Is it matzo, matzoh, matzah?  I can never remember how to spell it, but damn if it’s not delicious.  We didn’t do the seder thing last night but my wonderful shiksa-rific wife did me a solid with a huge bowl of yummy homemade matzah ball soup (sorry about the flash and my general suckiness with taking pictures.  I have no talent for it).

The dish is pretty simple, chicken stock (homemade if you have the time/energy to boil an entire chicken, which of course no one but Anthony Bourdain does), carrots, onions, celery, a little salt and pepper and of course matzah balls.  There is a question for many of how big is too big though.  For me, the bigger the matzah ball, the better.  I’m not a fan of the little marble sized fellows that you find in some restaurants.  The only real way to do it is making it like your bubbie did back when you were a kid.

We might do a seder next year.  I really don’t dig on the praying, but it might be fun to invite a bunch of gentiles over, get ‘em all drunk on Manischewitz and sing a rousing course of Dayenu.  Or make it a costume thing, where they all have to dress as their favorite Bible 1.0 characters.  Joseph in a pimpin’ coat works.  I could totally rock the Esau thing since I’ve already got the fur built in.  No costumes from the unauthorized sequel though unless the ladies want to do a skankified Mary Mag.  Plus, you can riff on the Afikomen, but make the prize a nice Oregon Pinot instead of a buck from dad’s wallet (obviously no kids allowed at this seder).  You get the idea.

On second thought, having a bunch of drunken adults tearing up the joint looking for a piece of matzah hidden under a couch pillow might not be the best plan.

If there was ever a Jewish staple, it is the bagel with a schmear. Cliché?  As my co-workers from Wisconsin would say, youbetcha.  Still though, before any Jew eats matzoh or kreplach, they nosh on a bagel.  Not to mention this is pretty much as ethnic as it gets for the gentiles.

As a Jew in Colorado, the problem that I have is that pretty much all the bagels in this town suck.  When I was in high school, we used to always stop off at this place called I & Joy Bagels in my home town of Studio City.  It was on the way to good old Campbell Hall and the bagels kicked ass.  They were made the right way (boiled in a giant kettle) with heaps of crazy good whipped into a frenzy cream cheese.  Instead, I have to deal with this:

I don’t want to go all Schleprock here, but this place was serious suckage.

First of all, the place is called Big Daddy Bagels in Lafayette, Colorado.  Because apparently there are a bunch of cajun Jews in Lafayette.  Second, the cream cheese looked and tasted straight out of a Philly econo tub.  And then there’s the bagel.  Bland and decidedly not fresh (at 7AM mind you).  Oh, did I mention that the lady at the counter was too busy yammering about her new ring with some other lady to even say hello or thank you.  She didn’t even look at me or tell me my order total.  But she sure did love that sparkle on her finger.

Since we moved out here in 1995, I’ve found one place that has decent bagels – Moe’s.  The problem?  Moe’s is in Boulder and dragging ass out there for an AM bagel just isn’t an option.  So, I’ll just continue to suffer while I attempt to ingest what the city of Lafayette deems a “bagel”.  Meh.

Well, this whole Jomnivore thing isn’t going to be as easy as I thought. First, my Irish/Italian wife said that there’s no way she’s cooking with gefilte fish. I suppose I don’t really blame her, since it really is quite disgusting. I’m not going to worry about that for a while, since I’m putting off the gefilte gastronomy session as long as humanly possible.

The real problem is the shopping. I went to King Soopers (the local grocery chain) yesterday to see what sort of selection they had and this is what I found:

Yep, one small section for Jewish “ethnic” food.  Matzoh, matzoh ball soup mix, gefilte fish jars and some random kosher stuff.  It looks like I’m going to have to try a little harder in order to get this rolling.

I did a little searching and managed to find a website called Kosher.com that sells all things kosher:

Thankfully, they offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more, so at least I won’t go broke from shipping charges.  Since there’s about 5 Jewish people in Boulder, apparently there’s not much of a market for a grocery store that sells the chosen food.