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Jewish Woman Eats Nothing But Starbucks for a Year

That included the creation of a seder plate

by
Adam Chandler
January 02, 2014
Starbucks Bistro Box Seder Plate(For1YearofMyLife)
Starbucks Bistro Box Seder Plate(For1YearofMyLife)

There are New Year’s resolutions and then there are (imagine Comic Sans font) NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS. One Seattle woman who goes (legally) by the name Beautiful Existence put all of the semi-dieters and trumpet aspirants to shame when she resolved to subsist on nothing but food from Starbucks for an entire year. This isn’t her goal for this year, she already did it. She actually completed the task and documented it.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite as narrow as one might think. Starbucks food also included, as BuzzFeed points out, Starbucks-inspired stores and brands like Evolution Fresh and Tazo Tea. Still I was struck by her story and her commitment; it resembled the diligence with which Jews that I know approach keeping kosher. When you’re out in the world, your choices are limited.

Turns out…she’s Jewish! (Good for the Jews?) Across the year her entries included a trial run with Starbucks coffee facial scrubs, an eco-challenge on top of the Starbucks challenge, and the construction of a Seder plate using items from Starbucks Bistro Boxes.

But what happens when you are only eating & drinking everything from Starbucks? Can you partake in a Seder? Well I’ve now experienced this question first hand and the answer is YES! Yes you can get most of your Seder food items (obviously not Kosher though) at your local Starbucks store!

Beautiful Existence, who has two sons whom she did not force to eat Starbucks for a year, was inspired to try after attending a seder at her younger’s son’s school. She added this caveat.

Now in no way am I advocating purchasing Starbucks Bistro Boxes for your Seder, you obviously cannot get everything at a Starbucks but it is an interesting question that came up for me this year and I obviously wanted to be able to partake in the history, significance & social gathering of this special event! So happily I was able to find most of the food items in these two Starbucks Bistro Boxes that would allow me to join in!

Judaism has always been a mutable religion I suppose. While you ponder what your next sojourn for coffee, enjoy this video of BE’s year of Starbucks.

Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.

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