Parashat Toldot

Please Pass That Red Stuff

Side note:
I don't know why my Chayei Sarah post never posted. Hmmmm. To recap last week: We had a beautiful pumpkin well filled with veal and seitan stew for dinner last week. Poached pear wells filled with pareve ice cream were dessert.
For lunch we were invited out to friends' and amazingly, we found a basket filled with treasures that had fallen off of one of Eliezer's camels to bring as a gift for our host. The basket overflowed with chocolate coins, candy necklaces and bracelets, and gems (the sunkist type :-) ).

As for this week:
We are back to red foods, so the kids can practice gentrifying Esav's request, "Gimme that red slop." We are starting with red lentil soup (of course), followed by red chicken and red tofu (proteins cooked in a tomato based sauce that tinges the food red), braised red cabbage, and a tomato salad. Our 6-year-old requested red jel dessert and our 10-year-old wants red berry kissel (a yummy compote of red berries cooked in grape juice).

Tomorrow for lunch we are doing dairy (see the Kli Yakar commentary mentioned in last years parashat Toldot posting). Thinking about that commentary that explains how being habitual meat eaters cultivates cruelty in a person, I cannot help but to think about the cooking in the parashah this week. Yaakov, the gentle man and gentleman, is cooking lentils according to tradition while Esav is back from the hunt. Clearly this very contrast vividly supports the Kli Yakar's thoughts. (I've also been thinking about Lord of the Flies and the hunts for meat that bring out the savagery of the boys, but those thoughts emanate from my teaching life rather than my parashah life.) Our 10-year-old has been waiting with bated breath for the week where we get to be vegetarians (even though we eat plenty of dairy and pareve on shabbatot in general....)!

Have a delicious and wonderful shabbat!