יום 185 אוהב ארוכת בוקר

My dad and stepmom are in town and we hopped the T out to Brookline yesterday for lunch at Ruben's Kosher Deli. Boy oh boy was it exciting! It's always a treat to find a Kosher place so I can have some meat and Ruben's did not disappoint. Even better, however, was the area of Brookline we discovered which has several Kosher places, a couple shuls and a few different Judaica shops. I was in desperate need of groceries for my apartment so we stopped at The Butchery which is Jewish owned and run and stocks only Kosher products, many of which are Israeli (Sabra hummus! Prigat in many different flavors! Osem soup almonds!). Needless to say, I'm a very happy camper and I'll be back many times before I leave Boston. Not surprisingly, they're already starting to convert over for Pesach (stopped baking and selling Challah, already lining shelves with paper, running down stock on certain hametz items, etc.) which means we got a preview of certain Pesach-only foods. Every year since I was born, Pescah shopping included a box of Kosher l'Pesach cereal which no one eats. It's nasty crap and everyone hates it but in my house there's a tacit understanding that everyone is required to have at least one bowl to signify that Pesach is here and the food sucks. We call them "Crappy-Os" and we each have an opinion about which is the worst flavor. Much as I hate them, it wouldn't be Pesach without them and seeing them on the shelves for the first time is an exciting moment. As we sometimes say in my family "L'shana Haba'ah b'Yerushalayim, bli Crappy-O's".