Passover is one of my favorite holidays and also the one I am most likely to observe haphazardly. Don’t get me wrong – I love a rousing rendition of “Dayenu” and will absolutely eat your gefilte fish if you don’t want it, but a whole week with no leavened anything? Just the idea fills me with dread.
But every year, I go into Passover swearing this will be the year that I make it through the whole week without a misstep. I won’t eat anything that could even remotely be construed as leavened, and for extra credit, I’ll even attempt to keep kosher! Or what I understand to be kosher.*
This year has a little twist on my normal preparations, though, with an infant who has recently discovered solid foods. With Passover on the horizon, I am trying to mentally prepare myself for a week of no bread, no rice, no biscuits, no scones…
Wait. What were we talking about?
Right. Passover.
You see where I fall apart.
But you try to tell this face that she can’t have any puffs. Puffs are essentially nothing but leavening with a tiny bit of “flavor” added in, and therefore off-limits to the tiniest Jew in our household.
Sure, she is still getting most of her nutritional needs met through breast milk, and my breasts are decidedly unleavened these days, but puffs are a big part of her daily life. When we all sit down to the table at night for dinner, she gets a handful of those magical pockets of air so that we can eat in peace without her baby-bird routine complete with squawking and flapping distracting from us stuffing our faces. Yes, she gets some “real food” as well, but those puffs go a long way. Plus, our dogs are counting on discarded puffs that land on the floor as is their right. It’s not just one life we’re impacting, but three!
So as I stock up on matzoh-based everything, I can’t help but wonder how my little one is going to take the switch from delightfully fluffed puffs to the kosher version of Cheerios.
My guess? Not well.
The real question this year is who will cave first to the siren song of leavened goodies this year. Technically, the answer will be me either way, what with Eliza’s inability to buy groceries, but at least we can say we tried.
There’s always next year!
*Let’s be real for a minute. I have not and will never be kosher, so my knowledge is limited to “stop eating bacon-wrapped shrimp already!”
