Tonight many Jewish families hold the Seder, the ritual meal celebrating the holiday of Passover. Many Americans are unfamiliar with the customs of this dinner, such as recounting the Exodus story as told in the ancient Maxwell House Haggadah and the obligation to drink four glasses of wine (oh, the sacrifices …).
One seasonal custom puzzling to Gentiles is the appearance of canned Kosher cookies in American supermarkets. Many Jews are puzzled as well, since the cookies are macaroons made with coconut, chocolate, and other ingredients not prominent in the Old Testament.
Origins of the Passover macaroon are shrouded in mystery. Some believe the dense sweets derive from hastily assembled desserts prepared by the Israelites as they fled Egyptian bondage on a route devoid of donut shops. Others maintain that, in the nineteenth century, rabbinical scholars exploring caves near the Dead Sea uncovered a huge cache of ancient canisters of sweet, rock-hard, unleavened biscuits. Each spring these pious prospectors slapped “Kosher for Passover” labels on the cans and exported them to the growing Jewish community in the United States, and a tradition was born.
Tonight many Jewish families hold the Seder, the ritual meal celebrating the holiday of Passover. Many Americans are unfamiliar with the customs of this dinner, such as recounting the Exodus story as told in the ancient Maxwell House Haggadah and the obligation to drink four glasses of wine (oh, the sacrifices …).
One seasonal custom puzzling to Gentiles is the appearance of canned Kosher cookies in American supermarkets. Many Jews are puzzled as well, since the cookies are macaroons made with coconut, chocolate, and other ingredients not prominent in the Old Testament.
It’s Girl Scout Cookie season, and pert pigtailed peddlers are pushing Peanut Butter Patties® on pavements across America. But somehow it’s not the same. Those yummy trans fats are gone, and now Girl Scout Cookies have gone Gluten-Free. What’s next, Kale Thin Mints and Quinoa Samoas?
Like everything else, Girl Scout Cookies cost more, but that creates a learning experience. For the first time you can charge your cookies, so we’re teaching America’s young women that it’s okay to spend money you don’t have. There’s also the chance to learn 21st century Orienteering skills through map reading downloading the Official Girl Scout Cookie Finder Mobile App. And any Scout who sells enough Gluten-Free Girl Scout Cookies earns the coveted Pseudoscience Merit Badge.
Related:
“Smart Cookie: Girl Scout Sets Up Shop Outside Marijuana Dispensary,” Melissa Locker, TIME
“Why Are Pro-Lifers Boycotting Girl Scout Cookies?” Katie Stroh, Austinist
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In South Carolina’s Spartanburg County, the Sheriff’s Office is investigating the theft of about 450 cases of Girl Scout cookies from a warehouse. The 5,000 boxes of Thin Mints and Shortbreads are worth $18,900.
An American icon reaches the century mark today: the Oreo sandwich cookie. A classic. Two crisp, round, embossed chocolate-colored wafers separated by a thin stratum of sweet white paste. Nothing but the finest sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B1}, riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid, high oleic canola oil and/or palm oil and/or canola oil and/or soybean oil, cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), salt, soy lecithin (emulsifier), vanillin — an artifical flavor, chocolate. Yum.
The Girl Scouts gave some of their cookies a merit badge they really don’t deserve.
Boxes of Samoas, Tagalongs and Thin Mints, the most popular cookies in the whole troop, have worn “0 grams trans fat” badges since 2007, but partially hydrogenated oils are their second and third largest ingredients.
But don’t blame the GSA, blame the FDA. Food and Drug Administration rules allow products to be marked “0 grams trans fat” if the amount per serving is below 0.5 grams. So if you make food out of artery-clogging trans fatty acids, just make the servings smaller and you can label those packages “0 grams trans fat,” too.
More:
“The Girl Scout Cookie lie: No trans-fats,” The Week.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.
Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine
Last year the Obama family hosted the first White House Seder, the ritual meal celebrating the Jewish holiday of Passover. The tradition continues this year. Many Americans are unfamiliar with the customs of this dinner, such as the compulsory obligations to tell the Exodus story and drink four glasses of wine (oh, the sacrifices …).
One seasonal custom puzzling to Gentiles is the appearance of canned Kosher cookies in American supermarkets. Many Jews are puzzled as well, since the cookies are macaroons made with coconut, chocolate, and other ingredients not prominent in the Old Testament.
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