Thursday, March 12, 2009

Quinoa 2009

Once again, it's time for the annual check on the status of quinoa for Passover. This year, instead of Aish Hatorah, the source of bafflement is the OU.

Their Passover Guide is out and online. The full PDF quotes the now common and relatively safe "ask your Rabbi" (yes, Rabbi is capitalized) position. One article attempts to define "kitnios" (or is it "kitniyot?") logically by reference to the Mishnah Brura, thus stating that quinoa "logically" should be kitniyot, despite all the exceptions that lead to the conclusion that kitniyot defies logic.* (Another baffling statement in the article is that if kitniyot are prepared on Pesach for a permissible reason, "they should be prepared in special non-Pesach and non-chametz utensils, which should not be washed with the Pesach dishes" -- anyone know where that comes from?) The other quinoa-related news on the OU website is the short kitniyot list, which, despite the official "ask your Rabbi" position, says (drumroll please):

The following may be Kitniyot and are therefore not used:
Quinoa
Amaranth


Huh?

* The article was prepared in a word processor with autocorrect turned on. Anyone want to guess how I knew that? :-)

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Comments:
You called it. All the more reason for me to serve quinoa at Passover this year. :)
 
Well...it could be because other pseudo-cereals (quinoa is a pseudo-cereal) were accepted a kitniyos in Europe.

For example - buckwheat, although not a grain, is customarily not eaten on Pesach, due to kitniyos reasons.
 
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

and people capitalizing "Rabbi" unnecessarily bothers me too.
 
what's with amaranth?
 
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