Ash Wednesday was two weeks ago--how's your Lenten resolutions coming?

Other than my aforementioned sausage incident, I'm doing pretty well. ASIDE: how many other websites will you visit today that use the phrase "sausage incident"? (ANSWER: up to 804)

First, a recap of my resolutions:
(1) Giving up meat for all of lent.
(2) Adding 1 hour of adoration or Mass per week.
(3) No snacks from the vendor at work.
(4) Make some charitable donations to worthy causes.

This year's meatless Lent is going smoother than last year's carne-vale. Starting at New Year's Day of 2008, I gave up eating Meat on every Friday of the year and gave it up altogether during Lent. Same thing for this year. The Fish Fridays thing isn't so bad, really. It actually adds an interesting dynamic to our weekly meal plans. My lovely wife and I plan out all our meals for the week and (usually) do the grocery shopping together.

I can't tell you how much this simple thing has changed our eating habits, spending habits and time management. Seriously. I used to think that I didn't have time to plan a menu for the week. But it's actually the exact opposite. Having a weekly dinner plan solves so many problems. Mrs. WRC and I split up the week for days we're expected to cook and we write our own meal plan for those days. Then we make a real-life grocery list that we're going to need for that week--and buy only what we need. Seriously. (You may think we're dorks. I don't care.) I used to keep a pretty well-stocked pantry of all kinds of whatnots to make dinner. These days, we don't keep much on hand aside from some pasta noodles and some canned goods. There's no need to keep a cram-packed pantry; we only buy what we need. It's resulted in fresher foods at dinner, a leaner grocery budget--and my favorite--fewer "improvised" meals. I used to think I was good at taking a can of creamed corn, a package of frozen cocktail weenies, some honey sauce and a half-package of farfalle pasta and turn it into a decent dinner. You know what? Real food actually tastes better. This would be unfathomable to the 23-year-old version of me. But I digress.

Last lent was not an easy period on our grocery budget. Fish and fresh produce is WAY expensive; there's also a limit to how many consecutive days you can eat cheese-covered-carbohydrates before you feel robbed of all your energy. (I first starting realizing how diet affected energy after reading this post on Conversion Diary. The author calls this her "Saint Diet". I don't have the same severe processed-carbs reaction that she has, but it's very good analysis of how what we eat affects how we live.) So when the WRC household switched from a meat-centric plan to a nonmeat-centric plan, the grocery bill skyrocketed! We were adding fish or shrimp to every meal... at prevailing prices. I'm telling you, man. We almost went broke. But a year later, it's much more manageable. Cooking meatless every Friday is a good tutor. We've learned how to make (awesome) mashed potato tacos and bean enchiladas, how to make (marvelous) rice-and-oatmeal balls instead of meatballs for spaghetti, how wheat germ is better than bread crumbs for breading your own fish fillets and how hot mushroom risotto and cold beer is good for whatever ails you. We're having vegetable stir-fry tonight--I'm looking forward to it.

The meat thing isn't some crazy task. If you've never done it, it's hard to believe. But with a little planning and a willingness to learn some new recipes, it's totally doable.

Still. Why do I do it? I'll point you back to a post from April 11, 2008 where I wrote:

Since the beginning of the year, I've given up meat on Fridays and altogether during Lent. It's an old practice of the Church that we basically gave up on in the 1960's, and in a lot of ways, it may be somewhat peculiar. After all, there's nothing un-Catholic about cattle. But it's been pretty amazing to me how the little outward things have made a big impact on my inward self. Let me explain: on a random Tuesday, I'll eat whatever I'm feeling like. If we're out to dinner and a cheeseburger sounds good, I'll order a cheeseburger. If we're making dinner at home and we're in the mood for taco night, we'll have taco night, ole! But on Fridays, things are different. Our Good Lord died on a Friday, and Catholics are called to make His sacrifice part of our sacrifice.

Don't get me wrong. Crab legs =/= Crucifixion.

But it does become a spiritual act to eat dinner. There's a conscience decision to do what I do for a reason other than wanton cheeseburgery. I hope I'm explaining myself correctly here.

A few years ago, I was working a part-time night job slinging pizzas at a restaurant in Overland Park, Kansas. As part of my training, I worked with this guy who went over all the items on the menu, then we ate some of the items that we just went over--it was one of his perks of training that he got dinner out of the deal. He said that we were going to talk about one of their pizzas, but we weren't going to order it, because it was made with 2 different kinds of pork sausage and that, as a Jewish guy, he didn't eat pork. I commented that there weren't a lot of people that kept Kosher laws anymore, and that most of the Jewish people I knew in college were bacon-cheeseburger eaters. Then he explained: now we think that a lot of the Kosher laws came from pretty practical roots: before modern sanitation or refrigeration, a lot of now-common foods were kind of rare. And handling them could get kind of dangerous, because of the way that animals were slaughtered and their meat preserved made people pretty susceptible to foodborne diseases that could kill; even today, pork and shellfish can get contaminated or compromised pretty easily. But if Kosher laws started as a way to prevent trichinosis, today, they do a way different task. He explained it as part of defining his Jewish identity, that he was asked to forgo ham as a way of setting himself apart from the rest of the world. It wasn't about pork; it wasn't about shellfish; it was about making each thing he ate a small act he did for God.

Woah.

It's a little decision that I make for no other reason than as an act of devotion to the Almighty Lord.

The other three items of my Lenten resolution are actually harder to do than abstinence. Adding an hour of adoration or Holy Mass per week takes some pretty serious planning; time is one of the most precious things I have. We're only given 24 hours in a day, 8 of them are used in sleeping, 8 of them are used at work, the final 8 are broken up by getting ready for work, eating, studying for school and watching college basketball. Who's got time for God?!! He'll have to wait until Sunday.

Eek.

Let's not even talk about the snack bar at work. Let's not talk about Gardettos, Twix Bars, powdered sugar donettes, Big Texas cinnamon rolls, Fritos or peanut-butter-and-cheese-crackers. And since we're not talking about stuff, let's not talk about refined carbohydrates. Thank you for your cooperation.

The charity thing will happen before the end of Lent, I promise. Catholic Charities and Priests for Life will get their cut by Easter. I am resolved.

But the meat thing? No problem. Piece of steak cake. Easy as pork pie. Oh, do I have meat on my mind? Silly me. I'll beef be more careful. Thanks for chicken checking.

I'm such a turkey ham sometimes.