Getting Dinner on the Table While Fasting

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

Every Lent I fast at least for two days: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I fast for approximately 24 hours. So for Ash Wednesday, I eat nothing after dinner on Tuesday evening until dinner on Wednesday evening. I will drink water during that time, but no other beverage. Every hunger pang I feel is a call to pray. When my stomach growls, I also remember that as much as I need food, I need God even more.

For years it never seemed to fail that I had to head to the supermarket on a day I was fasting. Talk about poor planning! Not only did I face extreme temptations to break my fast early as I navigated through aisle after aisle of appealing food, I also faced the extreme temptation to buy far more food than I needed because I was so hungry. After a few years, I learned to plan better: make sure to do my grocery shopping before and after fast days, not during them.

Yet I still faced another challenge – getting dinner on the table on a day I fast. Preparing a labor- or time-intensive meal while in the most difficult final hours of a fast is a struggle. Smelling food, seeing food, handling food can make my hunger pangs more intense – and can make me increasingly cranky. Not a good way to end a soul-nourishing fast!

After a few years, I again learned to plan better. Now I plan for an easy-to-prepare or already-prepared meal to break my fast. One of my favorite easy-to-prepare fast-breaking meals is pasta. All I have to do is make sure I have the needed pasta on hand (I normally have a wide assortment of pasta shapes in the pantry and freezer) as well as leftover sauce in the freezer to accompany it. This means, of course, that I need to plan ahead so I make sure to actually have leftover sauce in the freezer, so we will have spaghetti, ravioli, lasagna, baked ziti or some other pasta dinner in the week or two before a fast day. I’ll prepare extra sauce at that time, and stash the planned leftover sauce in the freezer. Then on a fast day, all I need to do is thaw the sauce in the refrigerator that morning, and right before dinner heat the sauce while I cook the pasta. That’s a great way to have a nourishing meal without adding to the struggle of a fast.