Is it really time to eat again?

I am apparently a glutton for punishment because after a month of Jewish holidays, I felt compelled to sit down and figure out how many meals I ate during the festive season. The results were not pretty.

According to my best recollections, I have participated in 18 holiday meals in a one month period. I have made more than 30 challot (according to a Google search a challah is a traditional Jewish, yeasted, braided bread), not to mention eight kilos of fresh salmon, chicken in every conceivable variation, and enough side dishes, soups and desserts to satisfy an ultra-orthodox wedding party of 600.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, we attended two bar mitzvah parties the night that the holidays finally ended. I can't help but wonder if the hosts of those two parties made a mistake when they set their dates? Or perhaps they are oblivious to the limits of the human capacity for food.

I don't think it would be out of place to mention here that there are people starving in Biafra. I don't actually know where Biafra is but my mother has been reminding me about the poor starving people there since I was six.

Time for my segway... a little education never hurt anyone. Wikipedia says that the Republic of Biafra was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria. It existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970. In other words, my mother milked that temporary situation for all that it was worth! And even if Biafrans are no longer starving or no longer exist, there are lots of other starving people much closer to home.

At the end of the holidays I swore that I would not enter my kitchen again. That didn't last long -- well, it didn't even last 24 hours actually. Despite my threats, my children were hungry again the very next day. In an effort to stay true to my original threat I suggested that everyone eat the leftovers, but apparently my children were also sick of holiday food. The difference was that, in their case, they expected fresh new food prepared by me. I would have settled for a fat-free yogurt.

I know that feeding your children is one of the top five obligations of mothers noted in the Official Mothers Handbook, and I know that there is a very disfunctional relationship between Jews and food, but for me, I am drawing a line in matza meal -- I am on hiatus due to an extreme reaction to a month's worth of gluttony.