*urrrrrrp*

[camwyn]

'scuse me. Quick lesson in Roman Catholicism:

The Lenten liturgical season of the year is considered to begin on Ash Wednesday and end on the Wednesday before Easter. Sundays being feast days by Church standards, no fast conditions need be observed on Sundays; during the remainder of the week, fast conditions should be observed by individuals between the ages of seven and (I think) sixty years of age, so long as their health is not endangered by it. Fridays are considered days not only of fasting but of abstinence from meat and from extraneous foods. The days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday - that is to say, the three days before Easter - are considered a separate section of the liturgical calendar known as the Triduum, often referred to as Holy Week. Fasting, abstinence, general sobriety and penitence are called for on Good Friday, in honour of the solemnity of the day, but the Lenten fast need no longer be observed during the rest of the Triduum.

Translation: I had a Fuddrucker's ostrich burger with cheddar cheese for lunch.

And I have never been so grateful that an animal outside a medical lab gave up its life for me. If nothing else, the annual vegetarian experiment reminds me just how much I and so many others depend on animals and on the lives of other creatures in order to live the way we do.

Comments

Congratulations

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

You have greater self-restraint than I do. I would have clawed my way back up the food chain weeks ago. Probably by eating my lab partner if nothing else was available.

Did you notice any physiological effects as a result of the dietary change?

-M

Re: Congratulations

[camwyn]

Not particularly, other than a greater tendency towards, er, breaking wind. That's what happens when you rely heavily upon beans and soya products to make up for animal protein. Oh, I made sure to pair 'em up with rice and such to cover all the amino acids, but essentially my protein was from beans and a small handful of other veg.

Worth noting that the beans I was most heavily interested in were varieties known to be high in iron, and that I had very little in the way of menstrual distress during the cycle that fell during Lent. I did experience a fairly prickly week of PMS beforehand, but nothing more severe than the urge to tell people to go away and leave me alone (as opposed to supremely high irritability and the urge to hit things).

[lwood.livejournal.com]

She piped up randomly:

In my little brown fieldstone parish, fasting was only for Ash Wednesdy and Good Friday, abstinence was on all Fridays, including Good Friday, plus Ash Wednesday. Not real fasting, just a 'no lunch' sort of thing.

Drat that silly old Vatican II sometimes!

-- Lorrie