With Passover just around the corner (it starts Monday night, Jews), it’s  about to be all about the Matzoh. Say goodbye to your Cheerios, your penne pasta, and your delicious New York bagels. It’s like a week-long Atkins diet… with nothing but a flat tasteless cracker to fill your belly.

But don’t go all no-carbo-depressed on me because there are definitely some delicious ways to survive Passover! (My first tip would be strategically placing yourself next to your favorite drunk uncle, cousin, sibling during your family’s 4 hour-long seder. Woof.)

Here are my favorite Passover matzoh treats!

Matzoh pizza – One of my childhood favorites. Cover matz0h with tomato sauce and cheese (and any other preferred pizza toppings) and stick it in the toaster. It will never be as good as your favorite slice from the neighborhood pizzeria, but it will help you survive your FOMO when all of your Gentile friends get their drunken deep-dish pies on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday night.

Matzoh ball soup – My mom’s matzoh ball soup could bring every boy, girl and dog to the yard. Thankfully, she passed this trait along to me. Throw in celery, carrots, and chicken and you’ll be full for a month. Matzoh ball soup is super easy to make and leftovers can last you through all of Passover. If you live off-campus, I would definitely recommend inviting all of your friends over for some Jewish Penicillin to cure their hangovers. Hopefully they’ll be immediately addicted and you can convince them to come back over after Passover to try it with some rye bread. Read More »

Passover means a week of saying thanks – but no thanks to bread, rolls, bagels and all other carb-y goodness. Along with (depending on how strict you observe) saying sayonara to beans, corn syrup, your soy lattes and – um – BEER.

Basically everything you need to exist on a daily basis and especially on the weekend. No beer and no pizza to eat late night ,and no bagels to curb the hangover the next day. I thought we were supposed to be the chosen people? What were we chosen for – to be the pioneers of the Atkins diet?!

Anyway, after celebrating this holiday for 24 years I’ve learned a few things. Like the fact that even though the orange packaging looks promising, Crispy-O’s cereal tastes like crap (if crap was made out of cardboard and cough syrup).  And that while matzoh pizza smells good while it’s baking, there really is nothing that can cover up the fact that matzoh tastes like what is ordinarily used to package my recent purchases from Gilt Groupe. So now, as a responsible and Jewy adult, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve to help everyone survive this week sans bread/non K-for-P goodies and keep you and your taste buds satisfied.

1) Look at Passover as a week to detox. Why waste calories on desserts that look decent to the eye but taste like stale cake mixed with bits of Styrofoam? I figure Passover is a great time to eat clean: fruits, veggies, protein. It’s like a week-long detox/cleanse that is imposed by the big man upstairs. (You down with G-O-D?)

2) Quinoa is K for Pizzle! That’s right, friends – Quinoa, the high protein complex carb goodness, is Kosher for Passover. You can chop up some veggies, some nuts, some dried fruit – whatever strikes your mood- and make a delicious and healthy meal! Read More »

I have a very serious boyfriend.

He may give me peanuts instead of flowers and he probably doesn’t enjoy the fact that I blare Backstreet Boys and the Glee soundtrack for hours at a time, but I’d say we are pretty committed.

And if the “check bags free” wasn’t enough to make Southwest Airlines my perma-beau, this new sale (which ends tomorrow so PAY ATTENTION) made me swoon with delight.

Southwest is currently offering fares as low as $39 each way (excluding Friday and Sunday travel) to their many destinations. And you can book any trip between now and May 25th, which, as you all know, includes SPRING BREAK, baby! Didn’t think you’d be able to get somewhere warm for a little R&R (or GTL) this year? Well thanks to my boyf, that a pina-colada-fest is totally do-able. (And hopefully the bar tender serving it will be as well. Count it!) Read More »

For most of us, it’s the first week back from the Easter/Passover break, which, while relaxing, can also be stressful.  Some of us found that being home for the holidays has its ups and downs, such as being able to eat yummy home cookin’ but also having to deal with our mom asking us to help her edit her Facebook profile (which reminded me to delete those suggestive pictures from last year’s Halloween party before I got an angry phone call from her).  For others of us, this break was a time to meet our new boyfriend’s parents for the first time (and worry about making a good impression).

All that stress has probably caused you to break out, which only causes you to stress more about the nasty bumps on your face and find a way to get rid of them—which doesn’t exist for that pesky mutant acne that’s everywhere now.

I know all this makes you feel like crying, but before you run out and rent some guaranteed tear jerkers and sit at home all weekend watching them while eating a whole tub of Häagen-Dazs®, think about all the great stuff that happened this week that’s sure to cheer you up.

Instead of crying, call up everyone you know and go out tonight!  If you think you have nothing to wear, maybe you can dress up that black T-shirt hanging in the back of your closet in a new way.  Or grab your girlfriends for a shopping trip to spend your tax refund!  You could splurge on a great new tote, or get more for your money with cute new stuff from Target.

Still feel like staying in?  At least do something that will perk you up.  Search the internet for some great new music, make a bet to lose weight before summer officially hits, or laugh at some hilarious Yahoo! Answers questions. The semester coming to an end and papers and final exams looming in the not-so-distant future can only add to the stress you’re already feeling. But cheer up: summer’s almost here!

Passover. A week of torture for the hungover soul. All we want is carbs and all we’ve got is cardboard. Saweet.

All my Jewish peeps out there know that Passover is a time where you have to hold your head up high and say, “Sure, my non-Jewish friends get to eat Peeps and Reese’s peanut butter cup eggs (where the PB to chocolate ratio is so. much. better.), but, hey, I get all those fake desserts that taste like crap yet still make me fat AND constipated. Mazel Tov to ME!” So glad we wandered in the desert for this.

Passover is a time where we must get creative in the kitchen. Top Chef has nothing on me after 8 days of no bread. So, being that I’ve been a Passover Jew since I left the womb, I will share with you my 5 best tips for surviving the Big P.

1) Don’t think of it as an “OMG WTF am I supposed to do without bread?!” sitch. Instead, think of it as a week long cleanse and use it as a time to detox; stick to salads, fruits, proteins, almonds, sweet potatoes and dark chocolate (K for P of course). All of those foods will keep you fuller longer and after a day of really craving the carbs you will feel a whole lot better anyways. Besides, its not like matzoh satisfies that carb craving, anyway.

2) Two Words: Matzoh. Pizza. It never gets old. It always tastes good. Load that bad tasting piece of matzo with sauce, cheese and a ton of veggies (the more fiber with that matzo the better – trust me) and you will forget how much you hated this holiday in the first place. Read More »

UC San Diego mistakenly sends acceptance letters to 30,000 rejects.

Chris Brown has some good PR people.

Why is someone stalking Miley Cyrus?

The Passover story…on Facebook.

Behold: the 4,800 calorie burger. Mmmm!

Are Drew and Justin back together?

Robert Pattinson drops out of New Moon!?

Target’s perfect leather jacket.

Victoria Beckham…in flip flops!

Hands down the most talented dog ever.

Are those….pants?!

Last week we had Rosh Hashanah; now it’s time for Yom Kippur. Yeah, baby; time to atone! Starting tonight at sundown, Jews around the world will eat their last meal…for 24 hours.

Why will we be giving up bagels, lox and all those other Jewy foods for an entire freaking day?

To atone for our sins, people.

We have one day and one day only to apologize to God for everything we did wrong over the course of an entire year. That is not a lot of time, which is why everything that does not involve repenting must be given up. Like eating.

Or admiring good looking men.

Or personal gratification.

Or shopping.

Or reruns of Friends.

Or massages.

Or ice cream.

Or ice cream sundaes.

On top of a cupcake.

Served by him.

Or all those fun things that got us in trouble in the first place.

Tomorrow night – and my clean slate/macaroni and cheese – can’t come soon enough. Until then, be nice to your Jewish pals; it’s gonna be a long day.

Basically, I ran out of things to eat.

Yeah, yeah, it shouldn’t be that hard. But somehow nothing seems quite satisfying enough, quite interesting enough when I have to think so hard about my food.

I am not the kind of girl who diets. In fact, I’ve never been on a diet in my entire life (excluding this “Passover diet” that I go on every year for a week). And I’ll tell you, I don’t like it. If I had to be so careful about what I ate all the time, I would definitely be a much bigger bitch.

Which is really making me a better person. Because now when someone is rude to me on the train, I can think, “oh, they must be on a diet,” and let it go. Thanks, Passover!

In any event, the last couple of days were annoying. I missed out on free Beard Papa cream puffs, on free cookies, on going out to (not free, but still) pizza with friends, etc. etc.

I ate Pinkberry frozen yogurt for lunch one day when I was in a rush and couldn’t think of anything else that was fast.

I was not always nice to my boyfriend. Read More »

Basically, I’m hungry and fatigued. And I want to eat bread.

I wake up and I eat matzoh.

Then I go about my daily day (see?! I can’t even think of a better way to say this!) and find something I can eat for lunch (surprisingly difficult even in lower manhattan).

Then I’m cranky at people until dinner, at which point I am tired of trying to think of what to eat and end up having a fudgesicle.

Actually, I think I might be losing weight, but only because eating has become so calculated and joyless that it’s not even worth it.

I mean, this is not a big deal. I can’t have bread. To channel my grandmother for a moment, this should be the worst thing that happens to me. Read More »

I should probably point out that I am crappy Jew and, even in not eating chametz (leavened bread), I’m not actually keeping Kosher for Passover. There are lots of rules that I suck at and am therefore not doing. Think of me as a Secular Jew. That’s probably the nicest possible term.

Anyway, Day 3. I woke up hungry. I ate leftover lox (with nothing else because I am super gross) and drank coffee. Then I went about my daily business.

I didn’t get a chance to eat again until the early afternoon and by then I was starving, I mean like in a dizzy, light-headed kind of way. Usually I can wait a bunch of hours before eating again. But then again, usually I eat bread.

So I had chicken and broccoli for lunch and felt better but still hungry.

Round it off with an apple and I’m doing really great, right? Actually, maybe I’ll lose weight on this after all. Coincidentally, of course.

Buuuuut then I felt hungry and depraved and ate a whole bunch of chocolate. Twice.

Happy Passover. Hand over the bread.