Food and Spirituality

[_aussieguy55]

It is a lazy August Saturday evening and I am lying in my comfortable lounge chair, listening to my wife in the kitchen cooking, smelling the rich aroma of the roast beef and vegetables in the oven. I pick up the food and wine section of the Saturday papers which has a review of a book by William Sitwell, A History of Food in 100 Recipes. Today we have a problem with overeating, and sometimes not the correct food for our bodies. The TV is now full of shows on cooking, different cultures (Asian, Greek etc), different ages (even kids cooking). And yet we have problems now not of not having enough to eat but overeating and obesity.
There is some of the interesting information in this book. ‘The richer you were the better you ate… Everyone else ate what the tavern was preparing – generally stew; in the early 1900s, the British held a royal commission to investigate why the army had to knock back so many recruits their families could not afford to feed them when they were children so they grew up weedy and unwell; In 1940 Rommel was surprised to see what poor physical specimens English soldiers captured in France represented.

MacDonald’s is a popular place in my town. However I find the food never satisfying like the chicken curry or the spaghetti bolognaises my wife makes. I make coleslaw which is a favourite of my daughters and co-workers. There is something great about this, thinly slicing the cabbage, adding onion, carrot, apple, celery and capsicum and adding some mayo but not too much. Grandpa’s coleslaw has become a legend in our family.

What has food to do with religion? Well the founding myth of Adam and Eve has them falling to the temptation of eating the forbidden fruit. Jacob gives a bowl of stew in exchange for his birthright (the right to be recognized as firstborn), and Esau agreed. Ruth and Naomi are allowed to scavenged the field of Boaz for droppings of wheat. I understand that the corners and any broken sheath were to be left for the poor (welfare state??)
In the time of Jesus, he was seen eating with people who were considered lower class. Eating with someone was a sign of solidarity with them. If we accept the Gospel stories Jesus was feeding a lot of people. The feeding of the thousands is an interesting point for today’s critics of “socialism”. Jesus takes a boy’s food, something he had the diligence to take and redistributes it among the people

[_moksha]

I've wondered whether Pad Thai and Baklava might touch upon that interface between God and Man.

For that matter, I have experienced a keen refocusing of my entire perception with a large dob of wasabi on some sushi. Coincidence? Read Eliot's The Wasteland and find out why April can be such a bitch as the cruelest month.