[Sca-cooks] Lent Approaches

Lilinah lilinah at earthlink.net
Fri Feb 1 09:56:01 PST 2008


Christianna wrote:
>I was
>wondering if anyone was planning on observing a period or Lenten diet this
>year?
SNIP
>Lainie? Urtatim? (Was just reading your posts about Middle Eastern Lenten
>foods) Anyone care to give it a try?

Well, i'm not planning on 40 days worth, but i've been considering 
doing it for a week again.

>In the past we've discussed variations such as eating a period but not
>necessarily Lenten diet; giving up dairy, eggs and meat but not sugar,
>alcohol, etc; doing just one week such as Holy Week (last week before
>Easter); etc.

There are some usable recipes in "Medieval Cuisines of the Islamic 
World" i'm wanting to try out - the book is still frustrating me 
because so often the author does not retain the original names for 
the dishes. Grrr.

>Also for my class, I found this Lenten Alms Jar activity on a Christian
>site, I think we may do some sort of variation on it:
>
>Lenten Alms Jar
>
>This alms jar performs the two-fold purpose of demonstrating to children the
>importance of almsgiving and contributing money to the poor.
>
>Directions
>
>The whole family can enter into the spirit of saving for alms. A glass jar
>is placed at the center of the table on Ash Wednesday, and all the money
>each family member saves as a result of self-denial from smoking, eating
>candy, going to movies or similar activities is put into it. The mother,
>buying simpler and cheaper foods for Lenten meals, puts the difference into
>the jar at meal time - so all can see where the cost of the dessert went!
>The children spend the first weeks of Lent investigating needy causes and
>charitable organizations and missions. They will have the responsibility of
>determining who gets the alms-fund.

Sounds a lot like a Jewish Tzedakah box. Based in some lines in the 
Torah, it has a long and varied history. Currently it's often a can 
or jar that the family children have decorated - the family puts 
money into the box at least every Shabbat evening - although one can 
have other "rules" for giving. When the box is "heavy", the family 
decides what charity to donate the money to - when teaching 
"charitable giving" to children, they get to decide who will be the 
recipient.

-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah


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