This week, more specifically, this tuesday was the Jewish holiday of Purim. Now on Purim there are a few different things you do. Dress up, get drunk(if you're over 21 of course) and eat. Food is always an important part of Jewish life. On Purim we eat hamentashen, triangular shaped cookies with fruit filling that are almost more fun to make then to eat. The shape is symbolic of course, modeled after the three side hat of the villian of the Purim story. Why do we feel the need to eat the villians hat? No clue. It's tradition.
Purim also comes with a mitzvah (good deed) centered around food. Shaloch Manos are gift you are suppose to give to at least two people (the more the merrier) containing food of two different types. One fruit, on cake. Some wine, some hamentashen. Etc. Etc.
For more info about Purim and just a generally good resource for information about Judiaism:
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/default_cdo/jewish/purim.htm
http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N10/pastries.html
ReplyDeleteThe great Latkes/Hamantshen debate. I attempted to ask you about them last week...but it didn't happen. Fail.
That was funny. However Latkies aren't pastries...It's like hash browns vs fig newtons.
ReplyDeleteWait. Avo, how could you be confused between Latkes and Hamantashen? I could understand Kolacky and Hamantashen. Mmmm....Kolacky =)
ReplyDeleteAwesome post, Sadie. I love that you took the topic and A) branched out and B) used it to (re)consider something you're interested in.
ReplyDeleteHere's me asking questions again: You wrote...
"So this week we talked about food. We talked about how food is modified. How it gets to where it needs to be. How it is marketed. But never did we even mentioned the great impacted it has on culture."
Indeed. We talked about those things, didn't talk much about food + culture (with the possible exception of the shortcomings of Golden Rice). I think another great extension of our discussion could be the ways in which how food is modified, how it gets to where it needs to be, and how it is marketed EFFECTS culture.
For instance, if your food can come from Brazil or Belize or Bennington, Vermont, are you likely to connect to it in the same way as an agrarian society does? What then of food-based cultural traditions, some of them ancient and agrarian in origin? Do they lose their meaning -- or, to borrow a term we've been thinking about a lot lately, are they modified past the point of recognition?
@ Kels
ReplyDeleteI'm not confused about the foods themselves, haha. It's just a funny debate over which "cuisine reigns supreme". iluvfoodnetwork.
Sadie is merely pointing out that the debate is pointless because you're comparing two very different things.
Which is the point of it being silly and entertaining.