On Pesach and Eating and Food

[gnomi]

Pesach (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

Comments

[ghilledhu.livejournal.com]

The other interesting thing is all the "cheats" that have sprung up: things which are technically pesach-safe, but which, to my mind, violate the spirit of things. If you're going to eat the bread of affliction, then eat the bread of affliction, dammit! Don't eat fluffy rolls and cakes and say it's okay because they're made with matzoh meal. Also, I never quite understood why legumes were banned. Can you enlighten me on that one? I mean, they aren't leavened.

I have to say, though, that I love a lot of the traditional passover foods: matzoh balls, which never felt like a cheat to me...maybe because they're not trying to be bread? macaroons, those yummy fruit slices, fried matzoh...and now I'm hungry.