Happy Ash Wednesday!
Although I grew up in a Roman Catholic family, attended CCD and was an altar server for 6 years, I rarely attend church anymore. I do, however, like the idea of giving up something, or as Tina so eloquently stated, giving up thoughts or judgments that may be negative, during these 40 days of Lent. Last year I gave up soda, and since then, I haven’t had the carbonated cravings that I used to have. Since then, I have probably had soda about 10 times. Before then, I would have had 10 in one week.
This year, I have decided to give up meat. My thoughts behind this are not because I think eating meat is bad for you, but rather to see if I can be more creative in my dishes and expand on my cooking abilities. In the past, if I’ve been strapped for ideas for dinner, I’d have my staples: chicken stir-fry, spaghetti with meat sauce or frozen TJ’s Mandarin chicken (pretty much all of my fall-back meals involve chicken).
I don’t believe that this next month or so will result in me becoming a vegetarian (I really love burgers too much), but I hope that it will make me realize that I don’t have to fall back on meat if I can’t find anything for dinner. It will hopefully also help in lowering my grocery bill. Meat isn’t cheap! 
So today, on my first day, I decided to photograph my meals. Not everything I ate was pictured. There were definitely some undocumented handfuls of tortilla chips.
Breakfast – Vans waffle sandwich with Teddie peanut butter and a banana
Lunch – Vegetable soup with added quinoa and tempeh, side of Pirates Booty and veggies (Unfortunately I think my tempeh had gone bad. 
I had to eat around it.)
Sweet Snack – Strawberries with a slice of my mom’s pumpkin bread
Dinner – Chickpea burger patty, on top of a spinach, romaine, cucumbers and carrots, topped with cilantro hummus (It was from Tribe and unfortunately did not taste like cilantro.)
I made the patty by mixing a can of garbanzo beans, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons of Italian style breadcrumbs, 1/2 teaspoon of cumin and a couple of slices of red onion in the food processor. It made 4 patties that I pan fried with some olive oil. They pretty much stayed together as patties but the flavor could definitely have been turned up a notch. I’ll have to keep working at it. 
I also roasted a pan of potatoes, which I mixed with olive oil, parsley, oregano, thyme and black pepper. I baked them at 475* for 25 minutes, flipping in the middle.
I also cooked up some lasagna for David. For dessert, I had a bowl of strawberries with vanilla yogurt, almonds, pistachios, dried cranberries and Kashi Heart to Heart.
Workout
My workout this morning was great! I bought a coupon through Living Social for $24 for a 30 day pass to Boston Sports Club, and there’s one not too far from my apartment. I started by doing an interval run on the treadmill. I covered about 2 miles and did a few 400s at a 7.8 pace and then the last two at 8.4. Sweaty mess. Then I made my way over to the weights and did 2 sets (8lbs and 10lbs) of bicep curls, hammer curls, upright rows, kickbacks…pretty much winged it. My whole workout took about an hour. Felt great!
Are you giving up anything for Lent?
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