Liza gave us little plastic bricks rather than edible eggs and peeps for Easter, but now the Pastafarians present (entirely in Legos) the amazing Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

Thus edible faith has now been rendered in the true building blocks of the universe, Legos, which although not edible, do multiply miraculously like the symbolic foods of the faithful -- Legos are limitless fishes and loaves in every room of OUR house, how about yours?

I've always had transcendent faith in food as holy, in chefs and chocolatiers as divine. My own most enduring ritual of faith is devouring human creativity in any form it presents itself. I'm not such an omnivore as Anthony Bourdain and his extreme cuisine -- his favorite eggs are the eggs of sea urchins, not exactly conducive to the traditional holiday rituals I know! -- but I do enjoy a variety of foods and well-rendered cultural infusions and combinations, and as you'd expect now that you're getting to know me, I especially savor the stories BEHIND the food.

[quote=Chef Bourdain]
[Food faith failures] usually get the décor slavishly right and then screw up everything else . . . They have too much attitude, which is exactly what a real bistro shouldn’t have. . . they tend to Americanize the menu or recipes in a cowardly way – afraid that the real thing won’t sell and that their customers are too stupid or unsophisticated to know or “get it” if they do it the right way.[/quote]

Which made me think of the dispute about the right way to cook for Thanksgiving, another religious holiday with competing cultural stories, full of quarreling over blind faith as expressed through visions of food.

Last year, the Times printed a Thanksgiving column by James E. McWilliams, Texas State University history professor, based on his book, "A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America."

(Our) Puritan forebears migrated to New England with strict
notions about food production and preparation . . . demand(ing) that flesh be domesticated, grain neatly planted and fruit and vegetables cultivated in gardens and orchards.

Given these expectations, English migrants recoiled upon discovering that the native inhabitants hunted their game, grew their grain haphazardly and foraged for fruit and vegetables. . . From the colonists' perspective, Native Americans grew crops in an entirely corrupt manner. . .the English, blinded by tradition, never got it - they just looked on in horror.

Where were the fences? The neat rows of cross-sectioned grain? The plows? Where were the carts of dung? The team of oxen? The yokes? Why were perfectly good trees left to rot? Why not burn them to power a fireplace? And those fish! Why not salt them down and export them to Europe for a tidy profit? What was wrong with these people?

A similar culinary misunderstanding developed over meat. . .
To resort to the hunt was, after all, indicative of agricultural failure, poor planning and laziness.

Culturally stuffed with story as Christmas approached, I came across a feature about fruit as religious Power of Story, which --what else?-- made me think of apples and oranges as the perennial fruit of every dispute among the education faithful.

If I had a pomegranate for every time I've heard scornful schoolfolk and other literalists use "no, no, that's comparing apples to oranges" as a new story or idea slap-down, I'd have . . . hmm . . . a veritable orchard of juicy ideas?

"FRUITS OF FAITH: Pomegranates burst with symbolism for believers of many creeds"
(as seen in the Miami Herald)

Next time you're in the produce aisle, pick up a pomegranate and treat yourself to a lesson in world religions. Beneath that smooth, bitter, red skin lie hundreds of tiny scarlet seeds -- and almost as many religious associations.

''People use whatever is at hand to express their religious beliefs,'' says Frank A. Salamone, an authority on religious symbols and a professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. Centuries ago in the Fertile Crescent, where so many faiths arose, the pomegranate was at hand, and, by its very nature, lent itself to religious symbolism.

''The pomegranate is red, and so is blood,'' Salamone says. ``It has a lot of seeds and is an obvious symbol of fertility,". . . beautiful, strong and delicate, he adds, and its juice is exceptionally healthful.

``It says a lot of different things all at once. People bring meaning to it.''

PEOPLE bring meaning to IT. Did you catch that ripened hint of saucy impertinence?

Some fruit in our cultural orchard is just rotten, of course. Calling other folks fruits for instance, even when you mean it Biblically, is rotten as story or truth, fermented fruit that may feel intoxicating when sipped, but leads to thoughtless abandon and inevitably stinks of decline and death, not life and discovery and true knowledge.

[Senator Brownback] shakes his head in sorrow, thinking of Sweden. “You’ll know ’em by their fruits.”

Conversation stalls – he’s citing scripture but we both know he just said “fruits,” about gay Swedes. . .
(and) since discussion of the article has stalled on the word fruits, I want to jumpstart it. I always write more than I use, and what gets cut usually never sees the light of day, for good reason. But for religion writers, some of the outtakes may be more interesting than the story itself. . .

Well, the apple in the Garden of Eden was a "bad" apple in the Bible story, wasn't it? The Tree of Knowledge, oooh - too dangerous, too ugly, too powerful! -- no wonder fundamental Christians are suspicious of "school" and its fruit.

They believe the fruit story of Genesis is literally true and fixed in meaning, not just something to think about and try to build new meaning from, through their own lives, like one Lego piece in a multi-colored closetful. (Wonder what my life would look like in Legos?)

The Gnostic Gospels and the Gospel of Judas make tasty outtakes from the Bible's writers, that's for sure! Truth be told, although I write about a different kind of faith -- faith in thinking and knowing -- I often find my own outtakes so interesting that I can't actually LEAVE them out, and sneak to incorporate them as comments. Maybe this outtakes-are-tasty rule of thumb is a crosscultural recipe, true for writers, readers and party planners of all cuisines?

In any case, do you think there could be "new" truth in this ancient faith-in-fruit power of story stuff, too?
Let's give it a squeeze and see how fresh the juices are --

We use apples to prove that The Doctor (unquestioned authority) is always right and to prescribe standardized accountability based on counting out one per day per person, while oranges have individually irregular navels (nature and motherhood as life itself) and dimpled skin that lends itself to enthusiastic "zesting" by hand - so obviously the whole "apples and oranges" frame represents the eternal conflict between public school and private home!

Maybe we could look to those culture-clashing forebears of ours for a mid-story change in course that might lead to a happier ending?

[quote=As our friendly food historian]
. . . these [previously shocking] foods became celebrated as a reflection of emerging ideals like simplicity, manifest destiny and rugged individualism.

. . .we proudly evoke this native American heritage by crowding the table with turkey, corn, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie as if they had always been there.

That they weren't shouldn't be a cause for chagrin, but a reminder that Americans have survived in some measure because we are endlessly adaptable and capable of overcoming our deepest prejudices -
even if the Pilgrims wouldn't have approved.[/quote]