An open letter to our friends at Safeway.

Dear Safeway Corporate Buyers,

We're loyal. We're your target audience. You provide a clean, convenient, generally easy-to-find-parking-at store in our suburb. In exchange, we provide you with thousands of dollars annually.

However, while I was shopping for Thanksgiving I noticed the large display of Passover items. Apparently you didn't pay attention to the 2011 Whole Foods Incident in Washington DC. These items were in a stand-alone display, far from the regular Kosher or ethnic foods where we MOTs (Members of the Tribe) find everyday Jewish mainstay foods such as packaged matzoh ball soup mix and Manischiwetz. Clearly this setup was an intentional act, one that took space away from other manufacturers. We've seen this in the early fall, too, around the time of our Jewish New Year.

The thing is, we only need those unleavened cake mixes, macaroons, jelly candy and gefilte fish during Passover. Passover is in the spring. So when you start thinking about that big pastel-colored bunny, you're there.

Here's the way our conversations go down at Rosh Hashana and Chaunkah dinners:

"Oy vey, Phyllis. Did you see the three-story matzoh display at Safeway this week?"

"Yes, Sadie, I did. Messhuganah, those people! When are they going to figure out that every Jewish holiday meal does not end with chocolate-covered matzoh?"

So, friends at Safeway, we really and truly appreciate you thinking of us. And we know it's hard to keep all of those Jewish holidays straight. Heck, if you need help correlating your sales reports with your buying plan, I can recommend a great software vendor or two ...

Loyally yours in latkes,

Jewish Suburban Wife of One, Mother of Three