Note: Obama is not at everyone's seder

So, your Jewish friend invited you home for his/her Passover Seder.

“Free meal!” you think to yourself.

But what is a Seder? And what exactly will you be eating? Who’s gonna be there? Do you get to eat Challah? Do you have to be able to pronounce it?

As your resident CollegeCandy Jew (OK, so there are quite a few of us), allow me to prepare you for tonight’s festivities. Below, what you need to know about a Passover Seder.

1. Eat a little before you go.
Passover food isn’t for everyone (no matter how creative that Jewish mother gets with her Passover rolls) and it may be hard to stomach for someone who hasn’t been choking it down for 18 years. And even if you do love yourself some matzoh ball soup (who doesn’t?), it might be awhile before you get some. First you gotta get through the actual seder service. Actually, first you gotta get all the Jewish women to stop talking, then you gotta get through the service. 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 »

Note: Obama is not at everyone's seder

So, your Jewish friend invited you home for his/her Passover Seder.

“Free meal!” you think to yourself.

But what is a Seder? And what exactly will you be eating? Who’s gonna be there? Do you get to eat Challah? Do you have to be able to pronounce it?

As your resident CollegeCandy Jew (OK, so there are quite a few of us), allow me to prepare you for tonight’s festivities. Below, what you need to know about a Passover Seder.

1. Eat a little before you go.
Passover food isn’t for everyone (no matter how creative that Jewish mother gets with her Passover rolls) and it may be hard to stomach for someone who hasn’t been choking it down for 18 years. And even if you do love yourself some matzoh ball soup (who doesn’t?), it might be awhile before you get some. First you gotta get through the actual seder service. Actually, first you gotta get all the Jewish women to stop talking, then you gotta get through the service. Read More »

"I'm sorry I tried to ruin your life to get onto Page 6"

After a two-week hiatus (WTF, CW?) Gossip Girl returned last night. I don’t know if I can handle any more breaks, but OMG, was it worth the wait!  As the weather changes outside, so are our friends from the Upper East Side.

First, let me start by saying how happy I was to see Cyrus again!  That little bald nugget of a stepdad is one of those gems (like Dorota) that make Gossip Girl sparkle.  Especially since Dorota was off falling in love and Vanessa was MIA, too!   She finally gets a good storyline, AND a backbone, and suddenly she’s nowhere to be seen. Was that delicious plotline with her and Chuck just a tease? WAS IT?

And with Rufus deciding to close down the art gallery, where is she gonna brew her coffee? What on earth is going to happen to V?

Also, can I just say that I am secretly really happy that the economy is affecting GG, though a bit peeved that it was the Humphrey’s that got crapped on. I’m pretty sure there are plenty of wealthy people out there who were hit hard in this recession, so why is it the “poor” Brooklyn family that gets it? And, being that they are in a bit of financial ruin, why would Rufus care about Dan getting a job? And why doesn’t my dad feel that way? But secretly Dan did get a job, and how cute did he look in that uniform?  Presh. Read More »

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 »

And oh, what a Day 2 it was.

Well, first of all, last night I went to my parents’ house for a Seder. We went through our Maxwell House Haggadahs like I go through a fresh, steaming cup of Maxwell House coffee.

…Anyway.

I asked my father what the correct pronunciation of “Haggadah” was, because a friend of mine says it “ha-GAH-dah” whereas I have always heard it as “huh-GUH-duh.” I was told that the first way is Hebrew, the second is Yiddish. Go fig. My fam-o is full of the Yiddish. The Hebrew, not so much.

Okay, this no bread thing is making me punchy. Let’s move on to today: Read More »

Every year for Passover, I give up bread, grains, etc. for 8 days. Why? Because this is how we do.

My mother told me she used to bring tuna sandwiches on matzoh every year every day for all of Passover. I can’t imagine how she did this. Tuna on matzoh is basically disgusting.

But I digress. This morning my Chinese-American-Non-Jew boyfriend walked into our living room, took one look at me eating buttered matzoh, and said, “Hey, Matzoh Girl.”

That was it for me, folks. I am going to document the 8 days of my Passover Diet here on College Candy.

Side Note: I am calling it a diet only in the sense that it is a way of eating. Unfortunately, it is not a losing weight diet. Every year I think it might be. I mean, the Atkins Diet is, right? Unfortunately, every year I also end up eating a lot of cheese and junk food to fill up when bread is not possible, and so it ends up…let’s say evening out. Yeah. Evening out.

So, okay, last night through this morning:

Right before the sun went down, I had my last bread meal before Passover: a chicken gyro. Mmmm. So long, dear pita, I knew you well. Read More »

Passover. Great holiday. Eternal source of existential agony.

I’m Jewish, yes? Well, ethnically, for sure. My family is made up of Jews from Belarus and Romania/Transylvania (suck your blood, blah, blah, vampire joke) who take the culture seriously but the religion…well, not so much.

Supposedly, all sets of my parents’ grandparents were Orthodox, and then their parents (my grandparents) were all Conservative, but my parents, as first and second generation Americans, kind of let that all go. They sent me to Secular Hebrew School for five years, where I learned all about the culture but not the actual religious rites, and that was that.

However, my situation growing up was very different from theirs, and that, of course, made my relationship to Judaism a little more complicated.

My parents were both raised in Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx. Growing up, they were in the ethnic majority (at least until high school). Being Jewish was just a fact of life.

I grew up in a very Italian- and Irish-American town on Long Island where I was one of about six Jews in my grade. Even though my parents and I barely practiced (every third year or so we’d go to temple for Yom Kippur), Jewishness became a very important part of my identity. As it happened, we lived directly next door to the Catholic church that was attended by about 85% of my classmates. This was a constant source of amusement. Jewish jokes? I was there…and maybe the one making them. Being Jewish made me stand out. So I made it work in my favor. Read More »