musings on matzo

musings on matzo for me always begin like this. a week or two before passover, my husband, known to some as "mr sax," brings home a box of matzo and we begin eating it. he eats it with an imitation butter he strangely loves which frightens me because it comes in a spray bottle. a plastic spray bottle. he adores it. he says his discovery of it has sincerely changed his life. anyway, he sprays his sheets of matzo with his imitation butter and then squeezes honey from a container shaped like a little bear all over it. when he had a beard, matzo crumbs and honey would be all over it. it sounds disgusting but it was a bit sexy, interestingly. 

i like matzo with just about anything on it since i grew up thinking matzo was just the same as melba toast. it was a cracker and that was it. my mother treated it the way other mom's treated wonder bread or peppridge farm; it was just a brand of bread in my house. we ate matzo all year round, not just around passover. we had it for dinner once a week in the form of matzo brei.

Should  i like matzo? probably not. i think it is as bad for me as anything else that i truly like and not just because it's trendy, and really, truly, seriously, i think  i may be sushi'ed out,  a list of exciting and delicious foods i grew up eating including pizza, hot fudge sundaes, zeppoles (that's confectioner sugar dusted fried dough, an Italian delicacy), and White House subs from the shop in Atlantic City where they make the best sub in the world. the bread is the secret but also their signature chopped hot peppers and the way they shred the lettuce and slice the tomatoes so thin. 

But I digress. we're still talking about matzo. the best advice i can offer to anyone who is attending a seder or maybe gentiles who feel they need to bring matzo into their lives because their adored daughter has married a Jewish man and they have to adapt and learn to eat strange stuff is that to orient yourself to the matzo experience, try first eating it covered in chocolate. chocolate covered matzo is amazing.