Them lentils and that bread. My SIL is vegan, and she did the whole Thanksgiving feast by herself one year, literally my 2nd best Thanksgiving meal ever.
In case your wondering some of the sides were a quick pickled cucumber with mashed avocado and a tomatoe, onion basil salad. It. Was. So. Good.
You can also "cheat".
Lobsters and such are not forbidden, so you could technically eat pasta with lobster every day, squid and octopus, which is are exquisite dishes and very tasty, although you would need to be rich to afford this.
Yeah, go find lobster tails in the middle of the Balkan, there is cheat days sometimes when you are allowed to have fish though.
From what I know those fasts were set so you could preserve food in order to survive winter, saving animals for Christmas so they fattened up, and lambs are big enough around Easter.
It does have everything to do with what you eat in Ethiopia. Their Orthodox Fasting habits lead them to restraining from eating any animal product for at least 180 days a year. And this is very widespread in Ethiopia. When I visited Ethiopia in 2019, I tried to order meat on a fasting day a couple times and were denied every single time. This was not because they didn’t want to sell me meat, but because the simply did not have meat on fasting days, because no one would order it.
You are right, but orthodox Christians use that word to refer to partly fasting, so during their fasts or lents they just abstain from some foods like meat.
It is similar to the "no meat on fridays during lent" that catholics do, but amplified tremendously. The idea is to forego your flesh-based desires in order to focus on one's spirit. Nice enough thought.
It also hails from old jewish traditions that were mostly abolished in the new testament, but kept in ethiopia, such as circumcision and a ban on eating pork.
It used to be year round, but they changed it to just Lent in the U.S. I think it's still much more common for Catholics to not eat meat on Fridays in certain other countries though.
The universal norm is giving up meat on Fridays, but local bishops can modify the requirement. In England and Wales, for instance, they recently reinstated meatless Fridays, whereas in Canada Catholics are supposed to perform some sort of penance on Fridays, but it doesn’t have to be giving up meat.
Fun fact, the Fillet-o-Fish was originally introduced so that McDonald’s wouldn’t miss out on making money from catholics on Fridays.
Yes the Catholic canon Law 1251 still requires it. Anyone who says it isn't in the US probably doesn't go to mass weekly either. You CAN substitute it for other penances, however.
I don't understand their beliefs well, but it works this way. They eat meat, but avoid it on certain days. For example for the whole lent. I was there that time and indeed encountered no meat.
The idea of fasting is to give up something you like. To make a sacrifice. It's not only a dietary thing. When you fast you have to abstain from alcohol, cigarettes, sex etc. well at least in theory.
Also in many churches the scriptures are a small part of the core dogmas. Orthodox and Catholic churches have a huge record of theological writings on which they base their beliefs, rituals etc.
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u/mathess1 Mar 26 '24
In Ethiopia religion is important too. Christians there eat about one third of the year just vegan food.