My experience with soft matza and haroset ice cream

I tried two new things this Pesach, so far:

1. I bought Yemenite soft matza to use for the korech sandwich at the seder
2. I bought the seasonal flavor of Ben and Jerry's Haroset ice cream

I had high expectations for the soft matza, and low ones for the ice cream. Over the yars I have heard the soft matza raved about, people talking about how much more "authentic" it is, how it is so much easier to eat than our ashkenazi hard matza, how it is much tastier. And I do not like Haroset at all. I dip my maror and korech into haroset, but I make sure most of the haroset falls off when I lift the maror out. I don't like the texture, the look, and the taste is too sweet for me, so I was skeptical, but willing to try, how that would work out when converted to an ice cream.

The soft matza was disappointing at best. The one thing that was good about it was the way it folds - used for korech as a sandwich with the maror nestled inside was great and felt the way it should. Everything else was lousy. I followed the instructions, both the ones written on the box and the ones relayed to me verbally, to a "t". I took it out of the freezer at the right time, I heated it up a bit on the blech for a short amount of time prior to eating it, and I bought a good brand that came highly recommended.

The soft matza was tasteless and difficult to eat. It was thick, not like the laffa, and after the first few bites, it became very difficult to eat. It was hard to chew. And after waiting a bit, I could not use the remainder of the matza. It got stale very quickly. During the meal I was going to eat some more, but by then it was getting hard already.

This is one thing I won't be doing again next year. I am pretty sure all the people who rave about it are people with inferiority complexes about being ashkenazi and think everything sephardi is more authentic and more jewish, because I no longer have any doubt that ashkenazi matza is much better.

Regarding the ice cream, as mentioned, I dislike haroset. I thought the haroset ice cream was great, though the resemblance it had to haroset was perhaps as a distant cousin. The ice cream was basically vanilla ice cream with walnuts inside and a tinge of cinnamon. The ice cream was great, but it was nothing like haroset. Which I guess, for me, was a good thing.

Oh, and one more thing. After davening on the first night of Pesach, there was a locust greeting us on the way out of the shul... It drew a lot of attention, but nobody ran to grab it to take home for the holiday meal...

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