The groaning board

This Easter I could not decide between ham and lamb for the family gathering, so I am making both.

It will be Meatfest!

All Lent I have been following this annoying medieval trad Catholic fast. It is not as bad as it sounds -- worse for the inconvenience than for the actual hunger you feel. The deal is, you can eat only one full meal at dinner, and breakfast and lunch together cannot add up to one full meal. Not only that but at breakfast and lunch you cannot eat meat.

Every morning you wake up with this cloud over your head because it will be another day of having to figure this out.

It is like doing accounting!

My cooking habits have changed. Normally I love doing stews, stir fries, things like that, where you get meat here and there plus a lot of vegetables. Now I tend to cook more the "pork chop" way, where you do the meat, then the vegetables and whatever apart from that. That way the next day I can give the meat leftovers to Howard for lunch and split the rest with him.

I have discovered some fine dishes this way. Last night we had this great mushroom pasta with roasted asparagus. It did have some ham in it but I could pick the ham out of my leftovers and add it to Howard's. The night before that I did this Moroccan chickpea stew. But this takes effort and planning which, you know me, I am not used to that.

And every morning I think, oh, right, this again.

My book on Leonard Pennario is a snap next to this!

I am probably not even doing it right, so it probably does not even count. I do these foggy computations and so my breakfast and lunch probably do add up to more than one meal. What is a full meal, anyway? The Catholic Church does not say. Sometimes during the course of my normal non-Lent life, I might eat a little salad and that winds up being lunch. Other times I eat three courses plus dessert and a glass of wine. It depends where you are and what you are doing and who you are with.

Well, the good part of all this is that when Easter finally gets here, you are very happy to see it.

I will be one happy camper on Sunday with my ham and lamb!