Tasting and Swallowing

Catching up a bit on my blog reading (I'm trying to stay off the internet more during Lent) -- I liked these two blogs about food (actually, three, I guess):

revelation on the gluttony front by bearing blog.... about what Aquinas called nimis, I think. The etymology of gluttony is from "gluttire" meaning "to swallow".

Taste and See -- at Childlight USA -- it's really about education, but also about food. I liked the connection. Charlotte Mason talked a lot about the parallels. Here's the whole list of Aquinas's aspects of gluttony, if you want to relate them to eating real food or the educational equivalent:

• Praepropere - eating too soon
• Laute - eating too expensively
• Nimis - eating too much
• Ardenter - eating too eagerly
• Studiose - eating too daintily
• Forente - eating too fervently

I could apply those to some of the mistakes teachers make in educating children. Ignoring readiness, educational clutter, forcing too much information, not allowing enough access to real knowledge, and imposing too much influence on the children by means of personality, mediating the material, or rewards.

The positive corollaries: quality of knowledge, deliberation and restraint in teaching, variety and breadth, and "whole" simplicity. That would be similar goals for eating, too: good quality, moderate quantities, variety, and wholeness/simplicity of preparation, at least for the most part.