![]() Bishop mangoes might also have a more direct clerical connection. Parmesan is anotherĮxample, possibly developed by Italian monks who needed to find ways to preserve summer milk surplusesīy making a hard cheese that would stay good over lean winterĮven Grammatico’s memoir shows how, for all her resentments of the nuns, it was their knowledge of sweet making that enabled her to open a pastry shop where people now come from around the world. They have been repositories of recipes and food knowledge,įrom Brahmin cooks in Indian temples to Buddhist priests in China and Korea who developed complex vegetarianĬuisines to fit their food restrictions to European monastic orders who created many cheeses, beers, and wines.Ĭhampagne is the most famous, developed by the Benedictine monk Dom Perignon. The desire to eat a piece of fruit, that was greed and it was a sin.”īut as Grammatico’s memoir also shows, priests and nuns were associated with food not just by eating it, but because they were involved in producing it. It’s a memoir of hunger in the midst of making sweets and the resentment of the nuns who tried to control her appetite: “Even for instance, if you had 'Bitter Almonds' is Maria Grammatico’s memoir, written with Mary Taylor Simeti, of growing up in a Sicilian orphanage run by nuns, who raise money by making traditional pastries. Deep resentments were nursed by those living in religious-run orphanages and homes for the poor, who contrasted their scant rations with the lavish food they imagined the religious authorities enjoying. ![]() It didn’t help that priests often had to oversee the feeding of people, who might feel they were being It’s easy to see how peasants working hard for meagre harvests might resent the clergy they were forced toįeed. He skillfully plays on the family’s fears, getting them to promise lavish supplies of food. Her family is appalled at the bad karma she might get, so they call a priest who happily tells his wife: “Don’tĬook today… there will have to be atonement, there’ll be plenty of delicious food to get our hands on.” A young wife, angry with a cat raiding her kitchen, hits it with a stone. One of the most vivid examples is the story ‘Prayashchit’ or ‘Atonement’ written by Bhagwati Charan Verma. Many Indian stories make fun of greedy priests.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |