On Pesach and Eating and Food
Apr. 24th, 2008 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gnomiPesach (Passover) is an odd holiday in relation to food. There's all sorts of normal, everyday things we can't eat, there's a bunch of foods that seem to traditionally only show up for Passover, and food seems to be of particular focus in people's minds during the holiday.
Because on Pesach we can't eat chametz (which has come to include much more than specifically leavened food) and, as Ashkenazim (people with roots in Eastern Europe), we don't eat kitnyot (legumes), there's all sorts of interesting things that are excised for the week. And other things appear in Pesach-only formats.
I eat much more meat (and potatoes) on Pesach than I eat the rest of the year.
One of the Pesach-only foods is Coca-Cola, which appears in its traditional sugared variety instead of the high-fructose corn syrup version that has become standard.
But there's something more: it's very hard to find caffeine free Coke or coffee or just about anything, because the decaffeination process uses (in ways I don't know) chametz ingredients. And so for me, having cut approximately 90% of the caffeine out of my diet, it's a bit more challenging to find what to drink (I'm drinking a lot of water, but I always drink a lot of water, and I like something warm with my breakfast). I've got caffeinated tea that I'm drinking instead of my coffee in the morning (since I don't have a Pesach coffee pot in the office), and a bit of the Pesach Coke over the yom tov, but other than that, I'm mostly sticking to water.
I love Pesach, don't get me wrong, but part of me is looking forward to returning to the normality of my regular diet.
Omer, day 4
Because on Pesach we can't eat chametz (which has come to include much more than specifically leavened food) and, as Ashkenazim (people with roots in Eastern Europe), we don't eat kitnyot (legumes), there's all sorts of interesting things that are excised for the week. And other things appear in Pesach-only formats.
I eat much more meat (and potatoes) on Pesach than I eat the rest of the year.
One of the Pesach-only foods is Coca-Cola, which appears in its traditional sugared variety instead of the high-fructose corn syrup version that has become standard.
But there's something more: it's very hard to find caffeine free Coke or coffee or just about anything, because the decaffeination process uses (in ways I don't know) chametz ingredients. And so for me, having cut approximately 90% of the caffeine out of my diet, it's a bit more challenging to find what to drink (I'm drinking a lot of water, but I always drink a lot of water, and I like something warm with my breakfast). I've got caffeinated tea that I'm drinking instead of my coffee in the morning (since I don't have a Pesach coffee pot in the office), and a bit of the Pesach Coke over the yom tov, but other than that, I'm mostly sticking to water.
I love Pesach, don't get me wrong, but part of me is looking forward to returning to the normality of my regular diet.
Omer, day 4
