Iftar

We just managed to bring everyone together for Iftar before Eid began. Our wonderful and brilliant volunteer chef arrived with vats of lentil soup, salad, lamb and okra stew plus an array of desserts. How she does it every time we don’t know. And the kitchen was full of old and new faces, of different nationalities, different religions, some fasting, some not. V and I tried not to pick at anything before the break of fast and were not hugely successful; Susan’s food is seriously good and walking past a bowl of her hummus without dipping a spoon into it is much harder than it seems.

It was a happy, relaxed and jovial evening and the time spent together, whether cooking, eating or clearing up, was just great. Many thanks to Louise, for her brilliant supervision of unwieldy attitudes towards kitchen knives (“Put it DOWN, H and use the TIN OPENER like I SAID!”) to Alison for all the help in and out of the kitchen, to Jonathan for rounding up the eaters and leading prayers, and especially to Susan for the food.

As Tolkien said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” We certainly valued it last night.

Images © Big Leaf Foundation