I'm not exactly a religious person by any stretch, but I love the idea of storytelling through food. Last night marked the beginning of Passover, the celebration of the birth of the Jewish nation and their freedom from slavery under the Pharaoh. Part of this celebration involves a ritual meal called a seder. In college, I had a couple of friends who were not able to be home for Passover, so they hosted a seder at one of their apartments. I think I had been to one or two when I was much younger, so didn't remember much about it. Anyhoo, the college seder was really fun. The different foods symbolize the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt, and by the way, you're obligated to drink a lot of wine. Granted, it's barely wine and mostly grape juice, but we're talking at least four glasses here. No, it wasn't fun just because of the wine, honest. These were fellow choir geeks, so one of them sang the different parts of the ritual in hebrew in his lovely bass voice. Not to belittle this particular ceremony, but I'd love to come up with "meal stories" that had significance to me and my people, if you will. It's a chance to honor a moment in time and connect with food and people in a way that we rarely do anymore (put your visions of food fights away - not that kind of connecting).
Your people...would that be white folk or geeks?? (ba-dum-bump!) I'll be here all week...Thank You!!
Posted by: Aheem Black and aheem prouuud | April 13, 2006 at 03:37 PM
Geeks, mostly. Thanks for asking!
Posted by: Robin | April 13, 2006 at 11:33 PM
Ah, if you mean geek tradition meals, then what about making something like this a tradition? ;)
http://www.britta.com/mystery/Trek/index.html
Posted by: Britta | April 14, 2006 at 09:44 AM