March 26th-28th 2018 – Happy springy tasty Passover!
In honor of the upcoming Festival of Matza, and in tribute to the first representatives of our yummy spring legumes that are ripening as we speak – the amazing peas and the fava bean – let’s dedicate some words to the general major confusion in the grains and legume world of chametz:
The Grain Family is a fundamental botanical family, the Poaceae family, or the Gramineae. It is one of the most important plant families to economics and human culture, essential for daily food consumption by humans and animals, as a chief source of sugar, as building material and as natural ornaments. It is a relatively young family (55-65 million years old), characterized by grass with hollow stems usually in a node formation, which grants stability and the ability to bend without breaking. As they are fertilized by the wind, grains have no need for any colorful prissy flower to attract pollinators; their flowers are characteristically green-brown-yellow, as the color of the plant itself. The grains are usually organized in spikes.