A Love Letter to Matzo

I’d not say these are the perfect of instances. I’d not say these are the chillest of instances. 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 instances. And but I can’t 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.), however it all the time brings matzo instances. And I positively adore matzo instances.

To be clear: Matzo sucks, too. No, I hear you—matzo is a mammothly essential meals, a colossally symbolic one. No, no actually—I perceive (I’ll connect my Hebrew highschool certificates right here, the place is yours?!)! But in addition, matzo is a worse model of a big and off salt-free Saltine. Even when it’s at its absolute freshest and greatest, 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 can be, with out exception, all the time at their easiest…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 Woman Dinner, #WaterTok, Fruit Roll-Up ice cream, the cottage cheese-ification of every thing…you’re acquainted, I’m certain. Have you learnt what wasn’t featured in anybody’s Woman Dinners? Damaged shards of stable flour-water. Have you learnt 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 person 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 great 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 tips on how to greatest 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 car that’s matzo—a mandated participant on the similar desk—and touch upon every thing we simply ate…apart from the matzo. To be clear, matzo will make steady appearances in all this super-cute Seder content material the world over in the course of the vacation…however it can seemingly be enveloped in beautiful, 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 needs 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 mother and father’ 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 chunk each time, each single 12 months, throughout days in February and the start of March, all the time insisting the strawberry jam makes it so a lot better. It doesn’t, and so they comprehend it, however it’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 loads of fucking matzo earlier than there’s none in any respect for months and months. I really like the brown-and-yellow stacks of packing containers. I really like the pre-matzo instances that each single 12 months dovetail us proper into the matzo instances. They’re utterly predictable, unremarkable instances, 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 instances.