Parshat Toldot
At Shabbat Mom's house, we call this “Shabbat Lentil Stew”. This, is after all, the Friday night that we enjoy “some of that red stuff” for which Isaac’s earthy son Esau (described as “red, like a hairy mantle all over”) traded away his birthright to his gentle twin brother Isaac (“a mild man who stayed in the camp”). Isaac, “favored” by his mother Rebekah, is later told by the Bible’s first controlling Jewish mother (not that Shabbat mom thinks that being one is a bad thing!