Conversations at the Grocery Store

[taffimai]

Me: *passing by the Easter display*
Woman: Excuse me, when is Easter?
Me: I don't know.
Woman: What do you mean, how can you not know?
Me: I'm Jewish.
Woman: And?
Me: And so I don't care about Easter?
Woman: *huffs and walks away*

ETA: Given what I was wearing today, I wonder if she thought I worked there. Hmmm.

Comments

[hllangel]

Luckily, it's only one week a year. :)

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

true- thank heaven for small favors. And some of the dishes are good...

[hllangel]

Some of them are, for sure.

And during most of the year, I barely eat bread. But it's really difficult to stay away from everything with flour and/or corn syrup for one week.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I'll admit I don't go whole hog and don't worry about the corn syrup. Although I know a lot of people who use this time to pick up "real" coke.

[hllangel]

The stuff with cane sugar. I can get that pretty easily here.

I started going off corn syrup for Passover about 7 years ago. It's difficult, but I can do it. I do it every year. I have to say, though, that last year was particularly difficult because of the two-day cross country driving in the middle. Finding food when traveling that way is difficult, to say the least.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Kudos to you! That's hard, but wonderful.

I used to be fairly strict until I went to college. And there was NOTHING I could eat other that matzoh and burgers or hot dogs without the buns and salad bar. After one year of that I had to relax my passover standards. I went back to strict observance for a year and then was pregnant and or nursing for 4 years during passover and got very sick when I tried. So I got out of the habit. No bread or risen products here, but that's about it.

[hllangel]

College was tough, since they didn't have much that wasn't breaded/fried or mixed with bread other than the salad bar. Luckily there was a grocery store within walking distance and I had a fridge in my room.

I forsee a lot of stir-fry during passover this year. Easy enough to make, and definitely made without bread. Though no soy sauce or hoisin sauce because of the wheat in it. Having a kitchen is a huge bonus for that week.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

And now I'm very impressed by both of you.

[hllangel]

I'm mostly non-observant during the rest of the year. I go nuts during some of the holidays.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I wish I could do that. The few times I've tried I just felt like too much of a hypocrite. It's not remotely logical, but I feel like if I'm not going to really observe the holiday (kasher the kitchen and switch out the dishes and not go to work on yontif, etc) then there's no point to doing anything. Silly, I know.

[hllangel]

I think my GF might kill me if I tried to rid the house of anything non-kosher for passover. and we don't have a second set of dishes. There's always the paper plate route.

[taffimai.livejournal.com]

I do not want you ded of girlfriend.

[hllangel]

I do not want to be ded of girlfriend either. :D I've got too much going right now.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Do you eat rice? Some brands of shoyu or tamari don't have wheat.

[hllangel]

I generally don't eat rice either. I stick pretty close to veggies and protein. With potatoes for carbs if I need to. I'm pretty close to non-observant most of the year, but for Passover and the High Holy days I swing towards pretty strict.

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

Rice is a weird one. It's not specifically prohibited. Sephardic Jews eat it and it only became frowned upon by the Ashkenazi due to the open air markets where big open bins of rice would sit next to bins of wheat and other grains and it was impossible to tell if the rice had been contaminated by the other things (according to the lecture I sat through last year by the Jewish Ed coordinator where I worked)

[hllangel]

I didn't know that. Maybe I'll loosen the restrictions on rice this year. Thanks!

[donutsweeper.livejournal.com]

I was surprised to hear it myself. :)