you ever work in a diner.)

At Thanksgiving last year, Thespina reminisced about being the kid who brought pita to school for lunch, before it was trendy for fifth graders to eat “ethnic foods.” So I think about how Nouna Frances cracked all those eggs (maybe 10, maybe a dozen, I’m not sure where she came out on that) and while she was doing it thought about her kids, making sure they had a good lunch. And I imagine that many years ago, standing in her kitchen, that made her happy. Maybe she was tired, or bored by repeating the task, or it was late, or the kids were yelling, or my Nouno hadn’t taken out the skoupidia (I’m not sure why I know this word). But I am sure that at least once or twice (and maybe that is all you need) she stood there making pita for her kids and was completely utterly happy with making those layers for those kids, to take out into the world.

My Nouna Frances died in 2009. She must have made hundreds of pitas. She brought them to parties, weddings and funerals. She threw showers. She made two dinners (and pita) whenever we came over. And she laughed, laughed, laughed at all the loud fun times in her kitchen. And the triumph of her life, as I see it and as I’m almost positive she saw it, was raising three children to have joy. So I strap on that apron and crack those eggs and I hope over the years I will get the recipe right too. Or at least good enough that I can impress my son’s teacher at Greek school next September.

Snowman in the Rain.

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D0o:]

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The end.