Grazing Day - Bride of Grazing Day

Well, everyone likes a good feed.

Native tradition refers to common meals, especially those that are part of celebrations or dances, as "feasts".

There's something reassuring, warming, comforting and very, very serious about calling such a meal a "feast".

We don't really use it in a sacred sense much these days.  Mostly, as least as I've seen, the term "feast" implies we're going to stuff ourselves sick, literally sick, just conspicuously consume food because we can do it.

It comes across, at least to me, as saying "look what we have, look at what we own, so much, so much beyond what we need, that we can make ourselves sick, because we have it and we can."

I suppose we can see a bit of both sense at work in how the Orchard celebrated its six-month party.  

Grazing Day had been declared back-of-house about a week ahead.  Actually, we'd missed the day - so much had been going on that we had to put it off.

Still, it was reassuring and somehow a little bit silly to see such an amazing collection of noshes.

There were some actually entrees available besides a ton of finger food.

For myself - and others - I'd brought gluten-free crackers and also some cheese sticks.  

My friend Mia is now in recovery from a serious stroke and attending to her transfer to a more supportive rehab facility took up my cooking time.

Not a bad reason to miss out - but still I'm sure my Mom's spirit was frowning slightly at the sight of me buying something to brink rather than making something from scratch.

It's not that she never bought anything herself, it's just that homecooked counted for more in her book - especially if you had time to make it - anything more than ten minutes.

So saying, it was fun to look at the table back-of-house, crowded with yummies, tracking the ravages of our ... well, you couldn't really call it "hunger" it was more "rapaciousness" ... the ravages of our eating chunks of dips, piles of cookies and crackers, the diminishment of pyramids of cheese.

I know I am in danger of contradicting myself but it was fun to think that our respect, joy and love for each other was expressed in such concrete ways. 

You can measure the feeling we have for each other by the variety of food we had to share.

What a strange, odd feeling.

I know I've had similar spreads at schools but this was something special - perhaps because I am so invested in the feelings and thoughts that brought us all together to celebrate and share.

It's a nice place to come from.