Food for Thought

How is it that so many of our holidays, religious and otherwise revolve around food? Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Fourth of July, Easter to name a few, all involve social gathering and eating. Lent, on the other hand, often revolves around not eating. After we gorge ourselves on pancakes and sausages on Shrove Tuesday, we might momentarily feel like not eating for a week. We might even feel we can give up certain foods for forty days. The notion of fasting might even enter our minds.

Jesus considered it. In fact, the Latin name for Lent, Quadragesima, means forty or fortieth, and refers to the forty days Christ spent in the desert, fasting and praying, which is the origin of the Season. We in our humble ways pay tribute to this event during Lent. Most of us don’t truly fast, although that is a term that can be loosely interpreted. Does that mean you can only have water? Does that include eating small meals once or twice a day, or one larger meal at the end of the day? Are we still fasting if we just modify our diet, go meatless, if you will, and eat only vegetables, fruits, seafoods, salads, pastas, and beans? That actually sounds healthy. Hardly a sacrifice.

So what are we doing here? Giving up bad food, eating healthier food, feeling better. Maybe that’s what God intended!

Joan Shisler

Why Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday

Every year, on Tuesday night before Ash Wednesday, Middleham and St. Peters has a traditional pancake supper in the Great Hall. So, what is the tradition?

Since Lent was a time to repent of sins and fasting, and foods such as eggs, fats, sweets are not allowed, pancakes were a quick and easy way to eat up all of those forbidden items. So before the deprivation of Lent must be endured, a feast was held.

The word “shrove” come from the old English ritual of “shriving,” in which the person confesses his or her sins, and is granted absolution by the priest. As recorded in the Anglo Saxon Ecclesiastical Institutes, “In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his (sic) confessor and confess his (sic) deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him (sic).”

Of course there are lots of variations on this theme. New Orleans, with its French influence, calls it Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), and has extended the celebration for weeks ahead, with the biggest and wildest revelry the night before Ash Wednesday.

An alternative celebration is found in England, where there are pancake races. A woman who was busy preparing her pancakes heard the church bell ring, calling the two to confession. She raced out of her house, with her apron on and carrying a pancake in her frying pan to the church. There has been an International Pancake Race competition that has been going between Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas starting in 1950.

Bruce Calvin