No Temp-Tee Today

Well, I'm not quite done and the soup isn't started and I've not done the final floor wash yet...and I'm sitting here feeling sorry for myself and missing Steve as much as ever. Not that he would be much use..except he would've stripped and waxed this horrid, defective, yukky floor this afternoon. I don't do that. Nope. I just wash the damn thing and dream of ripping it right up.

Earlier this year, the crack outfit handling kosher food in the Twin Cities went under. No surprise there. Not that I'm going to speak ill of the dead distributorship, other than to say it needed to happen. I was not, however, prepared for the cream cheese crisis. 

Passover in Minnesota lacks many of the comforts of home. Joyva Marshmallow Twists, real meat from a real butcher, Breakstone's Cottage Cheese and Temp-Tee Whipped Cream Cheese. 

"Wait!" you cry; "we have Breakstone's Cottage Cheese all year 'round!" 

Not quite; we now seem to have it for 51 weeks; there was no cottage cheese to be had. And there is no Temp-Tee. Are we expected to be as savages? No pure whipped fluffy cream cheese, long believed to be the saving grace of Pesach????? A shonde! 

And what makes it worse is that the junior son and wife are flying in from a wedding on the west coast and I was special agent in charge of procuring cream cheese. I have failed. I admitted there was no cream cheese when I called to confirm their arrival time at 5:20 IN THE MORNING. Junior son was very brave and said, "Ma, I'm sure we'll manage," but I am certain I heard a muffled sob in there. 

I won't tell you what I spent at Byerly's in St. Louis Park, I have a seizure just thinking about it...and I only bought one piece of beef! ONE! Any more and I would've needed a second mortgage on the house. 

My mother used to send the enormo-sized box of Joyva Twists which I would keep in the freezer and hand out as prizes for not making me crazy during week of Passover. Even Steven would line up. These are a precious commodity and will be greatly missed. 

These days, people make all sorts of stuff "just like regular" trying to pass it off as Passover: passover popovers, passover bagels, passover cookies... but that's not for me. Passover should be different. It should make us think a little more. This is a week when we really have to stop and think about what we're putting in our mouths and, by extension, our bodies. It's not all totally gross any more, but you do have to have things that, at least in your family, are just for Passover. 

At the seder, we say, "Once we were slaves, now we are free." As the Rabbi Allen pointed out to me this morning (all the way from Jerusalem at that!) we are not all free. This is true. There are people all over the world who are not free. And we who are, often take that freedom for granted. And often, we confuse the choices we make with chains that bind. To be sure, there are commitments forced upon us that we don't want to make but make because it's the right thing to do. We set aside that which we would prefer to do so that we can do what we need to do. And if our own self-gratification is delayed? Well, too bad. We're grown ups; we can handle that.

Life cannot be just all about "me;" it has to be about the greater good. Passover, in it's unconventional wisdom, reinforces that idea throughout the seder: the name of Moses, the guy who did the negotiating, the leader from bondage into freedom, is never mention. 

You see, it's not about him.

So this week and next week the blog will be out a bit early to accommodate yom tov, the holy days at the beginning and end of the week. Wishing everyone a Chag Kasher v'Same'ach.  

And to those who begin the Christian Holy Week, may you have a Happy Easter.

The Wifely Person's Tip O'The Week

Drink lots of water...and eat lots of ruffage. 

It really does help.