The Bread of Affliction

This week is the holiday of Passover. It's a holiday that celebrates the Jews being freed from Pharaoh and Egypt and starting their 40 years of wandering through the desert. One of the ways in which we commemorate the holiday is by eating matzah and not eating any leavened bread or bread product and certain grains and legumes are off limit as well. Matzah is like a dry cracker. I find myself really excited to eat it on the first night, and then after that I am done.

The other problem with passover is that suddenly there is all this junk food in the house. Soda, candy, Passover cake and brownies, jelly that is like 99% sugar and 1% fruit, you get the idea. And while I try to keep the way I cook fairly normal, I still make fresh vegetables and roasted an organic turkey, just like with any other holiday, sugary foods inch their way in. I blame my husband, but really I eat them too. It doesn't feel like Passover if I don't get jelly for my breakfast matzah or get to eat those little jellied "fruit" slices. Normally I don't even eat toast in the morning, but for Passover I eat matzah for breakfast.

It's an interesting experiment as an eater. My normal diet doesn't include a lot of sugar, and hardly includes any refined white flour or grain. For this week it's as if I am eating completely opposite. And I am feeling it. I have more headaches, and just feel generally more sluggish. Just a thought about what affect diet really has on us.

I bring all this up because I think holidays are challenging for all of us as eaters. We all have times of the year when our diet shifts, and that's ok. It's part of life. And food is part of celebrations, as it should be. For me, I know this one week I am eating a lot of things I wouldn't normally, and while I am feeling a bit worse for it, I am still going to eat these traditional holiday foods. And I know that once the week is over I will go back to my normal diet. Maybe I will even eat a little better for it.

I guess my point is that we don't have to feel guilty or berate ourselves for the occasional shift in our diets. Enjoy the holidays. Eat the Peeps. And once they are gone, go back to the more healthy, whole foods. And don't regret a few holiday festivities. That's the point of holidays coming around once a year.