Leviticus 2

I don't know about you, but I find this chapter fairly mouth-watering. (Maybe it's just because I'm hungry right now.) Sure, we're just talking about basic ingredients here--grain, flour, yeast, salt, and olive oil--but some of the most scrumptious dishes can be the simplest. I mean, naan isn't all that fancy (though I suppose it does have yogurt, but it's not like we're talking about caviar or filet mignon), but it's just so delectable. Then, of course, there's rice, the delicious mainstay of many of my meals.

It doesn't take a whole lot to please my palate--I like McDonald's McChickens, even if I don't like their burgers--and I don't eat a whole lot either, so it may surprising to hear that I used to like perusing cookbooks. I don't have a passion for cooking--I'm not even that great at it either--and I'm also not really a fan of cooking shows. So why, you may be asking, am I so weird? For whatever reason, reading about food activates my salivary glands, but often not enough for me to get off my derriere and get a snack from the kitchen. It's probably just God's sense of humor in creating my little quirks. And yes, I fully realize that that was a bald-faced, ungainly attempt to get this desultory post back on topic.

The grain offerings aren't to be totally consumed by a conflagration as the burnt offerings are. Instead, much of it goes to Aaron and his sons--sustenance, if you will, for the priests. Another interesting contrast between the burnt offerings and the grain offerings is the preparation. The animals for the burnt offerings come all ready to go, as it were, and the preparation involves bumping them off and arranging their insides in pretty designs before torching them. The grain offering starts out as simple ingredients that have to be prepared and then baked or griddled into bread. (By the way, according to my web browser, "griddled" is not a word.) I suppose few people want to eat animal innards that aren't specifically prepared for eating (though I don't know if any person or animal is ever ready and prepared to be eaten), but it would be a bit of a waste to bake bread and just burn all of it up.

Finally (well, not finally for the chapter but finally for this post), God says, "you are not to burn any yeast or honey in a food offering presented to the LORD" (verse 11). Once in 8th grade science class, we did an experiment in which we were supposed to boil a solution of salt water until the water evaporated (a step down from dissecting the cow eyes and sheep hearts from 7th grade, but still thrilling as it involved open flames). Well, the water reached 100º C, and our teacher was wondering why everyone was taking so long. I mean, salt does raise water's boiling point, but not that much. A few minutes later, the water started to turn all black and disgusting (and cool--remember, we were in 8th grade), and that's when the teacher realized that we had been provided with sugar and not salt. Honey does contain a lot of sugar, so perhaps God reasoned that burning it could create a mess if not done properly.