Post Resurrection Breakfast: Cooking

John 21:7-13: Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord!" As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, "It is the Lord," he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards. When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.

Jesus said to them, "Bring some of the fish you have just caught."

Simon Peter climbed aboard and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, "Come and have breakfast." None of the disciples dared ask him, "Who are you?" They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish.

Sometime after Jesus was resurrected, perhaps a month or so, a bunch of disheartened disciples went fishing. Suddenly poof! John spotted Jesus on shore, barbequing up a fish breakfast.

The rest of the time cooking was done at home, logically enough. Ovens were cheap and some families had two, one in the courtyard and one in the common room. Kitchens weren’t used much in the first century, and the common room served as a place for children to play, food to be cooked and eaten, construction work to be done, etc. Weather around the Sea of Galilee is fairly mild, and these things were probably done in the courtyard for most of the year. It was also very humid, and in a place and time with high humidity and no air conditioning, the out-of-doors must have been preferable for both cooking and other activities during the hot summer months. The families sometimes ate on the roofs, which were flat and suitable places to chat, study Torah and dry fruit.

I never had a suitable appreciation for the work needed to prepare a meal in antiquity. In order to make bread and any other grain-based food, such as oatmeal, grain needed to be ground for approximately four hours a day. This was no easy task, and according to rabbinic law the first task a woman could hand over to a slave was grinding grain.

Mills were made of stone, and of great variety. At its most basic, a large stone was placed on top of another. Kernels of grain were placed in between them, and women rotated the top stone until the hard coatings of the kernels were ground off. This was often accomplished by two women sitting opposite each other, one pushing and pulling on the right and the other on the left, which gives added meaning to Jesus’ words regarding the Last Day: Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. (Matthew 24:41-42)

Olive oil required, after the men picked them from the tree, cleaning them in hot water, removing the pits, trampling them to remove the oil, crushing the remaining pulp to get out extra oil, and bottling it. The bitter part of the olive, amurca, was turned into a pesticide and furniture polish, among other things. Wine – and most grapes were turned into wine or raisins - required similar work. While these were annual processes, it was common for something to need to be done. Homes in fishing villages would not have had space for much of this, and I would think that they probably had village groves and vineyards.

Vinegar was made, butter churned, and salt ground. Vegetables and herbs, though sold at the market, were mostly grown at home, which required planting the seeds, weeding the garden, picking the vegetables, etc. Fruit was often dried, frequently on the roof, or, presumably, turned into jam or preserves. Many families kept bees for honey, and the comb had to be removed and cleaned, and the honey processed.

Preserved fish, purchased in areas outside of the immediate vicinity of the Sea of Galilee or other body of water, had to be soaked in water, often two or three times, until enough salt was removed to eat them. The salt that soaked off was probably sifted out of the water and stored for future use; salt plates were used as fuel for the fire. The children’s fish, and there were always children around, had to be de-boned and quartered – no buying filets.

Breakfast was often barley porridge, which required the steps mentioned above for wheat as well as soaking the kernels overnight, drying them and roasting them until the seed coatings were loose enough to pound out the grain.

Fuel for the oven had to be cut and stored (wood, husks, grass, etc.) or, in the case of dung, gathered up and salted. Soot from the oven had to be cleaned off the walls. Even some of the items used for cooking were homemade: many things were stored in baskets, many of which were probably woven at home, and additional items such as sieves were made of basketry. Some serving items were probably carved at home from wood cut on the farm.

All that on top of watching the children, cleaning, laundry, and a variety of other tasks! I used to think busyness was a modern phenomenon, but it sounds unlikely.