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During the season of Lent, Catholics traditionally give up all meat and poultry products as a religious act of fasting. Some Catholics choose to give up these food for the entire 40 days of Lent while others only fast on Fridays. If you're creative, you can make tasty meatless dishes that will not interfere with your observance of Lent. Instructions
Difficulty: Easy Steps
1 Step One
Go vegetarian. Vegetarian recipes tend to be healthy, with low levels of cholesterol and saturated fat. They may also feature some new and exciting flavors that you do not experience in your regular diet. Grab a vegetarian cookbook and get inventive in the kitchen. Salads with different exotic ingredients, including veggies, tropical fruits and nuts, can be filling and satisfying to your palate. Concentrate on making delicious dressings. Also investigate vegetable replacements for meats and poultry. Some soy sausauges taste just like the real thing, especially the breakfast sausages.
2 Step Two
When it doubt, choose fish. Fish tends to be a foundational ingredient of Catholic meals during Lent, so take advantage of the opportunity to try out some new recipes. Ask for recommendations at the fish department of your grocery store, especially for local varieties that are more likely to be fresh. Just because it's Lent, you don't have to be austere. Scallops and shrimp prepared in elegant nouvelle recipes can be pleasing to your eyes as well as your stomach.
3 Step Three
Make pasta dishes with meatless sauces. Cooking pasta is a good way to provide a rich and filling meal for your family while avoiding meat. And the key to pasta is the sauce. Purchase a tomato, cream or some other vegetable-based pre-made jarred sauce, or make your own large batch of sauce at home and save the leftovers for another meal during Lent. Add exciting extras to the sauce in the form of black olives, wild mushrooms, green peas, capers or tuna fish.
4 Step Four
Cook as many meatless dishes in advance as possible and refrigerate or freeze meal-size portions for later use. The more meatless options you have available in your home during Lent, the less likely you will be tempted to eat meat.
5 Step Five
Be cheesy. Swiss, Brie, Rouquefort, Cheddar...you have so many options to create flavorful meals with the addition of cheeses. You can use cheeses as snacks, for meatless cheese melts and as the base for fantastic sauces. A slab of cheddar melted over a sliced open baked potato makes for tasty treat, especially when topped with garlic bits, onion or chives. Choose low-fat cheeses if you're watching calories or cholesterol.
6 Step Six
Visit the health food store. You can keep up your energy during Lent and get the protein you need by drinking delicious protein drinks made with whey or soy. Protein bars serve the same purpose.
7 Step Seven
Eat simple yet nourishing meals to symbolize solidarity with the poor and less fortunate of the world, an important value to recognize during Lent. Less extravagant meals like rice and beans, a very popular meal throughout the world, may be more appropriate for the act of fasting to encourage humility and gratitude for what you have.
__________________ Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it.
Readers share favorite recipes for Lent
Thursday, February 22, 2007
By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Seeing that Lent runs for more than six weeks -- and that your average landlubber can eat only so much fried fish -- observant Christians have to get creative if they're to remain happily meatless on Fridays (or the entire Lenten season, if you're a member of an Eastern Orthodox church).
Send us your Lent recipes
Do you have an especially tasty or unusual Lenten recipe you can share? E-mail it to gmckay@post-gazette.com, or mail it to Food at the Post-Gazette, 34 Blvd. of the Allies, Pittsburgh, PA 15222. We'll print the best and share it with other readers throughout Lent.
But not to worry: We did the culinary legwork for you. Actually, fellow readers did.
Last week, the PG put the call out to readers to dish up their favorite no-meat Lenten recipes. Following are the first of the responses.
Lent is a period of abstinence and meditation. But abstinence doesn't mean that you can't enjoy delicious dishes, that's why this month we feature our entire Goya Seafood line. Enjoy a great variety of recipes with fish and vegetables like the Paella Marinera made with Goya Yellow Rice, the healthy Mexican Nopalitos salad, or the classic Goya Pink Beans and Rice. Make this Lent a palate pleasing festivity with these recipes that Goya brings you.
Lenten Recipes
Throughout many centuries Armenian mothers (and a few fathers) have passed on to their children wonderful traditional Armenian foods. Lent is a special time to prepare for Easter. Try some of the wonderful recipes here and spend a very special mealtime with your family--helping everyone observe Lent and prepare for the joyous Resurrection celebration to come.
The 40 Days of Lent: Selected Armenian Recipes by Alice Antreassian
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Since we have passed both Ash Wednesday and the first Friday in Lent, millions of Catholics around the world have experienced the sudden sensation of, "That's right, I can't have meat today."
Lent should be a time of penance, and we practice that with two traditional forms, fasting and abstinence. Fasting is a limit on the quantity of food we eat; abstinence is a limit on the kind or quality of that food. While it is true that other kinds of fasting and abstinence can be effective, such as abstaining from forms of entertainment or fasting from too much talking, the old ways are still very effective because they hit us where it hurts, right in the gut.
On Ash Wednesday, as I was eating vegetable soup, I started to ask myself, why abstain from meat at all?
It is because it used to be expensive, a luxury, and so it indicates poverty and simplicity?
Does it derive from a sense of guilt over killing animals?
Is it because vegetables are better for us, as many a vegetarian will claim?
Or is it for a kind of ritual purity? Mahatma Ghandi, in keeping with the religious tradition in India, followed a strict vegetarian diet, because he believed that it gave him discipline and spiritual strength.
The last answer, I think, is closest to the truth. The desert hermits in the Christian tradition followed a very strict diet. The strictest diet is vegetables, salt, water and bread. The salt, of course, is a luxury, but it is a condescension to human nature since even the freshest vegetables cooked without salt are hard to finish. Fruits and nuts are sometimes permitted in this diet.
Many monastic communities today follow a less strict died, one which includes milk, eggs, butter, cheese, and even wine or beer. However, they only eat meat on the greatest feast days. Meat, by the way, has always meant meat with blood, i.e., from warm blooded animals. Fish and shellfish were not included as meat, and this is why even today fish can be eaten on penitential Fridays.
The fundamental sense of the spiritual tradition is that a disciplined and pure body leads to a disciplined and pure mind. This disciplined body does not ingest the savory, fatty, heavy foods which seem to weigh down the stomach and the spirit. That is why we don't eat meat on Fridays.
Have things changed today? Is meat no longer what it was? No, I would say that meat hasn't changed a neither have we. That is why the discipline remains. Although most Catholics don't know this, abstaining from meat on all Fridays of the year, although no longer under pain of sin, is still the discipline of the Church.
Even beyond the meat, the insight of the ancient Church seems even more valuable today. In a land which serves junk three meals a day, no wonder people are in such a bad shape spiritually. I wonder if we should consider not only meat but all junk food off-limits during Fridays in Lent.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Sauté mushrooms and zucchini in 1 tablespoon of butter for 3 minutes. Transfer to small bowl. Combine eggs, cream, salt, and pepper. Heat remaining butter in skillet over medium heat. Pour in egg mixture and cook until mixture is still soft on top. Remove from heat. Sprinkle top of omelet with mushrooms, zucchini, and cheese. Place skillet in oven and bake for about 4 minutes, until cheese melts. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.
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__________________ Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it.
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