As the boys and I read through the parsha to find our "menu inspirations" we read one section that surprised us. It's just not something we remembered when we thought about how the Israelites had a written record of the Torah. As the Israelites pass over the Jordan into the land God has given to them, they are to set up large stones, cover them with plaster and " write upon them all the words of this Torah" (Dvarim 27:3).
These must have been some BIG stones. Since this is something we'd like to discuss more and the parsha-ispired menus are, in part, designed to lead to discussion of the parsha, we are DEFINITELY making something for this. So, we agreed it would be a chocolate cake with grey/brown icing with this line from Ki Tavo written in icing, surrounded by edible candy rocks.
The parsha goes on to describe the ceremony where the curses and blessings are recited with half of the tribes standing on Har Grizzim and the other half on Har Eval. To represent this divide, my youngest son had the idea to make two different kinds of chicken (spiced and plain baked) and pile six pieces of each on two different parts of a platter. This also could (and did) lead to a discussion of which is the blessed and which is the cursed and whether you can always tell whether something is a blessing or a curse.
Finally, going back to the first aliyah of the parsha, we find the instructions around the bringing of first fruits. Since this only applies to the 7 species we could do any of the recipes already planned in the past to represent these items (wheat, barley, pomegranate, grapes, figs, dates, and olives.) However, we wanted to try something new and came up with the idea of focusing on the concept of a basket of bikkurim (first fruits). So we decided to use birds nest noodles to create the look of a basket and fill it with sautéed veggies. So we decided to use birds nest noodles to create the look of a basket and fill it with sautéed veggies.
B'tayavon and Shabbat Shalom!
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