Whether you’re keeping kosher for Passover for the first time or the 50th, remembering what exactly constitutes chametz — i.e. the kind of food you can’t eat on Passover — can be a challenge. Is a non-matzah cracker chametz? Is oat milk? Separately, if I make oatmeal with oat milk, does that constitute cooking a kid in its mother’s milk?
Read on for this extremely, definitively, definitely real and not satirical list of everything you can and cannot eat during Passover.
Can Eat: Matzah
A Passover staple!
Cannot Eat: Bread
Remember the golden rule: If there is yeast, you will not feast.
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Can Eat: Macaroons
The second “o” is what makes it kosher, actually.
Cannot Eat: Bagel
Sadly, there is bread in there.
Can Eat: Gefilte fish
Sadly, there is not bread in there.
Can/not Eat: Rice
Haha, yes! YES! Ashkenazi Jews get all the representation in pop culture and centering in most Jewish spaces and a lot of non-Jews just assume that Ashkenazi culture is the default. BUT, it’s all worth it because on Passover, Sephardim and Mizrahim get… rice.
Can Eat: Horseradish on Fruit Jelly Slice
One can… but should one?
Can Eat: Peeps
If Christians can have seders, my Jewish ass can have a Peep.
Can Eat: Boiled Egg
Mmmmmm…. egg. Yum, yum, yum deeeeeelicious boiled egg. Scrumptious. Mm, mm, mm.
Can’t Not Eat: Bone
A great source of calcium!
Cannot Eat: Easter Egg
DO NOT, and I mean, DO NOT under ANY circumstances come across an Easter Egg hunt in a local park one day and see all the brightly colored eggs and think to yourself “Mmmmmm…. egg. Yum, yum, yum deeeeeelicious boiled egg,” so you spirit away some of the Easter eggs from the unsuspecting children and you get so excited about your bounty that you unhinge your jaw like a snake and swallow all the Easter eggs whole only to realize they weren’t boiled at all. They were plastic. Oh God, the Easter eggs are plastic. And now 5-10 plastic Easter eggs are stuck in your gullet and you have to get some guy in an Easter Bunny costume to give you the Heimlich while all the children and their parents at the Easter egg hunt watch, and even though you didn’t die you definitely absorbed some micro-plastics into your esophagus while you were choking to death at the local Easter egg hunt so that’ll definitely be a problem that comes home to roost in 20-30 years. DO NOT DO THAT.
Can Eat: Plague Masks
I call boils!
Can Eat: T-Shirt That Says “Matzah Baller”
Just as long as it doesn’t mix wool and linen.
Cannot Eat: Rabbit
Obviously I’m not talking about that rabbit. That would be crazy. Like I said, you cannot eat rabbits because they’re not kosher. But if they were kosher… I’m kidding. That would be crazy. So crazy, right? But maybe crazy in kind of a fun, forbidden way? It could be like, so wrong it’s right, you know? No, no I’m totally kidding. Completely a joke… unless…
