Wednesday, March 19, 2008

And Nosh Some Hamentaschen

Purim falls on March 20th or 21st at sundown. (Two Jews, three opinions. Can't we ever agree on anything?)

For the uninitiated, Purim is another one of those Jewish holidays that's summed up like this:

They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat.

And during Purim we eat hamentaschen (literally, Haman's pockets). Around 350 BCE, an evil advisor to King Ahasuerus of Persia, named Haman, hatched a plan to kill all the Jews. I hate to give away the ending, but the Jews survived and Haman was hanged.

The triangular-shaped cookies represent his three-cornered hat. I don't really get the pocket-hat relationship, but I do believe that the reason prune is the traditional hamentaschen flavor is to give us an excuse to kvetch about our irritable bowel syndrome.

Personally, I prefer apricot.

1 comment:

Epicure68 said...

they all look good. I have yet to find a cookie I didn't like.