Holy Thursday

According to the Roman Catholic tradition, after Holy Thursday mass, Lent is over. Now, normally this is because mass is right before sundown and passover begins. :-) However, we had mass at work at 11 am. :-) It was great since the hall we used was right above the cafeteria. Right after mass, I ran down the stairs and bought tater tots and chicken nuggets. I hadn't had either in a very long time. It wasn't great (cafeteria food) but it was nice not to get a salad for once.

I didn't get a cake because I knew I had this waiting for me at home:



Chocolate covered strawberries!!!!! Yummy!

Oh and:



Mini cake pops!

A few weeks ago, Amazon had a "local" deal- spend $15, get $30 worth of chocolate covered strawberries. Honestly, I forgot about it until I got an email reminding I had to use it before April 8th. I figured that a good way to celebrate the end of the medieval diet would be with my favorite food, chocolate covered strawberries.

Since then, I've been eating a lot of fun stuff - to the point I made myself sick on Sunday. Easter weekend was a blast - really, one of the best Easters I've ever had. I did have to buy my own Easter candy -which is sad- but it's super yummy. Vegan chocolate covered marshmallow chicks are freakin delicious. To the point even the carnivores in my family loved them. I can't eat normal marshmallows since they are made with corn syrup. Vegan candy tends not to include corn (it's not "natural" unlike cane sugars) so I eat a lot of it. I'm allergic to corn (it's not super serious but it's annoying enough to avoid it).

I really did like the medieval lent diet. I learned a lot and it helped to make me very excited about Easter. It was NOT easy but it was manageable. I'm not sure I'll try it again -although I like the idea of eating seafood all late winter/early spring long - I enjoy potatoes too much. :-) I might try just doing the fish thing next year and not actually go with pre-17th C recipes.

Some things that helped me get through this were my friends and family of course. :-) It was wonderful that they were all very understanding during this season. I know it wasn't easy on any of you either. ;-) But also hot chocolate and salads, believe it or not. I think not having sweets restricted other than the pre-17th Century rules was VERY useful. I could have sugar and I could have apple fritters. If I wanted chocolate, hot chocolate was always available. I think the salad helped so much because it had a)salt and b) was something very familiar in taste and look. It never took long to prepare either.

This was definitely a different take on Lent for me this year and I'm glad I did it and I'm glad it's over. I'm just disappointed that I might have a milk allergy. Grr... Luckily, it's not serious and I'm just going to have to be aware of it for my own cooking. I'm not going to worry when I go out - I'll just take allergy pills.

Last Lenten Dinner

I decided to try trout and saw this recipe:

This is an excerpt from Libre del Coch
(Spain, 1520 - Robin Carroll-Mann, trans.)
The original source can be found at Mark S. Harris' Florilegium

183. Trout in crust or roasted or boiled. The trout must be scaled, and if you wish to make it in crust, cast in pepper and a little ginger. And if you wish to cook it in some other manner, such as roasted or boiled, cause water to boil in a casserole, and cast in the trout. And when it is almost half cooked, cast in a little salt so that it should have good flavor. And then cast a half glass of vinegar into the casserole, because the vinegar will make it firm, so that it shouldn't break; and eat it with pepper, and with a little broth of the pot or of the casserole itself.

And if they want to eat it roasted, it must be eaten with orange juice and water and salt and a little oil, and all the good herbs; and prepare the plate of the roast trout. And cast this juice on top of everything. And know that the best morsel of it is the snout.

I really liked the idea of broiling it in OJ, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and a seeing how it would come out. I did a half and half of OJ and water with a tablespoon of salt and a tablespoon of olive oil. The good herbs were cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The recipe was good but the fish, itself, wasn't. I think I just had it in the freezer too long. I'd love to try it again some day with fresh trout.

I also had rice and carrots which was great.

By Tuesday evening, I was so excited for Lent be over, I was like a kid before Christmas. Easter really ended up being joyful which, sort of, is the point of the entire Lenten season - to prepare for Easter and realize the joyful occasion it is supposed to be. Plus, I learned that, yes, I have yet another food allergy. Grr...

More posts to come!

Monday and Tuesday

Monday was some minor snacking on my now amazing collection of walnuts, pretzels, raisins, and crystallized ginger at my work desk. I think I'll keep up having all of these as part of a snack collection because they are a)good, b)last a heck of a lot longer than a candy bar, c) good for you, and d)cheap.

I also had a salad I brought from home. It was just green stuffs (spinach and the purple lettuce I like), carrots, and sliced almond. I also brought my own salad dressing which was nothing more than olive oil and red wine vinegar with salt and pepper.

For dinner, I cooked up my rice in almond milk. It took 20 minutes and was exactly what I needed. This means that there was probably something wrong with the rice Mom got on Friday. :-) She threw it out because we weren't sure. I added a bit too much cinnamon but it was still tasty.

Today I was in too a rush to make lunch so I've been snaking on the amazing collection which is fine. I also had a peach tea and a lot of water.

I'm not sure about dinner tonight. I have a LOT of sewing that needs to get done so I'm thinking something simple like toast and jam with a salad. This means stopping by the grocery store since I ran out of salad. Hmmm...

Past Few Days

Thursday : Pretzels, raisins, and bread with oil and herbs. I wasn't feeling well and just snacked the entire day.

Friday: Had a few walnuts, raisins, a couple of pretzels sticks, some peach tea at some point, adn then went over to Mom and Dad's. I cooked. :-) I made rice with almond milk, sugar, and cinnamon but -for some reason- it didn't work. I also cooked Salmon. Mom made peas and I think she made sweet potato fries. Of course, I couldn't have the fries but everything else was fine.

Saturday: I wasn't hungry this morning. I went over to a friend's house around noon and we went out with her family to a really cool grocery store that you can eat in. I ended up with brown rice and a crab cake - which isn't period but it was good. I'll through an extra dollar in the collection plate tomorrow. :-) I'll probably eat some more bread too.

On the sewing side of life: I've gotten a LOT done. The Titanic evening dress might get done tomorrow. Today, I did the beading on the underbodice piece. I'm not completely satisfied with the sleeves but we'll see. I have some plans and I want to try pinning them into place and choose from there. Pictures to come. :-)

Tuesday and Wednesday

Yesterday, I had a salad at lunch with my olive and red win vinegar dressing. I don't like the salad oil at work and they don't give you a cup to mix the vinegar and oil together which is bothersome. I've been drinking water lately since those three or four glasses of tea I've been drinking a day are about 500 extra calories a day -something I do not need. For dinner, I ended up just having bread and oil with herbs. I could have heated up more apple pie but I just wasn't hungry.

Today, I'm not feeling great (not quite to sick yet, but getting there. I'm hoping to hold out until Friday). Even though today is a fast day, I'm snacking on pretzels for the salt. I need some of the ginger but all of it is at home. I might be able to stomach some raisins later but, right now, pretzels. Lots of them.




This is one of the apple pies I made. It looks...horrible in the picture but it really is tasty.

And, of course, Fried mushrooms:



Oh! And my "helper" that evening:

Sunday and Monday

Sunday I had two turkey sandwiches with bacon and a couple of cookies. Oh! And Fried mushrooms. I desperately needed the turkey sandwiches. It was just necessary.

Today, I've had tea, a salad, some bread that didn't taste good so I ended up throwing it out, and some more of my apple pie. I finally figured out what it reminds me of -now that I've sprinkled powdered sugar all over it. It reminds me of cornbread with fried apples. I haven't been able to eat cornbread in a couple of years but I use to love a good cornbread crust with a chicken pot pie. This tastes similar but with a more mild taste and texture. So, if anyone else wants to try the apple pie recipe, keep that in mind. It's not like a modern flaky crust but more like a hard cornbread crust.

Most of this week will probably be apple pie since I have a ton of it. It really does make enough for 12 or more people.

Saturday!

Lunch was a salad and bread with herb dip. Not just any bread either! Homemade wheat bread by Mom. :-) It was really yummy. Yesterday, I know I was bad and had a cupcake (Birthday party) but I couldn't pass up a homemade cupcake even if I did end up having a small reaction to it (I think it was more the icing than the actual cupcake). I also had pretzels and raisins yesterday.

This evening, I'm finally getting around to making apple pie! for dinner. The dough is sticky. Very very sticky. I tried adding flour and that didn't work and I tried adding more water but nothing made it not sticky...so the pies look a bit interesting. But who cares? It's pie!

I didn't turn the apples into apple sauce. I just used apple slices. Hopefully, it won't matter much. One pie has almonds on it, the other doesn't. The dough is enough to make two pies. We'll see how they taste!

EDIT: Oh my! It's very different from modern apple pie. Imagine having something like a sugar cookie (but without sugar) for a pie crust and apples with saffron inside. That's what it tastes like. You can leave out saffron and still be perfectly period -which I might do next time. The pie is still quite good, but I don't think the saffron is really necessary. Since it's perfectly period to leave it out, I might make another couple pies next week like this.