On Reading and Eating, Not Necessarily in That Order

I love my monthly book club meetings.

We've been trying lately to get together with meals that somehow match the theme or setting to time period of the book we've read. Our read this month was The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. Without getting into a critique of the book (that's a whole 'nother post) I have to say that it was still difficult to find a food theme that ran throughout the story.

The story involves an allegory of sorts about the a man's meeting with God in all of his forms, i.e. the Trinity: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. In the book, the Trinity is represented by three physical beings, a black woman, a Middle-Eastern man, and Far Eastern Asian (oriental) woman. I think the author chose the most PC characters he could think of, but anyway, they did have meals during the course of their meeting, most of which the main character, Mack, couldn't readily identify, making it tough for our book club to figure out our luncheon.

There were some specific items mentioned that I googled to find out what they were. Turns out they were multi-ethnic dishes with some hard to find ingredients. But there were also several items that I could easily whip up if I wanted to. For instance I think I could handle the Sticky Toffee Pudding, which is a British pudding cake that actually sounds pretty good. The shaomai, ugali, nipla, or kori bananje were a bit trickier, though I did find recipes for them.

Anyway, my group has been emailing back and forth to decide what we should do and given the spiritual nature of the story I just naturally sought some proverbs on the subject.

Here are some I found on food:

Laughter is brightest, in the place where the food is. Irish

He who stirs the pot eats first.

A smiling face is half the meal. Latvian

Talk doesn't cook rice. Chinese

The way you cut your meat reflects the way you live. Confucius

Whose bread I eat, his song I sing. German

Here are some I found on reading as our emails got totally focused on food and I sought to redirect us back to books:

Reading books removes sorrows from the heart.

A wise man without a book is like a workman with no tools. Moroccan

We read to know we are not alone. C. S. Lewis

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested. Francis Bacon
And that's how we ended it, back to the gastronomic!