Passover has finally come to an end, after a long week with no bread. On Passover, we gorged ourselves on matzah (unleavened bread) and anything potato starch. I vowed that the night Passover ended, I wasn't going to eat. After all, I told myself, I won't even be interested in food after a holiday that was basically all meals. When my friend asked me to go out to a movie after Passover, we had no intention of eating another thing. But when the movie ended, we found that despite our previous statements, we were of course, hungry. "Let's get pizza!" my friend exclaimed.
This phenomenon, known as " the post-Passover pizza obsession", occurs at the end of Passover each year. The fact that "matzah-pizza" may have been consumed once, twice or even three times during the eight unleavened days is of no consequence. Nor does it matter that your "matzah-pizza" was just as delectable as any thin-crust real pizza in Little Italy. It just doesn't matter. Why? Because real dough pizza is still an absolute necessity on that post-Passover night.
For eight days we feel this sense of deprivation and yet we all gain five pounds. We spend our days and nights of this holiday eating delicious food and yet throughout we still talk about missing bagels, pasta and... pizza. We give each other pep talks -- "I'm doing great, how about you?" -- as if we are in the midst of a famine or food shortage. And so by the time the sun begins to set on the 8th day of Passover, the anticipation begins to mount. Pizza is all we want to know about. Braving the crowds, searching for parking, waiting on line for an hour, all to be able to bite into that isosceles triangle the very night Passover ends.
And thus, the search for our post-Passover pizza began.
When we got to the counter at pizza shop #1, the people working at the store were dolling out pie after pie of fresh from the oven pizza, which the bread-deprived customers were grabbing, at intense speed. Like "the apocalypse is coming and we're never going to see pizza again" fast. Much to our dismay, this pizza shop was only serving pies, which were taking a long time to make, so we ventured on to pizza shop #2, which was more of the same. However, we did manage to get a pie, of which we had a few slices and the rest of which my friend bought home to her family.
The day after Passover, it's like it never happened. The longing for bread feels like a distant memory and the pizza coma from the night before is blocked out of our minds. Until next Passover, at least.
