It is the season for marathons, light beers and little-known ethno-religious distinctions. And in this house of Jews, none of whom really keep kosher in the first place, there’s an amusing debate over the merits of seasonal yellow-label Coca-Cola. I somewhat prefer it, and I know several people who make a big deal of it. Others, Ivy for instance, seem to think it’s disgusting and that Coke is best left as-is.

Coke has a pretty long and interesting manufacturing history of its own, which I will resist the temptation to delve into. The relevant thing is, it’s one of the most widely consumed soft drinks on the face of the earth. Part of their strategy to maximize market capitalization is franchising. All coke is made by the same base formula, but regional bottlers control the sweetening of the beverage and the addition of any special flavorings (e.g. vanilla, lime, etc).

What we think of as “standard” coke is the basic formula sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, the non-diet sweetener of choice in the United States. It’s kinda sharp, it’s been claimed to be less healthy than other sweeteners… whatever. It’s dirt cheap so it’s what we use. Yuppies tend to prefer things sweetened with more traditional, wholesome-seeming ingredients like honey, sugarcane and agave.

And as it happens, in large markets like Stop’n'Shop, for a matter of weeks each year you can find such a coke. It looks exactly like an ordinary bottle in all ways but one: it sports a yellow cap marked with Hebrew letters that spell out “Kosher l’Pasach”. This coke is sweetened with pure cane sugar.

The short explanation is that Jews of the Ashkenazi heritage, which is dominant in the US and central Europe, are forbidden to consume corn during the Passover holiday. A full explanation is beyond me, but I’ll give it a go.

Passover is the ancient celebration of the deliverance of the Israelite tribes from Egypt, where they were among the groups enslaved by the Pharaohs to build their great monuments. To achieve this, God besieged the land with ten plagues, each more dreadful than the last. The name Passover (Pasach) refers to a sign, painted in lamb’s blood on the doors of Israelite homes on the eve of the tenth and final plague. The Angel of Death would pass over these homes, slaying the firstborn of all other homes in order to break the will of the Egyptians. When this was done, the Israelites fled Africa.

Jewish tradition is heavily oriented around food, and it seems reasonable to assume that they loved good cuisine as much as their descendants do today. But during their flight, they abandoned the delicacies of Egypt. This had less to do with moral revulsion than simply the lack of time–time for bread to rise, time for beer and wine to ferment.

The primary commandment of the Passover holiday is thus a symbolic ban on the possession or use of chametz, “leavening”. In all Jewish traditions, this is interpreted to include yeast and sourdough breads, as well as beer and grain alcohols, Egypt being a center of brewing knowledge in biblical times. Such products are viewed as decadent as well as out of keeping with the holiday. The actual process for defining chametz is complicated however, and so different groups within Judaism have evolved different proscriptions for Passover.

Of the three largest ethnic groups–Ashkenazim, descended from the immense pre-WWII Jewish populations of France, Germany, Hungary, Poland and other central-European nations; Sephardim, who emigrated to Spain and Portugal in the first millennium AD and flourished there under Muslim rule; and Mizrahim, hailing from the Middle East and central Asia–Ashkenazi tradition is the most specific and most stringent in determining what counts as chametz. It extends the traditional “five grains” (oats, wheat, spelt, barley and rye) prohibition to include new-world grains and legumes (kitniyot) that can be confused for or contaminated with chametz. That includes rice and corn.

Furthermore, it states that these forbidden starches can only be used to one end, the production of commemorative Matzo (unleavened bread); whereas Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are only prohibited from baking and fermenting these items, and are still permitted to cook with them in a variety of ways. The net effect is that keeping Kosher during the holiday is drastically less feasible in the United States than it would be in many parts of the world. The prohibition on chametz means that many common sides and starches and the majority of vegetarian staples are right out; so, too, are most soft drinks and alcoholic beverages. Keeping kosher for Passover nearly becomes a form of fasting.

But, you can still have your rum and coke.

Today I completed my state and federal returns for 2007, and since I haven’t had to file since 2005 when we weren’t all on the bandwagon yet, this was my first chance to experience the triumph of eGovernment that is IRS E-filing. Choosing one of the many free-to-paid online tax return services seemed pretty arbitrary, so I ended up going with the one my family used. The front page was very busy-looking, and of course decked out with all those little icons saying “you can trust us!” which few people understand well enough to actually distinguish site fraud, but whatever. I linked there directly from the IRS, and the SSL certificates were in order.

I started up an account, logged in and started working through the basics. Apart from poking me repeatedly with a stick, asking “Do you want our fine, fine premium services?” it seemed friendly enough, but I soon ran into a wall when I discovered that after skipping through some of these notices, their fancy-schmancy Ajax application would nonchalantly redirect me back to the very beginning. This made certain vital sections of the data entry process impossible to reach. Clever navigational strategies got me a bit further, but eventually it dawned on me that this was absolutely unworkable, probably around the time I was trying and failing (again) to actually find a place to insert the monetary details of my skeletal MathWorks W2.

Out of desperation, and a sneaking suspicion that the site developers were idiots, I logged out in Firefox and fired up the website in IE7. I retraced my steps, and Lo, the thing suddenly worked like a charm. Now it bothers me somewhat to discover there are people who still don’t write their apps to work in multiple browsers, but that wasn’t the real issue here. What really drove me insane was that they’d provided specific instructions for using the site in Netscape, Firefox and IE. Right down to how to disable pop-up blocking for the site. So clearly they had the target in mind; God only knows where in the deployment process they dropped the ball or gave up on us non-IE-using rebels.

Once I’d finished venting over this, the process went fairly quickly. I didn’t file for free, since I had state taxes to file and hoped the slight extra cost of Deluxe filing would take their software out of idiotic mode. Mostly this meant I got some extra advice that didn’t apply to me anyway, but no matter. The thing’s over with, I’m in the black overall by roughly the amount of my economic stimulus credit, and I can move on with my life.

I recall having a somewhat loftier vision of electronic government when I first considered its manifold possibilities. We’ve got the convenience part down, more or less; now we should be concerning ourselves with the transparency and equity parts. I think the (unsurprising) assumption that because e-commerce and tax filing tend to be private sector affairs, e-filing should too, may be a mistake. They still place a lot of record-keeping and data transfer burden directly on the user, and they don’t present the kind of consistent user experience that is definitely possible. When I think of what’s wrong with this process, I also think of what’s wrong with health care, and how projects like Indivo and Dossia could be a step in the right direction. By a similar virtue, I think a comprehensive reference implementation of basic e-file services would make everyone’s lives easier and help the IRS convince more people to switch over.

Incidentally, I also got to check out the process recently for electronically filing unemployment insurance claims in the state of Massachusetts. This service is provided directly by the state, through the department of workforce development. Aside from the fact that it is needlessly Ajaxy (but who isn’t these days), I’m pretty happy with the service. It’s simple, clean, and powerful enough to tell you what you want to know. What issues it does have are quirks that strike me as probably bureaucratic in origin: you have to initially sign up by phone to get the PIN with which to create your account, and then you can only do useful things with the system during operating hours (7AM to 7PM). Since this is the very definition of an automated system, it’s silly to give it business hours. But what the heck, I can live with that.

Specifically, by the brand history of Grey Goose. If you also had your head in the sand, it was made by a beverage hack from Long Island, out of thin air about ten years ago.

It’s not so much that the brand is young, or even that it’s not particularly French (it’s made in Cognac as much for symbolic purposes as anything). It’s that it really does taste that good. And I fancy myself something of a budding critic. So either I’m hopeless, or the contours of alimentary reality are not quite what I believed them to be. *le sigh*

I realized last night I had some overripe avocados that needed making into something, so I did what I usually do, that is, make guacamole. I didn’t have quite the usual set of ingredients, but my on-the-spot substitutions turned out to be fairly inspired.

For reference, my conception of a “standard” guacamole:

2 ripe avocados, peeled and mashed;
1 medium-sized tomato, diced;
2-3 garlic cloves, minced;
2 jalepenos (optional), minced;
sea salt and lime juice to taste

This leaves lots of room for augmentation and variation–I’ve seen onions or shallots in place of garlic, and vinegar in place of juice. Trader Joe’s sells kits that include a whole lime, which, in addition to being really tasty, makes for fun adventures when people happen across the little chunks of lime flesh. You can also add things like sour cream that give it a smoother texture and more balanced flavor; the above ingredients by themselves make very strong guacamole, which is what I prefer.

Whatever you use, however, the wet ingredients are critical to the consistency of the final product. Plain mashed avocado is rather too thick to make a good dip. I didn’t have any ReaLime, or appropriately sized canned tomato, and somehow I hit on the idea that everything that goes in a margarita should also work in guacamole.

Wait, what?

Okay, let’s consider this a moment. Guacamole is flavored and emulsified with the acidic pulp of tomato and citrus fruits, and salt. Margarita contains fermented agave mash, a different mix of (sweetened) citrus juices, and salt, and is a perfect compliment to nachos. I don’t think the exact specifications are very important, but I mixed it something like this:

3/4 oz. silver tequila
1/2 oz. triple sec orange liqueur
1/2 oz. sweetened lime juice syrup
1 tsp salt

and added that to the guacamole (which was made as above, but with no tomato and no salt). The contribution of alcohol is pretty small, and the sugar takes some of the edge off those other loud flavors, so what you’re left with is smooth, tasty guacamole that’s somehow subtly different, more racy. This is the kind of guacamole you’d hang out with at the bar on Friday nights, but never invite home for fear that it would try and seduce all your female relatives.

I came back to this today and decided it I didn’t want to skip out on tomatoes after all, so I went shopping and set out to make a complimentary mole bean dip. The proportions worked out such that I made more of it than I wanted to, but otherwise it came out rather nicely. I was really winging it with this one, so I tried ingredients that seemed reasonably safe together:

1 large tomato, diced;
1 can (~2 cups) black beans (be sure to rinse off the syrup);
~1/3 cup red mole;
~1/2 cup sour cream;
black pepper, cayenne, and chives to taste

As bean dips go, this one is pretty complex in flavor thanks to the mole. Not to be confused with guacamole, mole is a traditional dark Mexican sauce, more properly mole poblano, that combines two of God’s greatest gifts to cooking: chocolate and chili. I’ve exposited before on my love of this peculiar combination, and store-bought mole is a better and (presumably) more faithful application of xocolatl to cooking. The rich brown paste has only the slightest bit of heat and bears little resemblance to milk chocolate–and it’s a perfect compliment to the beans.

My dip came out a little on the thin side, and I tried to thicken it some with flour, to little effect. Probably this is best addressed by using the full measure of beans and being more careful to leave out the watery mess from the tomato. This stuff emulsifies pretty easily just from the cream and mole, although it takes a concerted effort to get rid of all the whole beans.

Complex as it is, it probably wouldn’t seem complete without the added spices, at least not next to the vibrant guacamole I prepared. Mole adds plenty of salt and a range of sweet flavors, so to distinguish it I turned to herbs. I threw in the cayenne to bring out the faint heat, which had been completely masked by the sour cream, and some dried chive for a combination of garnish, flavor and texture. That seemed to do the trick. Then all I had to do was make nachos, and let my concoctions fight it out on the field of deliciousness.

One caveat, I did notice that the guacamole went south fairly quickly, and it’s possible that the presence of unevaporated alcohol even helped this process along a bit. It could also be nothing; avocados are known to oxidize extremely quickly once opened. Carefully packaging the dip with saran-wrap should help it keep longer.

Fun fact: as a special this April Fools’ day, the webring composed of XKCD, Questionable Content and Dinosaur Comics has been shifted one to the left. A little URL hacking reveals that http://www.qwantz.com/ now points at http://www.xkcd.com/403/, http://xkcd.com/ points at http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1111, and http://questionablecontent.net/ points at (what should be) http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001195.html.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Randall Munroe suggested this year’s prank. Incidentally, his comic has just reached issue number 403, meaning that this and tomorrow’s comic are particularly ripe occasions for this very sort of geeky webmaster humor (in HTTP, status 403 means “forbidden” and 404 means “file not found”).

Update: XKCD has skipped to episode 405. Thus, the number 404 is commemorated in that http://xkcd.com/404/ will always display the 404 error message “file not found”, because the page doesn’t exist. Lest this confuse fans or search robots, the in-page navigation links conform to this reality and skip over 404.