Keeping the Ferial

By Donald McKenzie

April 16, 2021

I wrote this post on keeping the ferial six and a half years ago. I’m reposting it with some change in my thoughts. Not that I necessarily disagree with what I wrote. However, I find my approach to some matters a little changed in the interim.

One more thing I have noticed since the start of the pandemic. Eating alone on a regular basis, makes it harder to keep my focus on the amounts I eat at each meal. I have been a little more rigorous recently, and am slowly getting down to my pre-pandemic weight. I am doing this for my overall health.

My Ferial Eating Inspiration.

Common Eating – Ferial Eating

I’ve just started reading Robert Farrar Capon’s “The Supper of the Lamb.” Although listed as a cookbook, it could perhaps better be described as a memoir with recipes. Capon, a retired Episcopal priest from the U.S, has written a book that brings together two of his loves, theology and food. There is much of substance in this book and I believe I will be writing several posts about it by the time I have completed it.(I haven’t written the extra posts that I expected to, but this book continues to inform my thinking on food as much, if not more, than any other. I can’t urge you enough to purchase it).

Hurray for leftovers

However, my attention has already been arrested by the material in the third chapter,. Here Capon is talking about festal and ferial eating. Festal eating is that eating which surrounds an occasion. Feast days long held an important place within the Christian calendar, and not just days such as Christmas, Easter, etc.

Ferial eating on the other hand, relates to the meals we eat the rest of the time. (It’s interesting to note, that feria days were originally linked to feasts but have since come to refer to non-feast weekdays). Ferial eating is moe the meal of the kitchen than the dining room table. Perhaps, more than anything else, ferial eating is the dining that is dedicated to the leftover, or perhaps better written, the left over, or maybe even the held back.

From Capon’s perspective, leftovers are not something to be sniffed at. More than that, they are not meant to be the dregs of the previous night’s supper, dumped on a plate and reheated in the microwave. According to Capon ferial meals need not be any less good than festal, and he points out, many dishes that are “haute cuisine are simply worthy specimens of ferial cooking at its best.”(25) Leftovers are items that are deliberately chosen and lovingly prepared. Leftovers are marks of creativity and reminders of the Creator.

Summing up

I entitled this post “Keeping the Ferial,” and the reason I did so, is that I think that is something we have lost in our contemporary eating habits. There are a variety of reasons for this. Among them, is the focus that we have on “proper” nutrition, and the ever-increasing number of approaches to “good” eating that are limiting in the foods that they allow us to enjoy, allowing that for some people these limitations may be medically necessary. However, I don’t intend to address those issues in this post, and I may, or may not, write about them in the future.

There are two potential roadblocks to keeping the ferial that I would like to comment on. The first of these is time and the second is community. In my current situation, the first of these is of less personal resonance than the second, but both get in the way of keeping the ferial

Time and Togetherness

Firstly, time. Ferial cooking tends towards the time consuming. To take a chicken and create three different meals from it, as just one example, requires time both for planning and execution. We tend to allow our lives to fill up with so many things. Finding a place where we can put aside 4 to 8 hours at a single time to prepare multiple meals becomes very hard to do. Additionally, we can get reasonable quality and sometimes high quality meals relatively easily, not just from restaurants, but increasingly from our local supermarkets, and it becomes harder and harder to convince ourselves that it is worth the time required to prepare those meals by hand.

Time is something I would place greater emphasis on. I think that ferial cooking forces us to slow down. Living in a world that seems to get faster every day, we need to practice slowing down.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, the lack of community makes it harder for us to keep the ferial. This lack affects us on many levels, not just in the enjoyment of eating together, but in the preparation of the food itself.

Preparing Together

Growing up, Sunday morning was always one of the busiest times of the week for our family. With six kids to get ready before heading off to church, making sure the Sunday roast is ready by the time we get home requires teamwork on the part of my parents. While my mother stayed at home with us during the week, Saturday and Sunday were the two days that my dad would be in the kitchen helping to prepare the meals. This was particularly true on Sunday. That’s the one meal of the week that would always result in leftovers, by plan, the next day.

On a deeper level, keeping the ferial requires community to allow us to eat the food together. As a single person, I am quite capable of cooking food that is both creative and flavourful . Yet there is something missing when simply cooking for oneself. It’s hard for one thing, to cook single portions. Cooking multiple portions in such a way that you are not either eating the same meal four days in a row is also challenge. Sometimes I throw food out, because by the time I get round to the last of it, it’s going moldy.

More than that, we are meant to be sharing food. I’ve done a small amount of performing, produced work for others to read and reflect on, and helped solve customer service needs for people. There are few feelings more satisfying than watching someone help themselves to seconds of a dish you have prepared.

other common eating posts

• Common Eating 7 – Thanksgiving in the Meal
• Mobile Hospitality – Common Eating
• Common Eating – The Eucharist
• Visits, Social Graces, CE – Week 12
• Common Eating – Gathering up the Crumbs

My Own Experience

I’m once again on my own. I’ve spent several years in an apartment with a small stove and I have let my cooking lapse. I need to resolve to invite people round for meals on a regular basis.

Don’t expect dinner parties however. I think ferial eating goes best with potlucks or simple meals featuring hearty soups and stews.

The change came for me in 1990. I spent the summer in Southern Ontario on a World Christian Leadership Development course sponsored by Student Mission Advance. This organization ran Urbana style missions conferences out of Hamilton Ontario. The second part of that summer I lived in Scarborough with a group of people connected with Arab World Ministries. There were eight of us in the house and we all ate together. We needed someone to volunteer to do the cooking. Despite some original misgivings about having a man being the main cook, I did most of the cooking that summer. Having people to cook for made the experience far more enjoyable than it would have otherwise been.

Downside of Cooking and Eating Alone

Since then, I have always enjoyed cooking and particularly the creating of dishes. I like to work off the top of my head rather than using a recipe book. Even using a cookbook, I find some way to alter the recipe from the way it appears in the book. Over time, I am once again cooking dishes that to eat in one sitting, or cook in one pot. With no one to cook for, food increasingly becomes a source of fuel more than anything else. It is also, too often, a source of self-indulgence.

Perhaps that will make a good Lenten resolution for me. Finding ways to keep the ferial during the season.