Preparing for Lent...

Slowly, I am starting to take baby steps in preparation for Christmas Lent, because even though the fast is not officially beginning for a few more weeks, with my 3 little distractions, everything takes longer to do.

In past years, I have not been really organized in preparing for the meal planning for Lent, and it has really thrown me off. It was especially difficult for me in the last few years because I was always either pregnant or nursing a baby, during which times I had a blessing not to fast or to partially fast (for example, without meat). It is particularly hard to cook for your husband when he is fasting and you are not! This year though, I'm going to have a new beginning with fasting because I am no longer nursing, nor am I pregnant. I am excited to try a new, organized way of meal planning. Today I sat down and began perusing my cookbooks for Lenten recipes (anything that includes NO dairy, meat, or eggs), and made a huge list of them all. I have to add, that the idea of doing this "list" has been in my head for a long time, but I found Orthodox Mom's handy "Lenten Meal Planning" section of her blog to be helpful, too. In fact, I have printed out the meal planning pages (which she has linked to) to record my meals onto later. For now though, I am just listing recipes, followed by the cookbook they are coming from, and the page number. Once I have them all in one place, I will be able to make actual meal plans from there.

I have grouped my recipes into various sections. They are:

Lenten Soups
Lenten Appetizers & Salads
Lenten Lunch or Dinner (because for me, they are interchangeable, though for some, you may see the need to split these two up)
Lenten Desserts

I wanted to share one of my new cookbooks. I ordered it last year after a raving review from a friend. I have always struggled in finding fasting recipes that do not include tofu, seitan or anything funky like that. I'm a plain kind of girl when it comes to food, and I really am not into anything unusual. I'm into fruits, veggies and grains, and dessert during Lent. So I was thrilled to find out that the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen cookbook has no "weird" ingredients in it that I will not enjoy cooking. It's all about the fruits, veggies, pastas and grains! I love that.