With the advent of fasting, any responsible cook thinks about making a menu. Do not assume that Orthodox food is tasteless. This is far from the case. The fast table is observed for a long time several times a year, in addition there are fast days, so recipes for cooking lean dishes are very necessary for many.
Selected recipes for a lean table will help to diversify the diet and improve your health, since vegetarian food helps to relieve the body. For greater comfort, make a specific list of dishes, making it easier to choose and prepare an alternative – every time you go into the kitchen you will not have to think about the menu for a long time.
With prolonged fasting, it is necessary to think over a set of products especially carefully, since not everyone can withstand it. The diet depends on the rigor of fasting. For example, abstinence in the period before Easter is especially strict, so these days you need to choose mediocre dishes, including cereals, vegetables and fruits. A relaxing fast allows the presence of fish, meat or dairy products. In any case, even from a limited list of ingredients, you can prepare nutritious and delicious food.
Here you will learn a lot of options for what you can cook during fasting without using prohibited products, such as meat, eggs, dairy products. In general, representatives of the church teach that in order to achieve the desired effect, it is not enough to observe a lenten menu: in addition, spiritual fasting is also needed. Fast food is good, but the meaning of fasting is not to limit the use of certain foods, but rather to spiritual purification through self—improvement.
As for food, traditionally simple recipes for lean dishes do not contain “fast” products, that is, meat, fat, eggs, milk and dairy products. If you follow the strict prescriptions of the Church Charter, then you need to change your fast table from day to day, from week to week: for example, on certain days it is even allowed to eat fish, on some it is prescribed to eat raw food, on some – boiled, etc. However, modern clergymen emphasize that it is not so important what they eat during lent.
Recipes for lean dishes on non-strict days allow you to cook fish and use vegetable oils. But even from a strictly limited list of lean foods, you can cook delicious dishes of lean cuisine, and sometimes they can be more interesting and more useful than meat or dairy products that we have known for a long time. We must not forget about the beauty of the design, because artfully decorated food is much more pleasant to eat. In addition, a lean menu does not necessarily imply a feeling of hunger. It simply does not contain excesses, since fasting is a time of abstinence and restrictions.
As a rule, we prepare lean dishes at home from the most ordinary products — all kinds of cereals, vegetables, mushrooms, sometimes fish.
I often see how popular frozen stuffed peppers are in supermarkets. But they are easy to cook at home. Today I offer you a variant of harvesting for the future: stuffed Bulgarian pepper in Greek.
My beloved mother-in-law observes all fasts, and it often happens that holidays also fall on these periods. So I imperceptibly find such recipes so that they do not contain meat, but at the same time they are hearty and beautiful, suitable for a festive table. And, after all, there are days when you don’t want meat, well, absolutely nothing…
I suggest cooking a delicious noodle soup. This soup requires a minimal set of products, but always a great result! The soup can be cooked both on broth (chicken or beef) and on water, then you will get an excellent lean soup.
