An Irishman's Diary

THE “JESUS DIET” threatened to become all the rage a few years ago, at least in America. It was popular mainly among Christians, but also as yet another response to that country’s obesity problem. Enthusiasts asked: “What would Jesus eat?” And most of the answers fell conveniently into the category of health food.

The loaves and fishes we know about. Other foods could be inferred from the time and place: whole grains, seeds, nuts, grapes, and olives. Meat only on special occasions. And under Levitical law, the fish would have had to be non-scaly (no prawns or lobsters); otherwise they would be abominations. But on the plus side you could have wine with everything, even the simplest rations, as at the Last Supper.

Unlike Atkins, the Jesus Diet does not quite seem to have taken off. Maybe it had too much wine for America’s Puritan streak. But the memory of it came back to me on the Good Friday just past, when I was having dinner with my family in a medieval town in Catalonia.

Tarragona is one of the many places in Catholic Europe that stage a Good Friday pageant, with colourful floats and costumes, and the inevitable weird hoods. If you’re on the southern part of the continent at Easter, whether you’re any way religious or not, these fantastically theatrical events just have to be witnessed.

The more ancient the place, the better; and I’ve a seen a few in very dramatic settings: including San Gimignano (Tuscany’s “Medieval Manhattan”, so-called after all the towers left behind by feuding families) and Obidos, the beautiful walled town that Portuguese kings gave their queens as a wedding present.

There was also Mantua in northern Italy a few years back where, after watching the torch-lit procession cross a cobbled square, my five-year-old son – who had recently seen the film Shrek – thought the villagers were going out on an ogre hunt.

Part of the fun – if that’s not the wrong word – of these events is the way they take over a town. It’s fascinating to stroll down the streets beforehand, watching locals robe up and rehearse, or afterwards, when they let their hoods down and head for the bar.

But travelling on Good Friday, especially with children, has its stresses. You worry there’ll be nowhere to eat, for one thing. So after we took the train down the coast to Tarragona, we kept one eye on the pageant preparations and another on every food shop or cafe for signs that they were closing early.

Finally we found the perfect scenario: a restaurant that (1) was just opening for dinner and (2) offered a prime viewing point on the procession. Better still, it had children’s specials. Which was the only part of the menu I could understand.

My pidgin-Catalan vocabulary had expanded to about 15 words by now, and the waitress had roughly the same amount of English. But apart from “pasta” for “los niños” we stared at each other in mutual incomprehension, until eventually I threw caution to the wind.

With the place and day that was in it, it seemed safe to assume there was a lot of fish on the menu. This being so, the only thing likely to be served that I definitely didn’t want to eat was squid or octopus, “in its own ink”. I would strongly agree with Leviticus on this point: such foods are abominations. So I pointed at two different items on the daily specials list and ordered them blind. “I’m fairly sure they’re not octopus,” I told my wife.

They turned out to be pork and veal, respectively: facts I was still absorbing when the head of the procession hoved into view at the end of the street. It was led by Roman soldiers, swaying ominously as they marched with exaggerated slowness, beating time with their spears on the cobblestones. Behind them came the first of the floats: a scale-model of Jesus and the apostles at the last Supper, carried shoulder high by hooded penitents.

Toying with my veal – a dish I could not recall eating anywhere before - I concentrated on trying to work out what was in the sauce. Nuts, clearly. Mushrooms too. And there was also a faint tang of – what was that? – oh yes: vestigial Catholic guilt over eating meat on Good Friday. But at least I knew, courtesy of the Prodigal Son, that veal was part of the Jesus Diet; which was more than could be said for my wife’s pork.

On the other hand, that would have been free-range veal. Whereas among the reasons the meat became a modern-day, secular sin were veal crates (now banned in the EU) and other intensive farming methods that made fatted calves’ lives grim as well as short. I still don’t know where my veal came from, or how. But I have to admit it was very good. Somehow, in spite of the guilt, I polished it off before the Romans reached us.

Of course, as enthusiasts of the Jesus Diet will know, there is a useful let-out in the Gospel’s advice to disciples: “And into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are set before you.” (Luke 10:8) This would certainly seem to cover daily specials in restaurants. So assuming I really was guilty of anything in Tarragona, I like to think a good lawyer would have got me off.

• fmcnally@irishtimes.com