Shout out to my Peeps!

It’s that time of year that I must give a shout out to my peeps!! Here’s the story –

Spring is in the air!! For some, the first sign of the fact that spring has arrived is marked with the return of Daylight Savings Time…you know, that annual ritual during which we push our clocks ahead one hour, change the batteries in our smoke detectors, and spend about a week walking around like zombies trying to recover from that lost hour of sleep. For others, it’s the fact that the daffodils pop up through last season’s mulch and start to add a little bit of bright green and yellow color to the otherwise drab road-sides which are scattered with piles of the fall’s decaying leaves that did not get picked up before winter’s first snowfall.

There are other signs of spring as well. In New England, the sugar maples are bursting with sap. The steam from the roof pipes and sweet smell from the maple sugar houses are a tell tale sign that spring is here. The first Robin that lands on the rail of the back yard deck, the wiggling tad poles in the neighborhood pond, and the swollen buds on the flowering pear trees are all natures tip off that spring is just around the corner!

I love all of those things, and frankly spend all winter waiting to get my camera and get out to document this year’s coming of spring. However, there are two other transformations that happen right around this time of year, one of which is my absolute favorite.

Each year in the earliest part of spring, the supermarket shelves transform into two distinctly separate ethnic sections that cry out with the change of season. On the one set of shelves, the grocer overstocks the boxes of Matzoh, jars of gefilte fish, containers of egg kichels, and a smorgasbord of kosher for Passover staples. As odd as it may seem, I love that!! The fact is that most of this food is just too gross, too plainly nasty to ever eat at any other time of the year. However, I actually look forward to stocking up on my horseradish and gefilte fish. I can’t wait to fry up some matzoh brie for breakfast (click the underlined link if you have no idea what that is!!), complete with cinnamon sugar or strawberry jelly. I long for a heaping bowl of matzoh ball soup with crunchy egg kichels floating on top. I also look forward to the fact that Passover lasts for only eight days and I can go back to eating normal food before terribly long!!

The second set of shelves, as you may now have guessed, contains the brightly colored, highly fattening, and mouth watering foods associated with Easter!! Who wouldn’t look forward to all of the chocolate goodness – regardless of whether its shaped like a bunny or an egg! I mention the Passover stuff first, strictly out of loyalty to my Jewish heritage. However, out of all of this stuff, it’s the peeps that I look forward to the most!!

I’m not sure why this is. Among all of my early childhood memories is the fact that my mom would always buy each of us a small box of the marshmallowy, sugary, gooey, little yellow chicks each year. To this day, my wife will surprise me at some point between now and Easter with my very own box of peeps to enjoy. I savor them…I eat one a day…heads always bitten off first…and make them last as long as possible. I like the yellow ones best. I only eat them at this time of year and when I do I know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, spring has arrived!!