Like everyone else, we buy a lot of matzah for Pesach.
It is one of those Jewish-mom syndrome things, that oddly enough affects both men and women equally, as you worry that maybe, just maybe, you might not have enough matzah to feed your family, your guests and anyone else who walks through your door on Pesach. After all, it’s not as if you are going to spend hours and hours cooking for Pesach and will have stacks and stacks of cakes, cookies, kugels and salads to feed the hungry masses who will be showing up, will you?
Oh…
Right.
You will. Because in addition to buying massive quantities of matzah, you will also be spending countless hours at the stove and in your kitchen, mixing, blending, chopping, pureeing, sautéing and otherwise be engaged in culinary pursuits that will leave your hands red, dry and hopefully not too laden with battle scars. But for whatever reason, we still feel compelled to buy boxes and boxes of matzah, which, when you are talking about the handmade shmura matzah, adds up to a pretty significant chunk of change for bread that was never allowed to grow up into its intended form and is also likely to be slightly cracked and more than a little charred.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against matzah. I actually enjoy eating the requisite amount at the sedarim and have no problem doing the same at all of the yom tov meals. But that is all the matzah I am interested in eating. I have zero interest in snacking on it or consuming any more than I actually have to. Add that to the fact that there is no gebrokts in our house and there really isn’t a whole lot of matzah being consumed, which means we typically end up with lots of extra matzah, no matter how much we downsize our matzah order every year.
I should mention that matzah actually makes my life easier in some ways. It is always there in the box, ready to be eaten at every meal with zero prep or defrosting time. It takes up far less room than challah does and zero freezer space and I guess it goes without saying that you don’t need to buy a new challah knife for Pesach. And since I have no urge to nosh on an extra piece or two during the meal, it is a great diet food, because I just don’t eat any more than I am required to.
So, what to do with all that extra matzah?
It is, indeed, a problem. I have been known to try to feed my family matzah brei on the last day of Pesach when we do eat gebrokts, but I can’t tell you that we have met with all that much success. There was one year when one of my married daughters, who follows her husband’s customs and does eat gebrokts now, decided she wanted to make matzah grilled cheese and attempted to use a blow dryer to melt cheese onto her matzah since she couldn’t put it into my no-gebrokts-allowed oven. It did put a miniscule dent in our matzah stash, but not enough to really make a difference.
You might be wondering why we don’t just cut our losses and throw out the matzah, but the only way to answer that question would be to introduce you to my parents, the wonderful people who taught me that age is only a number, even when it comes to food items. After all those years of being raised in an environment where there is no such thing as food that is too old to be eaten, I am genetically incapable of throwing out food that isn’t green and fuzzy. On rare occasions, I can convince myself to feed leftover challah or bread to the birds but while things may be different where you live, around here, when birds see matzah on my lawn, they just keep on flying, looking for a better meal in someone else’s backyard.
