Rachel's Matzo Ball Soup :)

Nothing is better than my grandmother's matzo ball soup on a cold winter's day. Sniffling and sitting in front of a fire with my heaping bowl of Jewish goodness, I was thinking about the collection of foods that were warming my soul. All of the ingredients making my mouth water were brought to the Americas by explorers and colonists during the Colombian Exchange. This period was a time of sharing ideas, languages, diseases, religions, and the best: FOOD! This impacted the whole world—people in the Americas were subject to new illnesses, crops, and religions; and people in Europe reaped the benefits of a plethora of new foods from the Americas.

The salty chicken, the staple food in my family, was transported across the Atlantic from the Old World to the New World. This new domesticated animal, although it sometimes carried diseases, eventually became one of the primary sources of poultry in the New World. Thank goodness, because the moist, delicious, meat fell apart in my mouth! The base of the soup, carrots, celery and onions, were also transported from Eurasia to the Americas during the Columbian Exchange. Carrots, the sweet and vibrant roots, traveled on ships across the ocean to the New World. In Eurasia, they came in purple and yellowish varieties, but not until they made it to the Americas, did they become their characteristic orange color. The celery and onions, main foods in the European diet, added a quintessentially Ashkenazi Jew flair.  They were juicy and earthy. They made their way across the Atlantic in the Columbian Exchange as well. And the star of the show: wheat! In the heavenly, fluffy matzo balls, the magical grain made me smile as I sipped the soup. It was transported from the Old World to the New World where it thrived as a new domesticated plant in the North.