Peas and Love

I wandered outside in the evening light and found one of the pea plants in the front planter sweetly illuminated by the setting sun.

This is a more breathtaking lighting than is apparent, because across the front of the property, a dwarf blue gum eucalyptus spreads its branches, affording the house shadow from the western sun, keeping the yard remarkably cool and inviting even on the hottest days in the summer. For the sun to break through that foliage and spotlight a lowly pea plant is amazing.

A local Chinese restaurant makes a stir fry with snow peas like these, shrimp, sliced water chestnuts, and garlic ... I love it over rice, and now that there is a source for snow peas, can I resist trying to replicate the recipe?

Duhhh. Of course not.

Probably won't be until next week, though. This week brings us Ash Wednesday and the first Friday of Lent, days of abstaining from meat. Shrimp is not meat, you say, and you are correct. But the glazey sauce is almost certainly chicken broth based, which disqualifies it as a Lenten Abstinence dish.

So this week's abstention meals could turn out to be:  Bernie's phenomenal grilled cheese sandwiches; home-made mac and cheese (I do have the heavy cream on hand ... ); Alex's glutworthy salmon croquettes (AKA "Fish cookies); insanely delicious breaded catfish nuggets; Promontory Hot Springs fish soup; or mixed veggies with fake crab meat sauteed in butter over rice.

We love all these dishes, and only refrain from frequent nomming on them because fish and cheese are expensive, and because we eat too much when we have them. How can we do a penitential Lenten meal when we long for it?

I guess the Lenten discipline will come in at eating only one serving, and not stabbing anyone else with one's fork when they reach for the last catfish nugget.