A Love Letter to Matzo

I’d not say these are one of the best of occasions. I’d not say these are the chillest of occasions. I’d not say, as we emerge from a darkish and scorching winter right into a moist and warmer spring, that these are probably the most predictable of occasions. And but I can not inform you how excited I’m that we’re barreling towards Passover. Passover sucks (a week-plus of unleavened meals, a definite heaviness within the type of fixed reminders of our previous, an excessive amount of sugar-wine, and many others.), but it surely at all times brings matzo occasions. And I positively adore matzo occasions.

To be clear: Matzo sucks, too. No, I hear you—matzo is a mammothly necessary meals, a colossally symbolic one. No, no actually—I perceive (I’ll connect my Hebrew highschool certificates right here, the place is yours?!)! But additionally, matzo is a worse model of a giant and rancid salt-free Saltine. Even when it’s at its absolute freshest and finest, it’s nonetheless the identical stage of unhealthy as when it’s been sitting inside a field in a humid basement for 11 and ¾ months. What different meals are you able to identify which might be, with out exception, at all times at their best possible…and concurrently at their very worst? Matzo is so unhealthy. I nonetheless love matzo.

Over the previous few months, we’ve been subjected to the introduction of Lady Dinner, #WaterTok, Fruit Roll-Up ice cream, the cottage cheese-ification of all the pieces…you’re acquainted, I’m positive. Are you aware what wasn’t featured in anybody’s Lady Dinners? Damaged shards of stable flour-water. Are you aware what nobody was consuming that made them so thirsty, prompting them to bum-rush an space Goal and monopolize all of the Stanleys? Holy holey cardboard. Matzo won’t ever go viral. No one needs it to! None of us aspire to dwell in a world the place matzo is aspirational. And that’s simply a number of the fantastic thing about matzo.

Over the course of the subsequent week, on the web and IRL, we are going to see lush vats of charoset, hacks for horseradish housing, and takes on finest prepare a Seder plate amidst a bigger Seder unfold, however nobody will speak about matzo. We are going to all sit there and grimace as we pile charoset after which horseradish onto the car that’s matzo—a mandated participant on the similar desk—and touch upon all the pieces we simply ate…aside from the matzo. To be clear, matzo will make steady appearances in all this super-cute Seder content material internationally throughout the vacation…however it would possible be enveloped in attractive, sentimental matzo covers, by no means to be seen by the bare eye. What different meals are you able to identify which might be, with out exception, so synonymous with a vacation however no one needs to speak about consuming them? 

Yearly for so long as I can bear in mind, proper across the time the solar begins rising nearer to six a.m. than to 7, two bins of matzo seem on my dad and mom’ countertop proper by the espresso machine. They’re not prepping for Passover fairly but; not explicitly. However they’re slowly rotating buttered or cream-cheesed items of it into their breakfast routines. Totally different pots of toppings—candy preserves, salty spreads, straight salt for that already salty butter—find yourself unfold round their plates. They combine and match their matzo toppings from piece to piece. They provide me a bit each time, each single 12 months, throughout days in February and the start of March, at all times insisting the strawberry jam makes it so a lot better. It doesn’t, they usually understand it, but it surely’s good that all of us fake. 

A number of weeks later, contemporary bins stack up on their counter, subsequent to the fridge, on the desk. There’s quite a lot of fucking matzo earlier than there’s none in any respect for months and months. I really like the brown-and-yellow stacks of bins. I really like the pre-matzo occasions that each single 12 months dovetail us proper into the matzo occasions. They’re fully predictable, unremarkable occasions, and I really like the bowel-clogging cracker that ushers all of it in.

Passover sucks. Matzo sucks. I really like Passover. I really like the matzo occasions.