A year ago, today

A year ago to the day, I was photographing and eating this:

An attempt at a brownie dessert that would taste like the Almond Joy candy bars my mom loves.  It was the day after her birthday, and I'd probably spent a week conceptualizing, looking up recipes, and finally executing the dish.  It was good, in an okay-sort of way I'm sad to say.  The whole thing had various issues, most of which I can no longer remember (which is why I wrote them down then) and which are pretty much entirely beside the point now anyway since I've given up after-dinner desserts for the season of Lent this year.

It's just kind of ironic that I had to find this in the archives now of all times.

Even if it wasn't that good in reality, I can still remember the idea I had of how it should taste.  Yum.  Oh, yummy.  

Anyhow, Lent.

Besides giving up the after-dinner desserts I also decided to attempt another culinary discipline (there were those breads two years ago).  This year, I'm choosing and eating four diffferent "peasant foods" for ten days at a time to equal the forty days of Lent altogether.  We started with rice and beans and have moved on to cabbage rolls.  Next up will be African vegetables and porridge for ten days, and then Asian noodles (perhaps).  

Let's not quibble over the definition of "peasant food", okay?  Between living temporarily in someone else's home, re-connecting with friends I haven't seen much in the past two years, mothering two small children, getting through all the end-of-winter sickness going on around here, and buying (hopefully!) a house, I frankly don't have lots of time or energy to be really detailed and conscientious about this year's Lenten discipline.  I stand by my old 85% completion rate, and we're skipping feast days (Sundays) this year.

So here we are.  Caught up in the middle of a lot of change again.  Watching and waiting.  Cooking.  Eating.  And somehow in the middle of all this watching, waiting, cooking, and eating we remember that it is really God we are watching and waiting for, and in the way we cook and eat we humble and discipline ourselves to be attentive to what God is doing.  Something big and history-changing and at the same time very deeply personal, I bet.   

God, we rest in you, trusting that beyond our knowledge the great mystery of Who You Are is still the essence that holds this whole world together and gives us life.  Amen.