No Meat Shall Touch These Lips for the Next 40 Days

That's what she said. Barharhar.

Ok, sorry. Let me get serious here. Today is Fat Tuesday. So, happy Mardi Gras, everyone!

As I am Catholic, that also means that tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the start of the 40 day season of Lent. If you are not familiar with Lent it is a period of reflection, prayer and fasting.

["40 days" represents many things- The 40 days of the great flood (found in Genesis), 40 years that the Hebrews wandered in the desert (found in Numbers),  40 days Moses spend on Mount Sinai (found in Exodus),  40 days that Jesus was temped by the devil in the desert (found in Mathew).]

In the past I've given up fast food, swearing, chocolate, and caffeine. Well, I don't eat fast food any more. The swearing bit was an epic fail last year and as a high school science teacher I NEED chocolate and caffeine so I don't bite the heads off of unruly freshman and sophomores!

That only leaves one thing: it's time to go meatless. I had actually considered fasting from meat for Lent a couple years ago, but at the time I wasn't eating much meat at all, so that didn't seem like much of a sacrifice. But recently? Well, I've been eating-and enjoying- a great deal more meat than I have in the past 6 years or so combined. I blame it on addictive nitrates!


Case in point:

Yep, that was just a week ago. And let me tell you, the idea of having to for go salami on my cheese plate for the next month and a half makes me a little twitchy. However, since Lent is about sacrifice, I can suck it up.


Instead, my Tweets might sound a bit more like this in the coming days:

I'm excited for this challenge, to be perfectly honest. My vegetarian and vegan friends are being super supportive, sending me recipes and ideas. Some predictions have been made that I won't even look back after Lent is over. We shall see. Maybe this Lenten experiment of sorts will change my diet drastically.

Or maybe I will feel like this:

Thank goodness I genuinely like beans, tofu and veggies*!


Is anyone else abstaining for the season of Lent? I always get a kick about of everyone's fasting choices. It's like New Years with wonderful religious backing.


Love to all,
~the little vegetarian pescatarian Catholic gal, Jess


*I'm abstaining from meat (chicken, pork, beef, etc), but will still consume dairy, eggs and seafood. I also am not worried about chicken stock in soups if it is unavoidable.