When Margarine Costs Ten Bucks...And Other Observations.

Okay. I admit I'm an idiot. People have, over the years, told me I'm an idiot before this, but this year, I will agree with them.

I just spent $10 for a pound of kosher for Passover margarine...

and it's not even the good stuff!

I have, in years past, complained about no Temptee Whipped Cream Cheese, no Breakstone's Cottage Cheese, red horseradish. All things considered, these were annoying parts of passover, but I've made crème fraîche, cottage cheese, and even red horseradish from scratch. In fact, if you must know, I keep a supply of cheesecloth on hand for just such emergencies. But this year, the outages are devastatingly horrible, and neither can be made from scratch.

There is almost no margarine to be found, and what there is  is the yukky stuff (as in not Migdal which happens to be great for parve baking.) Even more tragic, THERE ARE NO JOYVA MARSHMALLOW TWISTS to be found anywhere...except for a lone package that was hidden away at the bottom of my chest freezer...and is Kosher l'Pesach. The Junior Son, ostensibly over to schlep boxes, nabbed the lone box of Twists. I think they're for his family...unless he's gonna sell 'em on eBay for a zillion dollars, and you know I won't be seeing a cut of that! It's okay. I'll just sit here imagining I'm eating a frozen Joyva Marshmallow Twist. 

And to add insult to injury, I FORGOT to buy my annual package of seriously disgusting coconut covered Pesadik marshmallows. See, you have to open the bag and let them dry out for a few days before they're even remotely edible, although they are a far cry from stale Peeps, the gold standard for crispy marshmallows. 

And you wanna know what's worse? Just like all your favorite Christmas songs, Peeps are Jewish. They may be tref (not kosher) because they actually use pig-derived gelatin, but most of the rest of Just Born candies are certified both kosher and halal. Go figure. 

From Wikipedia

Russian-Jewish immigrant Sam Born (1891–1959) came to the United States in December 1909. He moved to San Francisco, where, in 1916, Born was awarded the "key to the city" of San Francisco for inventing the Born Sucker Machine, a machine that mechanically inserted sticks into lollipops.

In 1917, Born started a small retail store in Brooklyn, New York. He displayed in his store window an evolving line of daily made candy, advertising its freshness with a sign that declared Just Born. The original company symbol showed a baby resting in a candy measuring scale. Sam Born is also credited with the invention of chocolate sprinkles, known as "jimmies," and the hard coating on ice cream bars.

In 1923, Born started his own manufacturing company in New York City. Irv and Jack Schaffer, Born's brothers-in-law, joined the company to help market and sell the confections. In 1932, the trio relocated operations to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The company bought a four-story, 224,396 sq. ft. building, built during 1920, from a bankrupt printing company.

Sam Born's son, Bob Born, joined the company in 1945, and would later become the company's president for more than 30 years. He was part of the two-man team that mechanized the process forming Peeps, allowing a substantial increase of production, causing Just Born to become America's largest manufacturer of seasonal marshmallow confections. Bob Born died at age 98 on January 29, 2023.

Passover is bad enough....

And yes, I know I'm carrying on over candy. Power is still out in some neighborhoods after the April Fools Blizzard. Tornados did a job on Mississippi. Kids are still dead after the school shooting in Nashville. And I'm complaining about candy.

Fourteen years ago Ziggy and I were doing the Passover changeover terrified because we each suspected it would be the last one we would do together and neither of us wanted to talk about it. We weren't having our annual fight about the correct way to duct tape the plastic sheeting over the laminate counters. We weren't arguing about how much floor washing we were gonna do, and whether or not he would paste-wax the floor in the morning. It was unusually quiet that night, and after the floor was washed, we didn't snuggle on the couch like we always did; he shooed me upstairs to bed because he wanted to just think. 

You see, I wasn't going to shul in the morning; we were going to the oncologist.

It's amazing how, in the space of a heartbeat, life can change. 

What's even more amazing is our refusal to change the things we can to protect the ones we love. School shooting after school shooting after school shooting...and those indefensible, bible-beating misogynists want to ban books.

No toddler ever found a parent's loaded book and accidentally killed a sibling, yet there is a ridiculous drive to ban books conjoined to a refusal to ban automatic weapons. 

Can someone explain that to me? How has this nation not risen up in screaming protest to remove these child-haters from elected office?

Marjorie Taylor Greene was on 60 Minutes the other night. She does a great job pretending to be a normal person who just happens to believe in conspiracies and lies like a rug when it suits her. ("Oh, I never said that." Roll video please.) But she did say something which I've written about in the past and sometimes think might not be such a bad idea: a national divorce. 

The idea is not without precedence. It was strongly considered after the Civil War; had the country divided then, things would be vastly different from what we have now. Duh. But the idea that the ideological differences are so severe right now as to warrant such a split may not be as farfetched as it sounds. 

As you can see, red states cut down the middle of the country, and it's easy enough to figure out that the industrial northeast is the more populous of the two. While Texas is somewhat industrial, most of the red states are agricultural with lower standards of living.  All of which got me to thinking: what happens if...?

For starters, what happens when the blue states walk away with the lion's share of the tax base? Companies that had been thinking about moving to red states will soon figure out their workforce probably wants stability of education and availability of health-related services. These will become two driving wedges into the separation of blue from red. 

What happens when the loss of the tax base coupled with red state promises of lower taxes, smaller government, and less government regulation means the loss of a whole lotta federal services like transportation infrastructure maintenance including air traffic control, railroad safety, and highway repair? If planes can't take off or land safely, if trains derail, and highways are unsafe on which to drive, how do the goods get to market?

What happens when all them pinko-socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will also shrink? If there is no Social Security, who is going to take care of Grandma's expenses? Since the GOP has yet to provide a blueprint for affordable care, who is gonna quit the job to care for Grandpa when he's home sick and can't get admitted to hospital? Who's gonna put food on the table?

You known damn well the blue states are gonna revise, fix, and replenish those safety net programs once they're not blocked at every turn by an obstructionist congress. And while the red states are largely agrarian, there is still a whole lotta farming in the blue states as well.

I'm not so sure Lincoln did the right thing in reunifying the North and South. If those people wanna elect Feckless to another term, let them....and let the blue states elect someone who knows how to run a company...other than into the ground. 

This isn't Brexit or Megxit or any other kind of cosmic break. This is actually a very specific one and one I would more than likely welcome, because it would rid We, the People from the likes of Feckless Loser, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, and some of the others of the brainless trust who can't figure out where the greenbacks come from. 

Yeah, this is a scary prospect, but wasn't leaving Egypt for the wilderness just as scary? It wasn't a walk through any sorta park; it was a struggle to get out, a struggle to form a single people, and a struggle to settle into the land. It took a long time, but it was the right thing to do.

I can only think that We, the People, need to stop being slaves to the whims of a party that claims to love America,  but clearly doesn't like Americans to live, be well, and thrive. Maybe, just maybe it's time to get out of this abusive relationship.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא דִּי אֲכָלוּ אַבְהָתָנָא בְאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם

This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.

All those who are hungry, let them enter and eat. 

All who are in need, let them come celebrate the Passover. 

Now we are here. Next year in the land of Israel. 

This year we are enslaved. Next year we will be free.