Food History

Tonight I’m not really here. In fact, I’m probably eating. Even overeating.

It’s first night Passover (if I’ve got my dates right) and – all going well – I’m in the heart of my family, doing all the traditional things an Orthodox Jewish family in Australia does for Passover. We eat meat and matzah and talk muchly and do many other things that begin with ‘m’.

I’m actually at my computer at home right now, trying to work out what on earthy you need to know about food on Saturday. My mind is in turmoil because there’s so much happening around me, including packing presents and finishing enough work to take the key days off and my historical imagination has somehow dried up. I was wondering – do those of you who have big Christmasses get this sort of intellectual drought three days before Christmas?

Let me tell you a bit about what my family eat. I’ve done that before, but that was for another Passover. Maybe this year I’ll tell you about what we don’t eat?

We don’t eat lamb, though sometimes we might have a lamb shank on the seder plate. Some Jewish families do, some don’t. The ones who don’t, mostly do it out of a tradition that keeps (or intends to keep) the memory of the Temple alive. I had an elderly aunt who had giant food restrictions, so Mum cooked lamb for her, but not for the rest of us.

We don’t eat anything with leavening in, because the yeast didn’t have time to rise for the bread before our ancestors had the flee Egypt. This includes both soy sauce and vegemite, and I just finished the last of my ordinary soy sauce, as a token effort towards good behaviour. I’ll buy more after Passover.

We (Ashkenazi Jews, not all Jews) don’t eat several other things, because of cultural tradition. One year I persuaded the family into trying rice, because we don’t actually know that our ancestry is all Ashkenazi, though some certainly is. The things change depending on background. Our list includes rice, obviously, and I think the rest are all legumes.

Then there are the usual forbidden stuffs- mixing meat with milk being the biggest.

I’ll report on how it all went (and how I yearn for soy sauce) when the real date has caught up with my advance posting. Maybe in day or two by your time. And yes, my mind is not where it should be. This is because I just realized I have tops to take with me, but no bottoms, and I doubt I should turn up half naked.