Tomorrow it's fish!

Tomorrow is Annunciation, which means we Orthodox folk can eat fish. Mmmmm. I'm meeting my pal Andrew for a sushi dinner. It's a long way 'til April 27, and my dear husband has been a trouper about lenten eating. Probably this is because I have been cooking from the Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites cookbook. Cook from Moosewood, and you're pretty much cooking vegan, which is pretty much the whole dietary idea of lent, but it's darn-tasty vegan cooking and that makes all the difference. We don't feel as deprived. But the whole idea of lent is to deprive yourself of pleasures that connect you to the world, so you have less distracting you from focusing on your spiritual health. As I understand it, Catholics get to choose what they give up for lent. For Greeks, it's prescribed: no meat, no dairy, no olives nor olive oil, and no wine, for 40 days. Loads of Greeks do not fast. My aunt, for example, teases me about my adherence, saying that converts are the worst.

Right about now in the lenten timeline I start questioning the whole effort anyway: One thing I'm not so good at is formal praying; giving up pork chops and cream puffs is probably not going to make me a better supplicant. A healthier wanna-be is more like it. Also, most people who do follow the fast end up making indulgent meals anyway. For example: lobster is allowed. All shellfish varieties are allowed. I don't know about you, but where I come from, lobster, scallops and abalone are considered delicacies. And wine is disallowed, but if you interpret the dietary law most narrowly, and many fasters do, that's the only alcohol that's prohibited. So you can go out and have a steamed lobster preceded by a martini (twist, no olive), wash it down with strawberries dipped in melted chocolate, and tell yourself you're being penitential. This is the line of thinking (and practice) that makes me want to throw up my hands and order cheeseburgers to be delivered to the entire congregation post-liturgy. But I have digressed horribly. Tomorrow, it's fish. I may have a tuna sandwich at lunch, for good measure. I can't figure out a way to get fish into breakfast. There are no trout streams nearby, and freshly-caught trout is the only decent fish to eat first thing in the morning.