Meatless Fridays, Week 1: Simple Cauliflower & Gruyere Tart

February 11, 2016February 11, 201611 Comments

It’s now officially Lent, and I am having a good, old-fashioned case of Catholic guilt.

I’m feeling guilty about not posting enough on the blog. I’m feeling guilty about posting anything on the blog when I really should be working on the new book. And today, I’m especially feeling guilty about posting pretty close-ups of food. Somehow, it doesn’t feel very penitential. Lenten fasting and all that.

To moderately assuage my guilt, I’m going to try to only post photos of meatless meals during Lent. To help with Friday dinner planning, of course.

Although, again, even with the lack of meat, “penitential” isn’t exactly the word that comes to mind when I think about this cauliflower and gruyere tart.

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Mother Knows Best: Six Timeless Lessons for Lent

February 17, 2015February 17, 20151 Comment

Your mother knows more than you think.

Long ago, when you were just a wee child, picking at your oatmeal, Mom persuaded you to clean your bowl by peppering her speech with pearls of wisdom. At the time, those pearls may have seemed like nothing more than motherly machinations. And chances are, they resulted in more eye-rolling than oatmeal-eating.

Yet, the clichés that rolled off her tongue with such seeming sadism were, in truth, some of the soundest theological summations on suffering and sacrifice known to man. Her truisms, aphorisms, maxims, and dictums distilled about 2,000 years of Catholic teaching into one-liners so simple that a five-year-old could understand them, but so profound that a 55-year-old can still learn from them.

The fact is, almost everything you need to know about Lenten sacrifice, you learned from your mother. Let’s review.

1. “Offer it Up” Continue reading →

Sacrifice All the Things: The Loser’s Guide to Winning Lent

February 10, 201512 Comments

I grew up Catholic, but you’d never know it based on my Lenten history. For decades, try as I might, I could never get the season right. Some years, I did too much. Other years, I did too little. And sometimes, I simply lost my mind. Like, the year when I gave up expressing opinions for Lent. Yes, I did that. Well, I sort of did that. I tried, but it didn’t work out so well. Fancy that.

There was also a Lent where I did a progressive fast. During week one, I gave up sweets. For week two, I gave up sweets and meat. The next week, sweets, meat, and dairy. By the time Good Friday arrived, I was basically eating like a tee-totaling, vegan Mormon Celiac on a diet. Or, to put it more accurately, I was eating like a miserable, crabby, total wench of a tee-totaling, vegan Mormon Celiac on a diet.

That was a special year for everyone.

The good news is that all those Lents—crashing, burning, banging wrecks that they were—didn’t go completely to waste. My own particular kind of Lenten crazy gave my friends lots of opportunities to offer things up. I think a few roommates actually did count living with me during Lent as their penance. Plus, eventually, I learned from my own mistakes, and stopped trying to win Lent—proving how holy I was by my ability to Sacrifice All the Things.