In the Devil's Garden Sinful History of Forbidden Food

LUST "And when Eve saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eye, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. . . . Genesis, 3:812 LUST MENU APERITIF Blue Chocolate (recipe page 38) salade Salade de Jardin Late-harvest Eden apples tossed with fig leaves. Served with Paradise vinaigrette. entree Fruits des Homme Cold, poached sea cucumber served with Sambian mayonnaise. PLAT PRINCIPAUX Pate aux Mon Petit Chou Homemade lingamini smothered in love apple and screaming basil. DESSERT Chocolat du Barry Louis XV pastry topped with well-whipped cream. Eaten with the left hand. Three Penis liqueur will be served in the library. First Bite It was still dark out when we left the monastery. Dawn was breaking a midnight blue etched with icy rain. Ocean waves crashed against the cliffs below. To the left and farther up the trail loomed the solitary Mount Athos. "Some Christmas," I grumbled when George and I finally found a sheltering cave. I handed him a soggy cracker. "It is the twenty-fifth, right?" "Yes," he said. George was a Greek fellow I'd met in a refuge run by an exceptionally grumpy monk. "But don't wish any of the monks here a good Christmas! The people of Mount Athos believe Christmas doesn't come until January, and they don't like to be reminded that the rest of the world is celebrating it on the wrong day." Mount Athos is a six-thousand-foot tall mountain that stands at the tip of a peninsula near the Greek-Turkish border. Surrounded on three sides by the Aegean Sea and on the fourth by roadless forests, it's controlled and run by the Greek Orthodox Church, which has kept out almost all foreign and modern influences since the eleventh century. Military patrols search all visitors. Non-Greek males are allowed in on a strictly limited basis, and there have been no females, human or animal, allowed on the mountain for a thousand years. The only inhabitants are hundreds of robed monks who live in cliff-hugging monasteries exactly as their predecessors did twelve hundred years ago. There's no electricity, no roads, no cars. Foods not specifically mentioned in Christian writings are avoided. Even time is different on Mount Athos because the monks follow the ancient Julian calendar, which, among other things, places the birth of Christ in mid-January instead of on December 25. Aside from farming, which is done by hand, the main activities are chanting, prayer, and creating illuminated manuscripts. It's a perfectly preserved slice of medieval Europe, the ideal place to find out how the apple came to grow in the Garden of Eden. The Old Testament does not reveal the exact identity of the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge, and how the apple came to be identified with the evil fruit remains a mystery. George and I were trying to reach a monastery on the other side of the mountain where I'd been told there was a monk with opinions on the subject. After our breakfast, George and I continued up and over the sea cliff, then headed toward the mountain. The rain turned to snow, and soon we found ourselves hiking through a landscape covered in silver ermine. Bunches of crimson holly berries encased in ice glittered on the leafless trees. It was like walking into a Noel fairy tale, so perfect and clean and clear, Christmas before all the lies. But as morning progressed, the snowfall turned into a blizzard. The trail disappeared, then the trees, then the mountain. All I could see were whirling flakes of snow, and even they dissolved into a surreal void as my glasses became encased in inch-thick ice. The snow was up to our knees.Allen, Stewart Lee is the author of 'In the Devil's Garden Sinful History of Forbidden Food' with ISBN 9780345440150 and ISBN 0345440153.