I would like to let you know that for a WASP*, I make a darn good matzo ball soup. (That's not a picture of mine, though. I was too busy eating mine to take pictures.)A month after we moved to the midwest I went to the store one night because I was having a yen for rugelach. The local grocery store didn't have any. Not only did they not have any, they didn't even know what I was talking about. That's when I realized that not every region of the country had grown up with traditional Jewish comfort food, and unless I wanted to drive really far, I was going to have to learn to make it myself. (Whole Foods which opened a year later has it sometimes, and so does Trader Joe's very occasionally. But still.)
I have five pounds of matzoh in my car as I type this.
Around Passover here, I can usually stock up on lots of the foods of my youth enough to last me for the year. But there's something wonderful about that first fragrant bowl of soup for the year.
A conversation with Nathaniel last night:
N: What's for dinner?
Me: Matzo ball soup and potato pancakes with homemade applesauce
N: Potato what?
Me: Latkes
N: Oh! Latkes! Why didn't you say that in the first place?
I love that even though my kids will be Buckeyes through and through they still understand the traditions of my youth...even if I am a WASP and they're only my traditions by close association.
*White Anglo Saxon Protestant. This isn't strictly accurate since I'm Mormon and we weren't around to protest anything back when that was going on. But close enough.
