With friends and family, even the simplest meal can be a joy, Karia believes. I think that’s clear in this passage from The Hall of the Prophetess:
This left Karia to eat alone again. Up until she was fifteen, she seldom did anything alone. She was always with family or Nana, or with Timbal and Narek – though she later learned they were family too. Since then she had learned to do many things alone. But of all those things, her least favorite thing to do alone was eat.
With friends and family, any meal can be a celebration, and even the most mundane meal is delightful when the conversation is good. Alone, a meal becomes simply an opportunity to satisfy hunger. And to Karia, that made even the most elaborate meal mundane.
She picked at a very tasty dish of noodles in a red sauce containing finely chopped but unfamiliar vegetables and herbs. She tapped her hard roll against her plate. She sipped her wine. It was a very good white wine, served in a crystal goblet. But she barely tasted it, and the flowery bouquet went mostly unnoticed. The plate was covered with gold filigree, as were the utensils. But she would have gladly traded it all for a wooden spoon and a wooden bowl full of hinarka and kariki with her mom and dad. Or even just her mom.
She sat back and pushed the plate away.
Will you help us provide rice and beans so needy families in Nicaragua can sit down together for a simple meal?
In December, for every book sold in the series, The Day Magic Died, $1 goes to the Rice & Beans Foundation. Rice & Beans Foundation will use 100 percent of the funds they receive to buy rice and beans (what else did you expect?) for needy families in Nicaragua.
That $1 buys a family’s meals for a day.
So you can, quite literally, enjoy the journey and feed a family.
Can you spread the word, so we can feed many, many families?
by Ian Fallis 
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