Cookiefest 2011

I’m in heaven. So are my children.

Here’s why. Why my counters are covered in cookies, that is. Not why I’m in heaven. It should be obvious why I’m in heaven. This year, the Ogre and I have decided to make a family sacrifice for Lent. (read: I insisted, the Ogre grudgingly agreed, with the caveat that he’s never giving up sugar in his coffee so I might as well not even ask.) So as a family, we’re giving up grains and sugar.

Why grains and sugar, you ask? Because, although I’ve been hearing that grains are terrible for you and I know from experiencing my pants not zipping that sugar is terrible for you, I took a good look at our eating habits as a family and realized that these are the two areas in which we overindulge. (Alcohol doesn’t count. And we’re not talking about me right now. Lay off, guys. Jeez.)

Charlotte and I will sit down and eat a pound of delicious orange-colored pasta without blinking our eyes. Sienna and the Ogre will go through three bowls of popcorn literally dripping with butter in thirty minutes. Dinners are often served with bread or potatoes and, on bad days, both.

Yes, please.

Check

Hello, lover.

As you can see, it’s become a bit of an issue. It’s so much of an issue, in fact, that Charlotte won’t eat very many things that aren’t a grain or a sweet. Except bacon, but let’s be honest. Bacon is just fried yum.

Lenten sacrifices used to not be confined to the forty-day fasting time. Originally, Lenten sacrifices were meant to be put into practice during Lent and carried on afterward, so that over your lifetime you would gradually and methodically be eradicating all your bad habits or excessive indulgences. I’m reaching back to that old understanding of Lent this year. This is something that our family needs to deal with, and we need to deal with it now. We simply are not moderate in the face of starchy temptation, no matter how much we strive to be. And we do strive. We just almost always fail.

So between now and Lent, I’m making the things that are family favorites that we’ll be giving up next week. For Sienna and I, this means our delicious chocolate chip cookies packed with Trader Joe’s mini peanut butter cups. For the Ogre, this means hot dogs and rhubarb pie. (I know, he’s gross.) For Charlotte, this means chicken tikka masala and pasta with tomato cream sauce.

And then, come Wednesday, it will be time to undertake the greatest Lenten sacrifice we’ve ever made as a family. I’m not looking forward to the whining and crying from the children, but it will certainly put a whole new meaning to the phrase “suffering with Christ.”

Personally, I decided to only make one small sacrifice this year. Finding ways to cook without grains is going to be difficult enough, and every year I’ve observed Lent I’ve always come up with huge, grandiose sacrifices. Nearly every year I’ve failed at something, and when Easter comes I inevitably feel terrible about those failures.

This year, I’m giving up sugar in my tea. It’s a really small thing, but it’s one that I didn’t want to do at first. I figured since we are giving up sugar on so massive a scale, I really didn’t need to give up a teaspoon of sugar in my morning tea. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it is a perfect sacrifice. After all, it isn’t as if we eat sugar and pasta every single day. But I do drink tea with sugar in it every single day. And that small sacrifice, every morning, will give me an opportunity to start each day of Lent with a reflection on Christ’s sacrifice for us, and what it means to sacrifice things for Him. 

What about you? What are you giving up for Lent?