I’m posting this in Cafe Society because it deals with food. Well, kinda’, if you think of matzo as “food.”
Anyhow, the prices of matzo around here have plummeted as Passover approaches; it’s a loss leader for many supermarkets, to attract observant Jewish customers to their other seasonal Passover offerings. I saw a five-pack of Yehuda kosher for Passover matzo for $3 at one supermarket, with mail-in rebate deals that bring the price down to almost free.
Considering the low price, and its airtight, secure packaging, would matzo make an ideal survival food? I know man cannot live on bread alone, but if power is down for a week, and you can’t get out of the house, cheap K-P matzo could make a good temporary food supply. A box provides about 1,500 calories, about a day’s worth of energy, and you could probably get by on less if you’re inactive. If you get the hunger pangs before disaster strikes, you’ll probably be less tempted to break into an emergency stock of bland matzo than some Pop Tarts.
Basically, how long would a sealed box of matzo stay edible? I know … Passover matzo is barely edible as it is, but you know.
If you sealed them in an airtight container, like a big tupperware, they’d probably last an awfully long time. Matzo doesn’t contain any fat does it? There’s nothing to go rancid. If kept in a sealed container so that humidity doesn’t make them stale and insects can’t get at them, they should be good practically indefinitely. In the army, I ate c-ration crackers that were years old.
Sure, matzoh might stay “good” for emergency purposes, but if you could actually [del]eat[/del] choke down an entire box of dry matzoh in a single day, then you deserve to survive through any disaster and I’d take my yarmulke off to you. I love matzoh, but even I couldn’t do that without topping it with tuna salad or at least spreading butter on it, which, in an emergency situation obviously wouldn’t be available. Your days and nights in the desert may vary.
Clearly none of you have ever poked through the stuff they used to put in fall-out shelters. There were giant cans of crackers and hard candy. The thinking was that you could do okay on those things and some water for a week or so til the worst of the radiation passed. I tried some of the crackers back in the early 80’s when we dismantled a fallout shelter at a county building where I worked. They were not the most flavorful thing I ever tried, but they’d beat having nothing.
Here’s a little experiment for you to try: do not eat anything at all between now and this time Monday afternoon. Then have a matzo and a glass of water. I assure you that you will find it an absolutely delicious repast.
I’m sure that a matzo would be better than nothing, but if you’re planning your survival kit, I’m sure there are better things you could store away. Matzo is too dry and nutritionally incomplete.
Sure there are other things you could and should store. But see, the OP wondered about matzo because it was cheap. Cheez whiz, or similar product and some some peanut butter/jelly are also cheap and shelf stable and will go a long way towards making the matzos more palatable. To reference the c-rations again, the not unmatzo-like crackers in them came with cheez or peanut butter/jelly to help you choke them down.
I guess it depends where you are. Where I am, a suburb that’s not exactly a hotbed of Jewish activity, a box of Matzoh sells for something like $3.00 EACH. For, I think, a ten ounce box. (Have boxes of Matzoh shrunk in the past few years since I last bought some?)
Anyway, at that price, you’d do better buying saltines or even raisins.
I have a box of 2004 Passover matzos in the cupboard at work. Unwrapped in a cardboard box.
I just tasted one.
It tasts * exactly *as it did in 2004. ;j
By the way, the highest use of matzo is matzo brei.
Crumble the matzo, pour boiling water over them and drain. Use one egg for every 1 or 2 matzos. Mix with eggs, salt, pepper, garlic powder and cook like scrambled eggs until the eggs set. Add a dab of butter. Mmmmm…
Over a long term, you need a wide variety of nutrients, most of which won’t be found in matzo. But in the immediate term, what you need is calories, and it doesn’t much matter what form they’re in. And matzo does have calories. So long as you have plenty of water, I’d imagine that matzo would hold you through for at least a couple of weeks, and if you toss in some multivitamins, too, it’d probably be more like months. About the only thing missing there would be fat and protein, so with matzo, multivitamins, water, and peanut butter or cheez spread, you’d probably be good indefinitely (at least from a survival standpoint… you might go crazy, though).
While this is about “food,” it’s really seeking factual answers, it’s not about taste or recipes or the like. Our classification system isn’t a strict one, but it’s not usually about Topics so much as style of discussion. So, I’m ruling it a GQ and moving it. I think you’ll get better answers, perhaps, in GQ.
Refried beans always get my tract moving nicely. Fat and plenty of fiber, plus those indigestible sugars that ferment in your intestines . . . if you’re living on refried beans, I don’t think there’s much risk of constipation.
Refried beans always get my tract moving nicely. Fat and plenty of fiber, plus those indigestible sugars that ferment in your intestines . . . if you’re living on refried beans, I don’t think there’s much risk of constipation.