Best Easter Candy EVA. Recognize.
This upcoming week those of us in the Western world get a special holiday twofer–Passover and Easter. Two great tastes that…well, don’t necessarily go together. Unless you’re me, and you grew up celebrating both holidays.
Fortunately my Jewish family doesn’t keep kosher. We’d have seders, but the ban on bread, pasta, breakfast cereal, rice, corn, etc. wasn’t enforced. But while we didn’t give things up, I always embraced matzo. These days, sarah.of.a.lesser.god and I are totally Team Matzo. It’s crunchy, it’s starchy, it goes well with peanut butter and jelly, cream cheese, humuus, runny brie—anything you can schmear. Plus it has a shelf life of, like, 200 years, so you can buy a couple boxes at Passover and enjoy it for months.
Otherwise, for a carb-lover like me, Passover is not a great eating holiday. Fortunately, my mother’s family is Christian, which meant church with my grandparents and going face-down into an Easter basket full of candy, which my mom and grandma made for me every year. MamaSharper and I are devoted to marshmallow Peeps, although we disagree about the best way to eat them. My mother likes to rip open the wrapping so they can air out and get kind of dried and chewy. I like them super-squashy, right out out of the package (although I will not turn down the aged variety). But the best Easter candy ever made is Reese’s Eggs, which improve on the already fantastic Reese’s Cups by increasing the peanut butter-to-chocolate ratio so you get more sweet, salty, slightly grainy peanut-y goodness in every bite. For me, an Easter egg will always be a Reese’s Egg.
Do you have a favorite Easter/Passover nom? Plz to share…
I’m totally Team Matzo! (And I have no Jewish affiliations whatsoever.) I’m the kind of person who buys the unsalted Saltines, so Matzo was made for me.
And while the Reese’s Egg is a perfectly good Easter candy, the best, by far, is Cadbury Mini-Eggs. They’re a higher-quality, perfectly sugared version of M&Ms.
Oh yeah we do the double also, and I’m with you on the Passover/carbs question.
I love matzoh brei. I have been known to eat a huge plate-full.
As for Easter, on my side of the family we celebrate every single occasion with lechon asado (not that I am complaining).
@rodriguez: Lechon asado should be served at every non-Jewish event! Nom nom little piggy!
I’m with Becky. Reese’s Eggs are sublime! I also like this time of year because McDonald’s has the inimitable Shamrock Shake. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
The thread I’ve been waiting for!
We do the Passover thing straight up-no leavened anything, although we eat rice and corn-I’m not playing the Ashkenazi vs Sephardi game. Here are the noms I make for our seder:
turkey with matzah stuffing
tzimmes with prunes, dates, carrots, sweet potatoes, honey and orange juice
potato kugel (crunchy and creamy)
cucumber salad (for spring!)
flourless chocolate cake
Passover cheesecake
chocolate chip meringues
charoset: a traditional mixture of apples, honey, walnuts, cinnamon and wine, mixed into a paste, representing the mortar the Hebrew slaves used to build buildings for the Egyptians. I eat it for lunch every day during the holiday.
That’s just the special Passover stuff. My mom makes matzah ball soup to die for. And a friend brings hand-ground horseradish-oh yeah. Mmm, Passover!
Slightly off topic: what haggadah do you use, Jewish Harpies and friends?
Chag sameach/happy holiday to all!
@mm OH please give me a little primer on the Ashkenazi/Sephardi rice game?
When I first me my bf future husband, from a Russian-Jewish but secular family, I invited him to Easter, and he came.
We had our usual dish of congri, black beans and rice. And I guilted him into eating some, because: it is THE cuban dish, and of course you MUST have some, how could you not, bf?
But Easter overlapped with Passover that year, and he felt weird about eating the rice. He ate it anyway, and told me about his doubts later. And I have now carried this guilt for many years!
Oh Reese’s Egg – the only candy for which I was ever willing to risk an ass beating by stealing from my brothers’ easter baskets. Three times in my adult life I have overindulged in a particular food enough to actually end up vomiting. Twice this food was Reese’s Peanut Eggs (I found that if you eat a whole 24 pack of the smaller size in under 3 hours, you will need to vomit. It takes 2 six packs of the regular size).
I’m all about Ashkenazi pride, but there’s no doubt that our Sephardi and Mizrahi brothers and sisters eat a lot better than we do at Passover, since they get to keep rice, corn and beans and eat egg matzo.
And personally speaking, I think they eat better year-round just because Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/N. African food is better than Eastern European meat-n-cabbage diet.
Like you, Becky, I am the product of an intermarriage (reform Jew dad = Episcopalian mom = me!). My dad was not religious at all, and his family lived pretty far away, so we never celebrated Passover. We did, however, eat matzo brei. YUM.
As far as Easter food, I’m a big fan of lamb for Easter luncheon, and of Peeps in general, because they’re just too disgusting not to love.
In other news, has anyone else seen these Vosges Easter eggs? One of them has bacon caramel. I will be bringing several of these to my brother’s place for our Easter lunch…
http://www.vosgeschocolate.com/product/Bacon_and_Eggs/Easter_Eggs
@rodriguez: The short answer is that eastern European rabbis felt that rice, corn and other kinds of starches were too easy to confuse with wheat and similar chometz during Passover, so they nixed the whole group. Of course, anyone who actually cooks has no problem telling them apart (sort of like chicken and beef, for Pete’s sake), but of course menz know best. For tmi on the topic, go here: http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_passoverkosher.htm
Some Ashkenazi Jews deliberately include rice or corn in their seder meals as a gesture of solidarity with Sephardim. I’m all for it, myself.
@Meg: I lived in a Greek neighborhood in Queens for years and always looked forward to the lamb at Greek Easter (which is sometimes a week after Protestant/Catholic Easter, although not this year). There was a butcher shop at the end of my street and often my morning walk to the subway at Easter time would coincide with the meat truck unloading its morning delivery of lamb carcasses!
@mm Wait what really!!!!??? The reason is that it’s too confusing to eat rice!!! OMG I am going off to rant a little while now, after I read your link. And thank you mm!
Happy Your Favorite Celebration to all!
@MM: Do you put an orange on your seder plate? And do you separate your fleishig and milchig? (and if you do, how do you make creamy kugel?)
Growing up we lived right around the corner from a local candy store that made the most amazing fudge eggs at Easter time. They were about the size of a baseball, with the creamiest fudge center you’ve ever tasted and a solid chocolate outer coating. My mom sent me one last year and it was just as good as I remembered from my childhood.
@rodriguez: Pretty dumb, right? The Ashkenazi rabbis tended to be overly cautious–it’s sometimes called “building the fence around the law”–i.e. you assume everyone is such a complete dumbass that you can’t just say “this is the law, live by it” (e.g. you can only have these kinds of grains). Instead, you have to go one extra step to make sure no one can even get CLOSE to breaking the law (e.g. NO GRAINS FOR ANYONE!)
Dude I loooooooove Matzo. I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood and so I was exposed to the wonders of Matzo young. I love to butter and salt it, it’s so good! Drool.
As to Easter, best candy holiday ever. Peeps and Cadbury cream eggs.
You guys are making me hungry.
Living in a multireligion family, we’ve had this come up before. Mom’s made matzoh lasagna for me at easter dinner at it actually turned out pretty well.
Easter candy always meant a chocolate bunny, sometimes hollow, sometimes solid. My brother and I used to get out the peanut butter jar and slather some PB on the section we were about to eat to make it more like a peanut butter cup. I think we would go through a whole jar with our bunnies.
When I was growing up and my grandma was still alive, we would go to her house for a big extended family easter meal. She would do a ham with the most amazing clove / brown sugar glaze. This was special because my dad hated the smell of cloves so at home we never ever had cloved ham.
Reese’s eggs are the best! I know it doesn’t make sense but to me they taste so much better than regular peanut butter cups.
Though I am officially Quaker, my family is very secular and holidays were not particularly big deals. That said, Easter was one of the few times my parents brought copious amounts of sugar into the house: jelly beans, chocolate bunnies, Cadbury’s mini eggs (my favorite favorite favorite!), etc.
My boyfriend is Jewish and I’ve loved celebrating the holidays with his family. I know it’s a symbolic food but I really like haroset. I don’t think it’s traditional but I love the zucchini casserole that the bf’s grandma always makes.
Reese’s Eggs and nothing else! NOM! I could never finish a whole Cadbury Egg as a kid so I used to put the un-eaten half in my toybox only to be discovered months later by my mother. After it had deposited its creamy center on everything near it. Oops.
When I was still living at home, the odds of having spring-ish weather on Easter Sunday were fairly good. So over the years the family tradition was to get together with another family and grill burgers and eat macaroni salad. Maybe work on a home-improvement/landscaping project on one of the houses as well. They are all Methodist and in the church choir, so they do the “Hosannah” business for 2 services in the morning and then get down to the burgers and beers for the rest of the afternoon.
Must get matzo, now!!!!!!
I’m not Jewish, but my mom used to buy matzo crackers so I acquired a taste for them, especially with peanut butter or cream cheese. om nom nom nom.
as for candy, I’m a jelly bean freak.
MamaSharper is right, stale Peeps rule!
No love for Cadbury creme eggs yet? HEAVEN.
(Though I am a bit afraid of what Hershey’s will do to them now that they own Cadbury. So far they’ve seen fit to totally rip off the classic “Nobunny knows Easter better than Cadbury’s.” commercial.)
Matzo with cream cheese or peanut butter gets my vote.
I am hosting Easter Lunch this year (although sadly with the rest of my extended family who will be in England and Ireland as always). Anyway I shall be cooking what we always had for easter sunday lunch which is as follows:
Normandy style roast leg of lamb with garlic, thyme and cider, served with cannellini beans in butter, garlic and parsley plus a large green salad on the side.
Some one else will bring the pudding as I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, although I will provide french cheeses and oatcakes and i’ve yet to pick the appetizer.
My daughter will probably be allowed a small easter egg if I’m not feeling too mean.
MM – Care to share you tzimmes recipe? Your description sounds yummy!
(Harpies, may I humbly suggest a Friday Fun Thread recipe exchange sometime?)
We used to get epic Easter baskets as kids. To me, Easter was even more Candy-rific than Halloween. I definitely liked my peeps stale back then. Now, I’ve lost a lot of my taste for candy, but I do remain devoted to the humble jelly bean.
@emilyanne: Your Easter meal sounds incredible. You’ve just mentioned 4 or 5 of my favorite flavors! If I were a member of your family, I’d be on the plane no question!
@rodriguez: yeah, it’s way silly, especially anyone who spends more than 5 minutes in a kitchen can tell the difference among the various foods. If you can’t tell the difference between a steak and a chicken breast, let someone else make the legal decisions about them, mmmkay?
@BeckyS: Mr MM was brought up in a more observant house than I was, so our agreement when we got married was that I’d separate meat and milk when cooking but I wouldn’t keep two sets of dishes. He went to his rabbi when he was a kid asking why chicken is meat and not parve (i.e., neutral, like fish, since chickens don’t give milk). The rabbi thought about it a while and said, “Because they look more like cows than fish”. Therefore, in our house, poultry is considered parve.
@Tall: sure. Harpies, should I put it up here or send it to Tall offline?
@MM: Go ahead, put it up!
I’ve heard the “chickens don’t give milk” rationale from some Sephardic friends who treat chicken as parve. Make sense to me. That was a lousy explanation on the part of the rabbi, IMO.
@MM – You for serious better save me some of those meringues (seriously, MM has different cookies for almost every holiday and they’re all amazing but the meringues, oh my god the chocolate chip meringues…)
I used to be on team Crunchy Peeps but have since grown out of them. And I find that one of the best schmears on matzah is sundried tomato cream cheese from Panera. Of course, hummus is also delicious, and I’ve lately gotten moderately into matzah pizza or matzah cheesy toast.
Team Cadbury Mini Eggs here. I may or may not buy a few bags at the pharmacy tomorrow and then hide them from my husband.
I just demolished a bag of ALL BLACK jelly beans. If only they’d had those when I was a kid… So good.
Greek Orthodox Dad + Catholic Mom = occasionally two Easters per year. Favorite food memory from Greek Orthodox Easter: for a few years, a relative would purchase a whole lamb and cook it on a spit. Best lamb ever, to this day. Favorite food memory from Catholic Easter (or as my Dad would say, jokingly, “Fake Easter”) the Easter basket full of candy, of course. Loved getting hollow chocolate bunnies and how the chocolate would snap when you broke it.
@emilyanne: That sounds divine! We need a Harpies and friends pot luck.
Is the Easter basket thing big in Britain? Or elsewhere in the world? When I was a kid, I never had Christmas envy, but oh man, those beautiful, lavish baskets, especially in the middle of Passover…
Here’s the tzimmes recipe. Feel free to adjust the proportion of fruits and carrots to your liking. Enjoy!
16 oz bag baby carrots
2 lbs. canned yams
1/2 lb. dried prunes
1/4 c dates
1/4 c honey
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp grated orange peel
1 c orange juice
1 tblsp butter
Cook carrots for 10 minutes, until barely tender. Drain. Combine carrots, yams, prunes and dates in a greased casserole dish. Mix juice, honey and spices and pour over fruit and carrots. Dot with butter. Cover and bake 30 minutes, basting occasionally.
Thanks, MM! It’s grey and rainy here, and the rain is supposed to turn to snow (again!) by tonight. This sounds so warm and comforting that I think it will be our dinner tonight!
@MM: The Easter basket thing was pretty big for all the Episcopalian/Methodist folks I hung out with. I absolutely LOVED them (probably because I was a candy-deprived child, so the sight of all that candy in one place tended to make me go a little bonkers. This was also true of Halloween).
I have a confession to make: I hate tzimmes.
*sigh* those little cadbury eggs…
I still keep a small cache of them when this time of the year comes around.
@Tall: Let me know how it comes out! 12newmoons@gmail.com
@BeckyS: I lol’ed when I read that. It’s okay, I won’t force tzimmes on you.
In answer to an earlier question, yes, we totally do the orange. In fact, one year I forgot to put it on the seder plate and one of our guests reminded me! We also do Miriam’s Cup, a ritual of which, as a Jewish feminist, I am extremely proud.
Family Pesach story: after we sing the Ma Nishtanah (the Four Questions), I always ask whether anyone has any other questions. One year, our daughter, who was 3 or 4 at the time, turned to the guy next to her and said, “Do you have a penis?” He calmly answered yes while the rest of us tried to stop howling with laughter.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Holiday Gifts, Helen. Helen said: Friday Fun Thread: Holiday Nomz – The Pursuit of Harpyness http://bit.ly/9eT92U [...]
OMG, one of the things I miss about college is that every year at Passover the dining halls all had haroset (as well as matzoh, boiled eggs, and matzo ball soup). It’s too bad something so tasty has to symbolize slavery. Sigh.
One of the best things about Easter that I’ve only come across since moving to Chicago is “Easter calzone”–a sort of pie or tart filled with ricotta, sausage, ham, hard-boiled egg… fantastic. Also good for Easter–spanikopita, which one of my aunts makes every year.
For Easter baskets, I recognize the Reese’s Egg love and the Cadbury love – but no malted milk egg love? Mmm, those are good.
@RocktheDebit: it’s true. But making it sweet might also be a way of recognizing the value of the work the Hebrew slaves did. Just a thought. The Passover experience as a whole is, literally and figuratively, a bittersweet one, as we remember and relive the pain and sorrow of the past and hope for liberation in the future.
@MM: So I made the tzimmes last night, but altered it a bit. I already had a large sweet potato so I used that instead of canned yams. I cubed it and parboiled it with the carrots. I also had some leeks that needed to be used, so I caramelized them and added that to the mixture along with some garlic and salt and pepper (I like the sweet/salty flavor profile). I served it over couscous for dinner last night, and today for lunch we ate the leftovers with some chicken-apple sausage. It was yummy!
@Tall: Nicely done!
Oh, yes, those Reeses eggs are the bomb! Did you notice they also appear for halloween as pumpkins, and xmas in the shape of little trees? Who knows, maybe we can get them to make little Reeses firecrackers for july 4th, and hammers and sickles for Labor Day.. I like Peeps too, but prefer them stale so perhaps the Xmas edition is ready to eat for Pesach.
Some other pesach favorites: Fruit Slice candy, charoset (esp. sephardic), and gefilte fish with homemade horseradish. Some people compare it to cat food, but I say, nom nom nom!