It’s the day before Lent and for the first time in a long time I’m planning on going to church tomorrow for Ash Wednesday.  The question of what everyone is giving up for Lent is going around like wildfire on my facebook today. What am I going to give up? This period before Easter is supposed to be a time of reflection; a time of sacrifice.  I’m running again and training for some races, albeit a little injured.  So giving up meat is not a good option for me; neither is fasting.  I wish I could give up cocktails but I would be an utter failure, especially with a lot of events happening in the next few weeks.  I’d rather focus on acts of discipline instead of acts of penance. So making an extra effort to stop swearing [I’ve been lots better but occasionally the f-bomb gets dropped – okay maybe a little more than occasionally], to look for something positive everyday, be more disciplined with the things I have to do versus the things I want to do, do some volunteering and start going to church regularly [notice I didn’t say ‘more’ regularly].  And I’ll be going back to the tradition of fish on Friday.

Tonight: Bon Appétit’s chicken and sausage jambalaya.  I made it yesterday but because it was meatless monday, couldn’t really taste it.  But it smelled fantastic!  Plus how bad can a dish of pork, pork and more pork be?  They call it chicken and sausage – do not be fooled…it is mostly sausages with a little bacon and ham thrown it to sate all your pork cravings.  So tonight we’ll just have to do a little reheating, perhaps a little more seasoning but have lots of time to focus on some fun Mardi Gras cocktails: Sazerac, French 75 and maybe even a Hurricane. To offset all the heaviness we’ll start with a chile-lime crab salad with tomato and avocado.  Enjoy the last day of Carnival.  Now I’m off to have some traditional pancakes.