Lent

By now, if your a practicing Catholic, you've already nailed down your Lenten sacrifice. On Facebook, I see a bunch of my friends have given up alcohol, Starbucks, and fast food. In the weeks before Lent Justin and I had an ongoing joke, that whenever one person did something that annoyed the other, we would say that they should make it their Lenten promise not to do that. For example:

Me: You should make it your Lenten promise to stop complaining (about Congress, our house, the litter in our neighborhood, etc.)
Him: You should make it your Lenten promise to stop nagging me! :P LOL...

Last year, Justin gave up fried food and I went completely vegan. This year it will be a team effort from the both of us as the Briones household is giving up eating out. That means we are excluding any and all forms of eating out that doesn't include preparing our food at home. Farewell, McDonald's McFish bites, we never got to know you. Short order places like Chipotle and sub shops are out of the question, too. No Lucky Carryout (our go-to Chinese delivery joint) and no pizza delivery either. However, there are some caveats to this rule such as the following:

• If we are traveling then we can be excluded from this rule as homemade food may be hard to come by. Lucky for us, we are only traveling once during Lent.
• We will be allowed to eat out for planned celebrations (i.e.: yesterday for Valentine's day) and birthdays (we don't want to be social pariahs now!). We will no longer be eating out to celebrate the fact that we don't feel like cooking on a Thursday night. Ha!

Here is a shot of me and Justin's last meal...Italian Store, one of our favorites!

 

Not eating out will greatly benefit our household in two ways. One, we will be eating better since we will be cooking ourselves and we will know what's in our food. Nice and healthy! Two, we will be saving money! Cha-ching!

I am hoping after the end of Lent we will rid ourselves of our eating out addiction (we eat out as much as four times in one week!), and practice better menu planning and food preparation. Namely, remembering to thaw the darn meat ahead of time!

In addition, I am going to try to go to church every Sunday for Lent. A priest once told me that Lent isn't only about sacrificing something, but it can also be about adding a good habit in your life. Going to church regularly is something I definitely can work on.

What about you? Are you abstaining from something for Lent? Or are you going to gain a good habit?

ps--all this talk about food and eating out has gotten me hungry so you can bet that we already have our Easter Brunch reservation on lock! The Four Seasons Hotel Brunch, 'cause we fancy like that.  Can't. Wait. :)