Video: Giant Matzo Ball Gets Police Escort!

While you were schlepping home via mass transit yesterday, a matzo ball received a police escort from Teaneck, N.J. to the Lower East Side. Some say it was the biggest matzo ball on earth, and this video documents its vastness with a matter-of-fact style usually reserved for footage of beached whales:

In case you're curious, the mighty matzo was made from 1,000 eggs, 80 pounds of margarine and an incalculable quantity of matzo meal. It weighed in at 267 pounds, and was 29.2 inches across. Cooks prepared it for nearly 20 hours in a custom-made 100-gallon kettle in New Jersey, then delivered it to Noah's Ark Deli on Grand Street, where it helped publicize a charity basketball game between the Knicks and Israeli basketball team Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv. The game, scheduled for October 18th, will benefit Migdal Ohr, an orphanage in northern Israel.

After being welcomed at Noah's Ark, the matzo was cut into smaller pieces and given to the Good Companions Senior Center, which provides low-cost kosher lunches six days a week. Many seniors were grateful for the record-breaking lunch, but not 91-year-old Seymour Kestenbaum, who told the Daily News, "This is not like my mother's matzo balls. I love matzo balls, [but] they have to be like my mother's."

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By John Del Signore in Food on August 7, 2009 2:29 PM

Comments [rss]

matty

"The game, scheduled for October 18th, will benefit Migdal Ohr, an orphanage in northern Israel."

Yes how charitable. Giving to needy families in a foreign country that isn't even poor.

PTG in nyc

Israel has a high poverty rate. Last I checked, the wealthiest country in the world (ie. the one you live in), also has hungry and homeless people.

Shall all homeless shelters in NYC and City Harvest be shut down because this country "isn't even poor?"

Yes, this could easily expand into a policy debate about how wealthy countries like the US and Israel should more appropriately allocate their resources to serve the poor, but let's just keep it as "poor people are everywhere, despite in smaller concentrations in Western countries."

The Man Bat

Anything to divert attention from the growing Rabbi body parts for $$$ scandal.

Pitiful.

hotstepper

ball envy.

CR

But nothing to divert attention from the fact that you're a bitter anti-semite.

JenChungsBaby

If my grandmother ever made a matzah ball that size it would have weighed 1000 pounds, not 267. You could have used those things for hockey pucks (which is how my family liked them).

chris

Gee, all of you commenters are such downers. 'Poor chickens, starving people.'

Seriously, it is a giant food ball for charity.

Jen Chung

It looks like a huge mound of hummus.

NannyState

That was my first take too! As hummus, yum. As a Matzo, blecch.

uptownnyc

A police escort? I'm going to just start burning my tax dollars.

mocanlagunas

margarine?!? do they still make that stuff?

felixthecat2

poor chickens.Battery hens suffer Caged Layer Osteoporosis (CLO), or brittle bones. Research has shown that 35% of premature deaths in cages are due to CLO, a slow death from paralysis and starvation at the back of the cage.

Confined to the cage, the hen is unable to forage by scratching and pecking at the ground. Under natural conditions a large proportion of a hen’s day would be spent looking for food. Denied this simple activity, the hen’s claws can grow long or twisted and be torn off. They can even grow around the wire mesh of the sloping cage floor. The slope itself puts painful pressure on the hen’s toes, causing damage to the bird’s feet.

Trilby16

1000 eggs? People could have eaten those eggs. I am not a fan of stunts involving edible food when people are hungry.

ides_of_march

Uhm, I'm no Julia Child but I do believe that just because you crack open eggs to use as part of a recipe doesn't mean the eggs don't get eaten. Did you think these people are like boa constrictors and going to swallow the egg whole, shell and all?

Trilby16

"just because you crack open eggs to use as part of a recipe doesn't mean the eggs don't get eaten"

What on earth are you trying to say? If you make something inedible out of them then they don't get eaten. Duh!

Tamar Weinberg

Um, have you never eaten a matzo ball before? They are perfectly edible.

ides_of_march

They DID eat it you putz. You've obviously got a matzo ball for a brain.

thisis_

I know! What a waste of food! They should have donated it, like to the Good Companions Senior Center. Why didn't they think of that?!?!?

SpeedVX

Umm, you did read the part about how the matzo ball was donated to a local senior center....where they ate it. Right? Are you against hungry seniors getting a meal? Or are you against using eggs at all in cooking? No bread, no cake? Why don't you like cake?

Trilby16

Yes, I see it was donated, but do you really think it was actually edible and actually eaten?

Sorry to be such a downer! I just don't see the fun in making something out of good food that would not be good to eat. Call me Debbie Downer, if you like. Or sue me!