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By Marian Scott, The Gazette January 28, 2009;
If a total stranger offers you a cup of pudding in the next few weeks, don’t be surprised.
Members of the local Turkish community are distributing 5,000 servings of Noah’s pudding, a traditional treat they trace all the way back to the biblical story of Noah’s ark.
This is more than a random act of dessert.
Organizers hope the offerings will promote peace and heal rifts between different faiths and cultures.
A tall order for a cup of pudding, but then, this is no ordinary dessert.
Noah’s pudding is one of the world’s oldest recipes.
According to Turkish tradition, it originated when Noah’s ark landed on Mount Ararat after the great flood recounted in the Book of Genesis.
The story goes that food was running short on the ark and Noah told the survivors to contribute whatever they had left to celebrate their safe arrival. The result was a sweet porridge of wheat, chickpeas, dried beans, apricots, raisins, orange peel and sugar.
In Turkey, people offer the pudding to friends, neighbours and the poor during Muharrem, the first month of the Islamic calendar.
In recent years, Turkish Muslim organizations across North America have transplanted the tradition as a way to reach out to the wider community.
“Our aim is to get people from different faiths, bring them together on a common platform of love and tolerance and build understanding,” said Fehmi Kala, executive director of the Dialog Foundation, a non-profit organization founded three years to build bridges between different religious and cultural groups.
read more http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Pudding+peace/1223793/story.html
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