Maybe the first week in January was a bit early to stand in the pantry and contemplate all the chametz we would need to eat up before Passover—a bit early, at least by liberal Jewish standards. All the same, there I was, eyeing the biscuit mix, the Bombay Spice crunchy chickpea snacks, the pie crust mix that I bought with my 8-year-old last fall, while there were still local baking apples to be had. Several packages of pasta sat on the shelves, including a bag of organic, soy-based spaghetti I bought in an adventurous mood just after Passover last year and hadn’t touched since. And that was not all. There was some brown rice couscous, and brown rice and white rice, and yellow rice, too. And some yellow taco shells my partner likes.
Usually I’m not one to think this far in advance. But this year, I wanted our annual chametz eat-down to be about something bigger than what food is and isn’t technically permitted during the holiday. I wanted to expand the concept of chametz to address food waste, too. Those uneaten leftovers in the fridge, and the salad mix going limp seemed to me to encapsulate all the puffed-up arrogance so many commentators have ascribed to forbidden Passover food. And all the more so because one in seven Americans is now what experts call “food insecure,” and food production and transportation consumes 10 percent of our country’s energy budget. (Read: greenhouse gases galore.) Something crazy like 31 percent to 40 percent of the food produced in America is wasted somewhere between the farmer’s field and our refrigerator shelves.
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From Tablet Magazine
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