@samuelpepys

A generous offering of fine dishes, Sam, truly glorious. Quite an achievement to get it all done in your house! Your friends will have enjoyed the event.

You invite your friends to celebrate the success of the dangerous operation that removed your bladder stone, five years earlier, and I celebrate with you. Looking mortality in the eye changes our outlook on things, doesn't it. Most people forget the lesson once the danger is over. But you keep reminding yourself of the fact that every day alive is a gift, and for that I love you, Sam.

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I don't want to spoil it for Pepys, so I won't ask him about "a leg of mutton boiled". If boiled here means cooked in boiling water, the mutton clearly is being ruined. But perhaps he means slow-cooked or baked? I do appreciate that preparing all those varied meats and pies in his own family kitchen all at the same time may have simply left his cook with no space in the oven or over the fire.

#Pepys #mortality #feasts #mutton

#Esther skillfully welcomed #Xerxes and #Haman to successive #feasts. In between the feasts, Xerxes was reminded of Mordecai's exposure of an assassination plot against the king. Xerxes then charged Haman to honor Mordecai.

At the second feast, Haman's plot was exposed to Xerxes. When Xerxes saw his favorite queen had been endangered, he grew angry. Haman was executed on the gallows he built for Mordecai.