{"id":2927,"date":"2013-02-28T08:16:25","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T06:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=2927"},"modified":"2013-02-27T16:20:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T14:20:36","slug":"the-fattest-holiday-of-them-all-purim-pesach-shavuot-or-hanukah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2013\/02\/the-fattest-holiday-of-them-all-purim-pesach-shavuot-or-hanukah\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fattest Holiday of Them All? Purim, Pesach, Shavuot or Hanukah?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Roladin<\/a>Purim may now be behind us, but some of the sweets still remain. The holiday, which is officially about retelling the story of how the Jews were almost annihilated in ancient Persia, is perhaps best remembered going forward by one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s increased belly size after partaking of one too many\u00c2\u00a0hamentaschen<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201c the classic triangular-shaped Purim cookie<\/p>\n

Ah, if it were only\u00c2\u00a0hamentaschen<\/i>, maybe we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be OK. But this year, in the tradition of giving gifts to friends to celebrate the holiday, some of our friends went a bit overboard.<\/p>\n

We received everything from foreign imports (Toblerone chocolate bars and pumpkin shaped Reese\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Peanut Butter Cups \u00e2\u20ac\u201c left over from Halloween, I guess); homemade mulled wine (best served slightly warmed, the note said); cinnamon spiced muffins and a Bavarian coffee cake; sushi (!) complete with wasabi and soy sauce; walnut-stuffed dates; and\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6a plant. That one didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit the sweet tooth but will probably have the longest impact.<\/p>\n

After driving my sugar intake to absurd levels this year, I got to wondering about the candied ark of the Jewish year and which is the fattiest of our many holidays.<\/p>\n

Purim, with its All Hallow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Eve flourish of costumes and Snickers Bars, would seem the favorite, but there are clear contenders. Hanukah, of course, features\u00c2\u00a0sufganiyot<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201c the ubiquitous winter donut \u00e2\u20ac\u201c prominently in its culinary excesses and the bakeries are even more creative in December than at Purim time. You can also buy\u00c2\u00a0sufganiyot<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0earlier \u00e2\u20ac\u201c starting at some establishments as early as the day after Simchat Torah \u00e2\u20ac\u201c whereas\u00c2\u00a0hamentaschen<\/i>stick relatively close to the Megillah reading.<\/p>\n

Shavuot is more of a\u00c2\u00a0concentrated<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0eating day \u00e2\u20ac\u201c while cheesecake is the preferred dessert, there aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t weeks of decadent dairy tastings prior to this holiday, which marks the giving of the Torah \u00e2\u20ac\u201c otherwise, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unlikely Moses would have had the stamina to stagger up Mount Sinai.<\/p>\n

But the very worst, as I see it, is really the next to come: Passover. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the overt sweets that will do you in (how many chocolate covered macaroons can one person eat, after all) but the hidden calories in all that\u00c2\u00a0matza<\/i>, so deceptive in size, yet so dense in consistency.<\/p>\n

Shmear\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>a slab of butter on top and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just downed a double\u00c2\u00a0sufganiyot<\/i>-cheesecake-hamentaschen<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0infusion while thinking you were just having a little\u00c2\u00a0nosh<\/i>. And to that the fact that\u00c2\u00a0matza<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0has this\u00c2\u00a0small\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>side effect (how shall I put it delicately\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6you won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be visiting the bathroom for the duration of the holiday, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the eleventh plague), and even if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t gain weight, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll feel like it.<\/p>\n

Jewish dieters view the year as a cycle of cringe and binge. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly one month between Purim and Pesach \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is that enough time to slim down before the next fat fest begins? And another seven weeks from Pesach until Shavuot \u00e2\u20ac\u201c surely, you can get things under control by then. And if all else fails, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always Tisha B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122av and the other three fast days on the Jewish calendar.<\/p>\n

The cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have come up with a better incentive towards keeping in shape. This year, both are holding their annual Marathons in the coming weeks (Jerusalem<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0this Friday,\u00c2\u00a0Tel Aviv<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0March 15). And with tens of thousands of runners from Israel and around the world descending on the Holy Land, at least some of our country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collective carbs stand to be burned off.<\/p>\n

I first posed my fatty question yesterday on Israelity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Purim may now be behind us, but some of the sweets still remain. The holiday, which is officially about retelling the story of how the Jews were almost annihilated in ancient Persia, is perhaps best remembered going forward by one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s increased belly size after partaking of one too many\u00c2\u00a0hamentaschen\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u201c the classic triangular-shaped Purim cookie Ah, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,3,9],"tags":[23,102,53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2930,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions\/2930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}