Preparing for Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday and Lent

We are planning a game night with doughnuts and gatayif for Shrove Tuesday, whoever wants to come is welcome, and we'll play and eat and have a great time. I will still be cooking for the kids on Ash Wednesday, but with the two adults fasting, it won't be much. Rich and I are looking forward to Lent, and not just as a spiritual discipline, the dietary restrictions will help our well rounded figures.

I am very excited that this year we will be having an Easter Vigil. It will be ending at midnight, and we won't have morning services on Sunday. The church will be coming her for the feast that afternoon, and we will sleep in a little bit in preparation.

Last night's dinner was a quickie stir fry. I thawed some pork tenderloin and diced it up, marinated in soy sauce, garlic, ginger, brown sugar, and oyster sauce. I cooked some sliced onion in sesame and sunflower seed oil, then added the meat and some sliced green beans, then the sauce to thicken up. We served it over rice and rushed off to our Bible study.

Tonight will probably be a clean out the fridge type vegetable soup. We've had a cold spell for our area, with some snow pellets on Monday, and just chill nights. Just when we were hoping that we wouldn't be needing the heater much any more. Ah well, we should be getting out of it soon.

Feasting

We had quite a nice meal last night. Falafel, grilled lemon chicken, laban bi khiyar, hummus, ful, grape leaves served with lettuce and tomatoes. I never did get the raspberry tart made, so I'm going to try to make it today.

We are planning ahead for our Easter feast. We will have a late night vigil, ending at midnight, and no church in the morning. Then the whole church will come to our house for roast lamb, grilled lamb, hummus and pita, baba ghanooj, laban bi khiyar, tabbouleh, grape leaves, and maybe fried kibbeh. I'll also make the triple chocolate cheesecakes and gatayif. Other people will bring veggies and fruit, salads, devilled eggs, breads, drinks, chips and dip, desserts, all sorts of things. We'll have olives out and feast after a long time of fasting.

Ash Wednesday is late this year, this is the first Valentine's day that wasn't in Lent in a long time, it seems.

Ice Cream

Last night we went to dinner at our neighbors' house. They served a chicken stir fry with rice and a chicken and vegetable soup that was really nice. We said we'd bring dessert, and I really wanted to bring kiwi-lime sorbet, because I thought it would go with the food, but kiwis were really expensive. However, we did have cream and eggs and sugar, so I made two kinds of ice cream: coconut and dark chocolate. They were easy to make and very tasty. We enjoyed them a lot, and our neighbors made sure to keep the containers to finish them off.

We're having two couples over on Friday, and I'm still on the ice cream kick, so I'll be making two more batches of ice cream. Probably mocha almond fudge. We'll be eating wicked shrimp (in a spicy wine and butter sauce) over rice pilaf with a salad and some slow sauteed broccoli and butternut squash.

Tonight however, is clean up the fridge and get rid of leftovers night.