"lent" news and stories

Ash Wednesday marked the start of Lent, during which pious Christians abstain from eating something they savor till Easter Sunday. During that 46-day stretch, some swear off soda pop. Others may nix chocolate. Prescott, Iowa's J. Wilson has gone one drastic step further: During Lent, the journalist has decided to not to ingest any grub. Instead, he'll just sip water and beer.

"Right now, the plan is to drink four 12-ounce beers a day...and lots of water in between," he told The Des Moines Register. "Getting drunk is the last thing on my to-do list at this time."

Hold your giggles. You may assume that this is a high-falutin' excuse to stay schnookered for a month and a half, but that's not the case. We think. Wilson calls this a "historical study," an attempt to live like a seventeenth-century monk. To sustain themselves during Lent, monks subsisted on a high-calorie, carbohydrate-crammed beer dubbed a doppelbock.

Time to tuck away those shiny Mardi Gras beads. Lent is officially underway, and for many observant eaters, that means several fish-focused Fridays. Lucky for you, we found some folks offering tasty specials where the spotlight shines only on sustainable seafood. That makes it easy to leave your guilty conscience at home.

While Wisconsin throws a mighty tasty fish-fry, they're not the only ones. At Jackson 20 in Alexandria, Va., chef Dennis Marron says they're adding U.S. farmed channel catfish to their traditional fried chicken offering during Lent, making it "Fryday". (He said it, not us!) "We try and stay true to our Southern-influenced concept, and we like to get our fish from as close to home as possible. We track our carbon "fish-print"," he says. The catfish he serves is raised in closed containment systems and fed a mostly vegetarian diet which garners it a Seafood Watch best choice rating. Pass the tarter sauce, would ya?

While Louisville is deep in the heart of the fried-food South, chef Edward Lee of 610 Magnolia steers clear of a fryolator. His Fruits de Maine is a play on the traditional French dish, fruits de mer. "We try and embody the entire North Atlantic in one dish by incorporating four or five different seafood items from the coast of Maine." Depending on what Maine fishermen bring in each week, that could mean line-caught cod, Maine lobster or fresh clams.

Other chefs are making thoughtful choices too.

The fish fry may sound like a simple concept – essentially, frying fish! – but it's also a Wisconsin tradition, from supper clubs in the North Woods to trendy restaurants in Milwaukee.

Wisconsin's fish fry is a tradition begun by the Catholics in observance of Lent and it adheres to a no-meat rule on Fridays. Somewhere along the way, this culinary practice expanded into the rest of the year. Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a restaurant in this state not cooking fish on a Friday night.

Its interpretation varies widely. But the sides are pretty much consistent from cook to cook: coleslaw, tartar sauce, potato pancakes, French fries, dinner rolls and applesauce (to spread on top of the pancakes). Depending on which restaurant you visit, the fish is likely beer-battered or baked cod, breaded perch or blue gill.

What's worse than having to endure a long, hard winter? Enduring a long, hard winter as a crawfish.

Crawfish hate the cold. When the temperature dips, they respond in kind, burrowing into the mud and refusing to eat. That means the few critters that have wriggled into farmers' traps this season are too puny to impress the many Louisianans who traditionally feast on crawfish during Lent.

"Mother Nature's throwing us a curve ball, and the trouble is she keeps throwing them," says Stephen Minville, director of the Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association.

Minville's 2010 harvest stands at about 30 percent of his typical year-to-date haul, with the most successful farmers topping out at 40 percent. "Optimism is running out," Minville says.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• A handy corned beef for the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
• Shake up no-meat Lenten Fridays with this seafood casserole.
• We'd take a break with this best-selling East-meets-West Kit Kat.
• A Guinness milkshake is a greater brogue-inducer than green beer.
• Do you enjoy "monkey eyes" -- a.k.a. capers?
• Pastrami and corned beef are Irish twins.
• End your St. Paddy's Day festivities with grasshopper pie.