Broccoli Rising and Bright Lights
Are you ready to party? We’ve got a full week of festivities ahead:
You probably know this Thursday’s Halloween.
It’s also Diwali India’s Festival of Lights.
Friday is World Vegan Day. I’ve been vegan almost since World Vegan Day began in 1994.
Saturday marks Mexico’s Dia de los Muertos. You probably know it as the Day of the Dead.
In a way, Halloween, Diwali and Dia de los Muertos all honor the same thing — that liminal space between darkness and light, goodness and evil, wisdom and ignorance, life and death. Our ancestors believed this to be the time when the dead and the living reach across the great divide and say hey to each other.
Halloween started out as a Celtic celebration marking the harvest. They called it samhain. Maybe human sacrifices and wild orgies were involved, hard to say, but bonfires we’re sure of. Sweetness meant homemade candied apples. Commercial Halloween candy didn’t enter the picture until about 80 years ago. Some say it happened after World War II sugar rationing ended. Others think the driver was the candy industry. I think they’re on to something. Halloween candy sales are estimated to hit $3.5 billion this season.
Diwali, just enshrined as a state holiday in Pennsylvania, falls on the darkest night of the year. But the darkness doesn’t last, because Diwali is about the triumph of light over darkness, goodness over evil. It’s celebrated with Indian confections called mithai, and lights to pierce the darkness, from fireworks to traditional diyas, small oil-burning clay lanterns.
On the Day of the Dead, ancient Mesoamericans believed the dead returned to life. It wasn’t scary, it was cause for celebration. It still is. Dia de los Muertos is joyful and such an intrinsic part of human culture it’s recognized by Unesco. Alters are built to welcome the dead. They’re lit with candles and laden with food offerings. The sweetness here comes by way of candied pumpkin, a sweet yeast bread called pan de muerto, and of course, sugar skulls, or calaveras, reminding us that death comes for us all, and it can be sweet.
Halloween, Diwali, the Day of the Dead, and even World Vegan Day are sweet, not scary celebrations. But they remind us we have a choice. I’ve been thinking about choice a lot with what’s at stake next Tuesday. November 5 is Election Day, when voters will determine America’s fate. You have a say in this. What do you choose? I’m voting for light.
So we’ve got light, we’ve got sweetness, and we’ve got vegan recipes:
A whole lotta mithai from Vegan Richa
Mexican candied pumpkin — easy, earthy, and good, There’s a similar Turkish recipe where the pumpkin macerates in sugar overnight, creating its own syrup. I was thrilled to make it last Thanksgiving — I think it’s good to mix things up. Guests who were expecting my sweet potato pumpkin pie were less sure. So this year, I’m serving them both.
Sugar skulls. Fabulous but let’s face it, kinda fussy. Easier, exquisite and way more edible are these white chocolate skulls from Miami artisan chocolatier Romanicos
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