A Love Letter to Matzo

I’d not say these are the perfect of occasions. I’d not say these are the chillest of occasions. I’d not say, as we emerge from a darkish and sizzling winter right into a moist and warmer spring, that these are essentially the most predictable of occasions. And but I can not let you know 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 degree of dangerous as when it’s been sitting inside a field in a moist basement for 11 and ¾ months. What different meals are you able to identify which can be, with out exception, at all times at their highest…and concurrently at their very worst? Matzo is so dangerous. I nonetheless love matzo.

Over the previous few months, we’ve been subjected to the introduction of Woman Dinner, #WaterTok, Fruit Roll-Up ice cream, the cottage cheese-ification of all the things…you’re acquainted, I’m certain. Are you aware what wasn’t featured in anybody’s Woman 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 desires it to! None of us aspire to reside in a world the place matzo is aspirational. And that’s simply a few 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 the right way to finest organize a Seder plate amidst a bigger Seder unfold, however nobody will speak about matzo. We’ll all sit there and grimace as we pile charoset after which horseradish onto the automobile that’s matzo—a mandated participant on the similar desk—and touch upon all the things we simply ate…apart 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 should seemingly 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 can be, with out exception, so synonymous with a vacation however no person desires to speak about consuming them? 

Yearly for so long as I can keep in mind, proper across the time the solar begins rising nearer to six a.m. than to 7, two packing containers 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 yr, throughout days in February and the start of March, at all times insisting the strawberry jam makes it so significantly better. It doesn’t, and so they comprehend it, but it surely’s good that all of us faux. 

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

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