Lent Cooking Challenge

I'm not religious, so I wasn't going to do anything for Lent this year—I didn't even know it was happening! But a friend reminded me and convinced me that even if I don't want to fast or give up sugar or alcohol, like many people do, this 40-day period can still be an opportunity for change. It couldn't hurt to try, so I set myself a challenge to try two completely new recipes each week.

I chose this challenge because, when it came to food, I was in a rut. I was mostly rotating the same three meals throughout each week. Sometimes I'd swap out an extra ingredient, but that was it. I had been aspiring to level up my cooking for a while, and the arbitrary forty days of Lent were just the motivation I needed.

I'm pretty slow in the kitchen anyway, but especially so with a recipe I haven't done before, so doing them every day would have been too much for me. But as I'm working part time with Wednesdays off, I could pick those and Saturdays as my two kitchen days: Each day I could select a recipe, go grocery shopping specifically for that recipe, and cook it.

The experiment was really successful for me, and I'd highly recommend it if you are in a similar situation as I've described above. Obviously, I had some really tasty meals and found some cool recipes that I'll cook again in the future. But I've also generally gotten to know some cool ingredients I hadn't tried before, like bamboo shoots and pak choi. And I have learned some new ways to use certain ingredients, like sweet potato casserole or blanching and skinning tomatoes.

Now my only "problem" is that I can't go back to my previous three boring recipes—I have developed an appetite for some of the more flavourful and exciting recipes and for some more diversity on the meal plan.

Thoughts? Reach out on Mastodon @Optional@dice.camp, message me via SimpleX, or shoot me an email.