Seven reasons to feast during Lent (SQT)

Linking up with This Ain't The Lyceum.

It's pretty common knowledge that Catholics "give stuff up for Lent." Sweets, alcohol, gossip, broccoli... everyone has something they've given up in order to (hopefully) draw closer to God. Our family does meatless Wednesdays as well as Fridays, along with some other personal sacrifices.

As Matt and I were talking the other day, the question of "what for Lent entails, exactly" came up, and it's an interesting one. Does sacrificing something for Lent mean it's completely gone for the whole span from Ash Wednesday through the end of the Triduum (which is technically not Lent, but definitely a penitential season anyway)? Or are there exceptions, and if so what are they?

It turns out that this can be a surprisingly heated question; many people I've talked to who favor or oppose marking certain days and times in Lent by taking a break from their voluntary sacrifices seem to feel very strongly indeed that their way is best, or even the only correct position to take. We lean more toward the position that if "how to Lent" hasn't been set in stone, well, it's not set in stone. Given that stance, this should be obvious, but just in case, I'm not telling anyone that they're doing Lent wrong! Unless they're eating meat on run-of-the-mill Lenten Fridays without a dispensation, I suppose. But in the Shifflerhaus, and with our understanding of Lenten sacrifices, we do make a point of celebrating these days even during Lent:

I

Birthdays. So far, Matt's the only one with a Lenten birthday; the latest date possible for Easter to occur is April 25, and Alex's birthdate is April 26, so her birthday will never quite fall during Lent. But we do celebrate Matt's birthday despite its always being in Lent, complete with a meal of his choosing and his favorite brownies. (I should note that we as a family have not explicitly given up dessert; I focus on making "simple" food, so not making desserts has been a natural extension of that, but if someone gives us cookies they're fair game for after supper. His requested supper, burgundy meatballs, is definitely not what I would consider "simple," though, so having brownies was not the only thing that marked the day as different and celebratory.) 

II

Name days. (Otherwise known as the feast of your patron saint.) In our house, name days are a big deal. Goodness knows I badger all of our patron saints for prayers and help on a regular basis; the least I can do is celebrate their feast days! We read about the saints, maybe read something by the saint of the day, see if I can find a coloring page to print off... And like with birthdays, we let the one celebrating their nameday pick out supper, and dessert is likely to appear. For Kit's nameday last week we didn't have anything particularly special, since she's little and wouldn't have understood, plus Matt was out of town and "fancy" just wasn't happening, but Little Bear was happy to pick one of his favorite suppers to celebrate for his sister. Octopus pancake it was.

III

Baptismal days. If the day you're born makes the list of "days worthy of celebrating," the day you're reborn through Baptism should definitely count too. It's arguably a more important day, even! Same basic drill: we talk and read about the sacrament of Baptism and make a specially-requested supper, with a strong possibility of dessert. 

IV

St Joseph. The feast day of St Joseph, March 19, is a Solemnity. A capital-S solemnity means it's a really big deal, a celebratory, no-fasting, meat-eating-even-if-it's-a-Lenten-Friday sort of big deal. 

"Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (Can. 1251)."

So, we celebrate it. 

V

Annunciation. Well, usually; because March 25 (the Annunciation—exactly nine months before Christmas) happens to be Good Friday this year, observance of the Annunciation had to be bumped all the way to April 4; they couldn't just move it to the week after Easter, because each of the seven days following Easter Sunday (the "octave of Easter") is a Solemnity in its own right. The Annunciation is a Solemnity as well, so even when it falls during Lent (as it usually does), we celebrate it as such. With waffles.

VI

Laetare Sunday. The fourth Sunday in Lent is Laetare Sunday, "Rejoice" in Latin. The name comes from Isaiah 66:10, "Rejoice, O Jerusalem..." which is the Introit for the day. When we hit Laetare Sunday we're halfway through Lent, and everything starts hurrying along toward Easter: next comes Passion Sunday, then Palm Sunday, and we're already into Holy Week! So the Church marks Laetare Sunday as a day of rejoicing that Easter is in sight; a ways off yet, but we've crossed the turning point. 

VII

Sundays in general. This one might be the most controversial; the two opposing views as I understand them (and please, if you interpret them differently, share your position!) are A) Lent is Lent, and taking breaks from your sacrifices every week is cheating and is opposed to the spirit of Lent, vs. B) every Sunday is a "little Easter," a commemoration of the Resurrection, and it's thus inappropriate to fast (c.f. Matt 9:15). We agree with the latter view, and do not treat the Sundays of Lent as penitential days.

Edited to clarify: The "no meat on Fridays of Lent" is a hard-and-fast rule, so birthdays, name days, and baptismal days don't overrule that. Solemnities, though, do. We have meatless birthday, etc. celebrations if they fall on Fridays, but meat for supper on solemnities regardless of what day it is.

Agree? Disagree? Did I forget something? What days, if any, do you count as exceptions to your Lenten observances?

Midweek Motley

What we're doing

Little Bear learned about exclamation points today. That knowledge may or may not have been acquired by reading comic book sound effects... He was very proud of himself.

Matt is home from his work trip, and hopefully not traveling again for a while. So many things are just better when he's home, when I know that he'll be back every evening. Rhythm and schedule are important to me, and it seems like the kids do better when our days follow familiar patterns as well. And of course, it's good to spend time with him and for him to have time playing with the kids. Kit definitely talks more for/to Dada in the evenings than she does all day with me: he regularly gets "drum," "(s)tan(d)," and even "dum(p) t(r)uck" from her, and I rarely hear anything other than "nigh(t) nigh(t)" and "done," both cues that she's tired of whatever else is going on and just wants to go nurse. Daddy is for playing with, Mommy is for eating and sleeping on. :-)

Kit has reached the point where she's very sure that she should be able to move around the room, and becomes upset quickly when it turns out that nope, actually, she can't. Tonight during story time she was rolling all over the bedroom floor, and found herself over by the mirror, where she happily smiled at herself for a while. She's become very good at "driving" her walker where she wants to go in the kitchen and dining area, but she can't get off of that hard-floored area into the rest of the apartment. If she's sitting on the floor and something or someone is out of reach, though, she quickly turns on the tears until Matt or I come and pick her up.

What we're eating

Red lentil vegetable soup tonight! It was my first time cooking with red lentils, and I'm pretty sure also my first attempt at vegetable soup. I left out the spinach and green beans, mostly because I forgot about them, but it was very colorful anyway with the carrots, tomato, and green bell pepper. The red lentils did not dissolve into creamy shapelessness like the recipe had promised, but it was a very good soup regardless. Little Bear was not a huge fan, but I'm hoping we can attribute his reluctance to eat it to the brown basmati I served it over... There's a lot left over, and I'd like him to help me eat it for lunches.

For breakfast on Matt's birthday, I had a pan of these dairy-free banana pecan cinnamon rolls waiting for us. So delicious! I was planning to have the rolls all prepped the night before and ready to pop in the oven when we got up, but then he had to take a later flight home than he'd planned and I was up waiting for him until midnight, so I just went ahead and baked them. We didn't wind up frosting them, and they really didn't need it. I wouldn't have believed that you could get such a smooth, springy dough with no milk or butter, but they were perfect; I even used spelt flour!

If, and this is a big if, everyone gets enough sleep tonight and is having a good day tomorrow and I decide that I'm feeling adventurous, we may be attempting to make homemade coconut milk. Surely it's not that difficult; the only ingredients are flaked coconut and water. There's a sack of unsweetened flaked coconut taking up pantry space that is not disappearing quite as quickly as I'd expected, and oh my goodness non-dairy milk is expensive. I've been using almond milk from the store, not coconut, but if I can make non-dairy milk at home with ingredients I already have instead of buying those cartons that cost twice as much per ounce as cow milk? I should try. We don't have a blender, though, and the idea of making milk in the food processor still has me a little skeptical.

What we're reading

I loved Simcha Fisher's post at the National Catholic Register today, "Suck it up" vs. "Offer it up". She explains well what "offering it up" means, and the reasons why we do it.

Over at Carrots for Michaelmas, Haley has a great collection of suggestions and ideas for How to Do Holy Week with kids. Although I've been keeping track of Sundays in my head—last Sunday was Laetare Sunday, we're coming up on Passion Sunday, and after that is Palm Sunday—I needed to see those lists of so many things we could potentially be doing to remind me to get our own lust hammered out here quickly.

Plus, she's hosting a giveaway for beautiful handmade beeswax candles shaped like Easter eggs, from Toadily Handmade Beeswax Candles! We used their make-your-own Advent candles kit this past year and loved it, and now I'm eyeing those eggs... do I really need more candles? But they're so cute! Check them out here.

Katherine of Half Kindled is hosting a series this week on creating a capsule wardrobe, which has been fun and informative so far. If you're interested, it begins here with Capsuled Style Day One.

And Little Bear is reading superhero books. Well, I'm reading superhero books, and Little Bear is reading "Boom!" "Crack!" "Zzzap!" etc. We have a set of Little Gilden Books featuring the Avengers, and it looks like they are back in the current set of books he wants to hear every day. At least it's not Dick and Jane; his insistence on trying to read that all by himself, when they start out assuming the kids know about silent Es and double vowels and all kind of non-short-vowels was making me crazy!

Midweek Motley, Vol. 2

I kind of like this format, and clearly I didn't manage to get anything more substantial written in the past week, so let's try another jumble of thoughts.

What we're doing

It's been a fairly laid-back week in the Shifflerhaus. 

That's completely false, actually. This afternoon was laid-back, and yesterday afternoon was fairly laid-back, which is why I initially thought the week so far had been. But it hasn't, not at all; I spent much of the weekend and Monday dealing with more "soy is in everything!!!" craziness, researching and grappling with contradictory opinions on whether glycerin, vegetable (which usually means soy) glycerin, is safe for people who are allergic to soy. The stuff that's in practically all soap, and toothpaste, and lotion, and deodorant... That was very stressful, trying to figure out replacements for all of the things I presently use that contain glycerin. 

Our pediatric allergist got back to me Monday evening. As long as Kit isn't abnormally sensitive to it, the soy in glycerin should be so far broken down that the problematic proteins won't be able to affect her. So I'm not going to keep scouring the wilds of the Internet for glycerin-free toothpaste, at least for now. I'll keep an eye on her, though, in case it turns out that she is unusually sensitive; reputable sources including the Canadian health department list glycerin among soy-based items for those with allergies to be careful of. She's had a couple of reactions again recently, all slight enough and spread out enough that they certainly could have been from simple cross-contamination, but we want to keep track of everything just in case.

So, soy is everywhere, and that makes life stressful. But that's not really news, because I've been complaining about it for months.

Taking up all of my other spare moments this week was the paperwork for our home loan program application—we're hoping to be house-hunting again this spring/summer! I turn the packet in tomorrow morning, and we should hear back in about a month.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of this afternoon. Little Bear was playing with a balloon, batting it with his hands and bouncing it off of his nose to keep it in the air. While he played, Kit sat on the floor watching the balloon: eyes wide, smile wider, laughing and laughing every time he hit it. I love watching her watch him play. Whatever he is doing immediately becomes just the most wonderful, exciting, interesting thing in the world, and she is gets so, so happy when he sets aside his play for a moment to crouch down and smile at her.

What we're eating

There's a something or other for Kit's nameday! I can't remember what it is called, because I'm sleepy. That's not very helpful, is it?

Matt hasn't been here for supper the last few nights, so cooking has been lower on my list of priorities this week; I know that Little Bear is always happy to have breakfast for supper, so yesterday I scrambled up a mess of ham and eggs, and tonight it was waffles and fruit salad. Proper supper food tomorrow! I'll have to remember to bake some bread and pull some meat out of the freezer in the morning, because we're pretty much down to peanut butter, cheese and lettuce in the fridge.

Oh, wait; there's a big pot of caribou chili in the fridge, one that I made this morning but didn't want to eat today because we're doing meatless Wednesdays, and anyway the house had been smelling like kidney beans all morning. I really like the idea of buying dry beans, and I don't mind having the extra step of soaking them the night before, but the smell of beans slowly cooking is not my favorite.

What we're reading 

Look, paper books! Three of them! I forgot about the Daily Lenten Meditations booklet on last week's list, though to be accurate, I must admit that I forgot about reading the meditations themselves at least half the days last week. So far this week I haven't missed any, though! Each is just a page long, a handful of prayers, Scripture verses, and saints' quotes. I've found that if I actually read them aloud to however many children happen to be in the room at the moment, I am much more likely to finish them (rather than start reading the first prayer, get interrupted, set it down and never come back to it... that happens a lot.)

33 Day to Merciful Love is the brand-new book from Fr Michael Gaitley, MIC: a preparatory 'retreat' for making a consecration to Jesus' Divine Mercy. To time the 33 days to lead up to Divine Mercy Sunday this year, we started it on March 1. I've had a particular devotion to Christ's Divine Mercy for years, so this consecration caught my attention right away, and Divine Mercy Sunday in this Year of Mercy seemed like just the perfect timing. 

As for The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, I've really only flipped through it and begun the introduction; I keep going through the start-reading-get-interrupted-never-come-back-to-it routine, unfortunately. There's a delightfully Austinian flavor to what I have read, though, so I have high hopes for it.

Only one link this week, but it's a good one: Liturgical Living at a Glance: March 2016, from Carrots for Michaelmas. Haley does such a great job of pulling together ideas and resources for celebrating the liturgical year!

A midweek motley

Blogging. I haven't been keeping up well lately, at all. But words are going on a page today one way or another, and if they don't all quite go together? Well, I did just use "motley" as a noun.

What we're doing

Soaking up sunshine—it's been warm enough all week that opening the window shades doesn't suck all of the warm air out of the house! I am loving having the living room lit up with sunlight instead of electric lights all day long again.

Little Bear has been working on his reading, and as long as I check for consonant blends ("th," "ng," etc) he's doing well with me picking out random short-vowel words as we're reading stories and asking him to tell me what they say.

Kit is happily rolling from back to stomach to back to stomach to back... all the way over to whatever her brother is playing with, where she grabs his toy away and then smiles at him, waiting to be praised for her rolling.

What we're eating

Still dairy-free and soy-free, plus meatless on Wednesdays as well as Fridays right now. I try not to take away all of Matt and Little Bear's dairy just because Kit and I can't have it, which leads to suppers like this taco pizza that only have cheese on one side, or two separate batches of oatmeal (with/out milk), scrambled eggs (with/out cheese), etc. 

Do you know that there's soy in canned tuna? Soy. In canned tuna. It's in everything!

Ahem.

And then there's "fake cake," 90-second cake in a mug. That's been a thing for how long now? But I'd never done it, because putting dry ingredients + oil + (almond)milk in the microwave and having them spontaneously manifest a mug full of chocolate cake? Ridiculousness. How could that possibly work? It would surely be like one of those silly "two-ingredient homemade apple pie in the microwave" recipes that have little to nothing in common with the deliciousness they're named for. 

But... it's not like that. It works. Who enchanted my microwave? Not that I'm complaining about having an enchanted cake-producing microwave, mind. But seriously, how did this happen because I do not understand and it is boggling my mind. The crumb was perfect, the upper crust firm, the whole thing moist and rich and delicious and decidedly unLenten. I may be making myself a microwave-mug-cake for Matt's birthday, so that I can make his requested brownies for him without any funny nondairy substitutions.

What we're reading

Little Bear keeps requesting this month's issue of Ladybug magazine and Leo Landry's Space Boy, a bedtime story of a young astronaut who travels to the moon for some quiet but realizes that even with the noise, it's better back home with his family.

Kit eats any book she can get her hands on.

I keep trying to read Theresa Tomeo's Extreme Makeover, which I'm very sure is excellent, but reading a paper book is so unreasonably difficult these days. I knead bread with a baby in one arm; having two hands free to hold a book and turn the pages would be a rare moment of leisure indeed. Reading one-handed on my phone while Kit nurses, though, works fine. A few of my favorite finds this week:

King Arthur in the Lives of the Saints

Buttons, lard, and Old Norse: The Invention and Abandonment of Home Economics

How to Soak, De-Gas, and Cook Beans from Scratch

Plus the archives of the Fountains of Carrots podcast, which I had somehow never heard of. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd never listened to a podcast ever, at all, probably because Little Bear usually doesn't cooperate at all when I want to listen to things. He's been enjoying? listening to? keeping quiet while I listen to them this week, though, so that's been fun.

And I just finished an ebook on closet decluttering, Simply Dressed by Victoria Osborn. Hopefully I'll have more thoughts on that book, and decluttering in general, to share in a couple of days.

And that's all, I think. One more day left before the weekend starts! I either sprained or broke my toe this evening, taking a corner too quickly in socks on the tile floor, soooo... Saturday cannot get here too quickly. I can't wait to have Matt home for two whole days!

SQT: There and back again

I

Hesitantly, possibly against my better judgement, I'll go ahead and say that we're all finally caught up and back on schedule after our trip. Throwing the beginning of Lent into the middle of this first week home certainly made it take a little longer, but we knocked out a whole long list of errands this morning (in town from 8 am to 12:30 pm!), and everyone seems to be back into our regular rhythm at this point. I'm so ready for quiet predictability!

II

The plan was to fly out the night of January 22, land in Baltimore the next evening, and drive up to visit Matt's parents. We knew there was a storm coming through, but figured that we're Alaskans, we could handle it. Wednesday afternoon, though, with Matt home from work sick, we learned that all of the airports in the area were preemptively closing before the storm, and would probably stay closed through the weekend. But if we could be at the gate in four hours... Kit had an appointment to see the pediatric gastroenterologist first thing Monday morning, which we'd be guaranteed to miss if we waited out the storm, so we frantically threw things in suitcases and ran out the door.

III

It was a great trip. About two weeks with Matt's family, a day with my sister, a too-short time with several friends. Being snowed in was an experience: from Friday night to Sunday morning, we got about 30" of snow! That's a lot more than we get here, at least in one go. There was still quite a bit on the ground when we left, which was nice—it made the coming home to two and a half more months of winter much less jarring. 

IV

Coming home was... a different sort of "experience." So, it's 2:30 am. We left the hotel 22 hours ago, everyone desperately needs to go to bed, and the jeep (which my brother had dropped off in the airport parking lot for us) is throwing a fit: the check engine light is blinking, the heat won't come on, and when we stop/start or go uphill it starts lurching. We wind up waking my brother up and having him follow us home in his truck, just in case. At home, we notice that the bedrooms are a little chilly, but we'd turned the heat down before we left, so we just turn on the electric heater in Little Bear's room and bump up the thermostat in ours... But the baseboard heat never comes on. Matt and I spend a very cold night, and text our landlord first thing in the morning. At least Little Bear stays nice and warm with his heater!

V

It turns out that

— the check engine light was telling us that another coil had gone bad (our ridiculous engine has one coil for each cylinder, and we've had to start carrying extras everywhere because they burn out so frequently.) So Matt replaced that on Sunday afternoon.

— the lurching was being caused by ice in our fuel line; we've known that we probably have some water in the gas tank since this summer, but it hasn't caused any trouble as long as we remembered to fill up when the gauge says we have a quarter of a tank left. Matt picked up a bottle of HEET to treat that.

— the zone valve for the bedrooms was stuck closed, but our landlord met us at the house right after church and got it fixed.

— we think we've finally fixed the heat in the jeep as of today; the coolant was low, and after topping that off, within five minutes of starting the jeep we had warm air coming out of the vents again.

VI

Oh, and about Kit: Her appointment with the pediatric gastroenterologist went well. Matt's cold was still too bad for him to come along, so his mother offered to come to help with Kit and to be a second person listening to the doctor and asking questions, which I really appreciated! The doctor was confident that Kit is indeed allergic to cow's milk protein and to soy, and offered to give us a referral to a nutritionist if I wanted it, but said that it sounds like we're already doing everything right. So that's good; we didn't get an "oh, it's X and we can do one quick thing and make it all better!", but it's good to know that we're on the right track for taking care of her, and to hear that most kids grow out of this and get instructions for how to go about trying to introduce dairy once she's older.

VII

Our excitement of the evening. The chocolate chip banana bread had been in the oven for more than an hour, so when Matt pulled it out and showed it to me, I said yeah, it's done, just lay it on its side and I'll take it out if the pan after supper. After supper, we came back into the kitchen to see... this. Oops. It took another 40 minutes to finish baking! Is there some strange property of coconut oil that makes quick breads take f-o-r-e-v-e-r? I've never had any trouble like this with cooking time in other non-dairy breads, but before today I think I'd exclusively been using canola oil in quick breads, not coconut oil. Or, maybe, I just realized that I put a whole cup of barely-above-freezing chocolate chips into the batter right before putting it into the oven... That could possibly have had something to do with it too. Regardless, I'm very glad that he'd laid it down on that sheet pan instead of on the wire rack on the counter; I just stuck the entire pan back into the oven and kept checking it until the goopy mess was solid. There's quite the cavern in the middle of my loaf, now, but at least it tastes good!

Linking up with Kelly at This Ain't The Lyceum. Have a good weekend!

Looking at Lent

Another Ash Wednesday has just about wrapped up here, despite my feeling completely unprepared for Lent to begin already. Why is there still a Christmas tablecloth out? Where is the bean jar for sacrifices? How has Little Bear apparently forgotten all about Lent? I don't know. We're off to a slow start, but we'll get our feet under us soon.

Matt and I each have some personal sacrifices we're making, and the whole family is going back to meatless meals on Wednesdays in addition to Fridays, which sounds a little daunting with Kit's current allergies—no meat, no dairy, and no soy? Oh, and no breakfast-for-supper, at Matt's request. I guess my available proteins are beans, fish, and maybe hard-boiled eggs... This could be difficult. 

But hey, just a half hour ago I read a quote that totally applies here: "For if the work be laborious, reflect that it is for God's sake you undergo all this, and you shall receive sufficient consolation." (St John Chrysostom) I'm hearing two pertinent lessons in there: Not only that A) remembering that we're doing this in order to draw closer to God will help when observing Lent is difficult, but also that B) I do actually have to be carrying out these Lenten practices with the purpose of growing closer to God. Not for the sake of looking good to others, not simply for the sake of "doing something for Lent"; for God's sake. Whatever sacrifices I'm making during Lent, they're supposed to be about God, not about me.

Because having a list schedule thing helped me so much with staying on top of things during Advent, and I was somehow organized enough last Easter to write down what we'd done for Lent 2015, let's have a quick sketch of what our current Lenten plans look like.

Feb 9: Shrove Tuesday; doughnuts for breakfast, pancakes for supper

Feb 10: Ash Wednesday; fast/abstinence

General Lent: meatless Wed & Fri; sacrifice jar with black beans on the table; daily reflections; sing Stabat Mater; shoot for once-a-week stations of the cross 

Feb 17, 19, 20: Ember days; meatless

Mar 6: Laetare Sunday; ??

Mar 13: Passion Sunday; veil statues around the house

Mar 17: St Patrick; Irish stew? Soda bread?

Mar 19: Solemnity of St Joseph; ??

Mar 20: Palm Sunday; psari plaki for supper

There's a few question marks up there, but I have almost a month before I have to figure out how to celebrate Laetare Sunday, so we should be good. Holy Week and Triduum don't need to be taking up real estate in my cluttered mental calendar just yet either; I'm probably going to need all of my mental energy to come up with this year's list of supper ideas. If you have any favorite meatless recipes starring beans, please share them!

One thing more; I think I've shared this before, but here again is the Lenten prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian. I've had it posted on the bathroom mirror the last couple of Lents, and I think it's going up in the kitchen as well this year.

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust of power, and idle chatter. 

Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Your servant.

O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother, for You are holy always, now and ever and forever. Amen.

Chocolate chip doughnuts {dairy-free}

Whoops, I disappeared for a while there! We're still recovering from two and a half weeks of traveling, followed by too much everything-is-breaking excitement when we got home, but more about that soon. Today, I'm writing about doughnuts.

It is practically Lent. How is that possible? I feel ridiculously unprepared; I still don't even know what time zone I'm in half the time, let alone what liturgical season it is! But because Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, we're celebrating Tuesday with rich, traditionally non-Lenten fare. We often try to pick up traditional foods from one of our ethnic backgrounds on holidays or other notable days, and for Shrove Tuesday we're going with both English—pancakes—for supper, and German—doughnuts—for breakfast. Matt and I each have both German and English in our family trees, but I only grew up hearing about eating pancakes for Shrove Tuesday, while he grew up hearing about Fasnaucht Day. But really, why not do both? We'll have one great symbolic "using up" of the rich foods before our Lenten fasting begins.

I feel rather silly, making dairy-free versions of these supposed dairy-full treats, but oh well. Maybe next Shrove Tuesday Kit and I will be able to have milk.

Chocolate Chip Doughnuts

3 tablespoons coconut oil, melted

4 tablespoons canola oil

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup almond milk

3/4 cup chocolate chips

Cream oils and sugars together, then beat in eggs. In a mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients, then thoroughly stir in oil/sugar/egg mixture and almond milk. Fold in chocolate chips. Spoon batter into greased doughnut pan, not quite all the way up to the tops of the wells, and bake at 425 F for 10-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing doughnuts to a wire rack to cool completely.

Notes: when making these dairy-free/soy-free, remember to check ingredients on the chocolate chips and cooking spray! If allergies aren't an issue, you can feel free to use cow's milk instead of almond milk and 4 tablespoons of butter instead of the 3 tablespoons of coconut oil. 

Also, per our highly scientific experiment wherein I forgot to grease the pan the first time and the doughnuts stuck and tore when I tried to take them out, even silicone pans should really be greased if you want the best odds of getting your doughnuts out in one piece.

Recipe adapted from these doughnuts from King Arthur Flour.