Lent: My Favorite Unaffiliated Holiday of the Year

With Manheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls, A Charlie Brown Christmas, egg nog, and actually watching A Space Ghost Christmas in season, you'd think Christmas would be my favorite unaffiliated holiday. Surprisingly, it's not. Lent is my favorite, for one reason: Fish.

On Fridays, the Christians that observe Lent don't eat meat. Therefore, there's fish. My mom likes the Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's, and they lower the price that day, and also offer a double Filet-O-Fish, two patties on one bun.

I eat as little red meat as I can nowadays (it's part of what caused me to gain a lot of weight over the years before I finally decided to do something about it late in 2010), and I like chicken well enough, but if there's the chance to have fish, I grab it. I love the light, clear taste of most fish, getting closer to the water in a way. I've no fear of it, but I could never do what fishermen do. I'm always in awe, and appreciative, of their efforts. But most of all, I love the variety of it. Haddock. Salmon. Cod. Pollock. Tuna. And I'm sure there's a lot of others I haven't tried yet.

Lent works for me because of such offerings as the one I found in the Vons/Pavlions ad for this week of what's on sale, and what's items are their $5 Friday deals. Last week's $5 Friday listings included five-piece battered fish. Alaska pollock, I'm sure. I like it, though, and don't mind having it more often than other fish (I do miss the salmon at Sprouts Farmers Market, which was salmon at its best, but I guess that store in Valencia isn't making as much profit, because the latest salmon pieces look worse than what there was before). We didn't go to Pavilions last week because Dad and Meridith got home late after a phone interview Dad had to do from school, since the company interviewing him rescheduled it on the day and he couldn't get home in time to do it from here. It was ridiculous for him to come home and then go back out about half an hour later. The battered fish, if it was there next week, could wait.

It's in the $5 Friday listings again this week, thanks to Lent, and we're going to pick up a few things from Pavilions, including spare quarts of Silk Very Vanilla soymilk, Silk dark chocolate almondmilk, and Silk Mixed Berry Fruit & Protein. I haven't had the latter in two months because of the outrageous price at Walmart, and there's a coupon in the Pavilions circular for three quarts of any Silks, and hopefully we can use the separate Vons coupon that gives $1 off any Fruit & Protein.

So I get to try that battered fish, and Meridith gets what she wants too: 8-piece dark meat fried chicken for $4.99. She doesn't have fried chicken very often, but when she does, she loves dark meat the most.

In Las Vegas and Henderson, I want to find, so far, a decent marinara sauce, the best covered fries, and an oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-I'm-alive-for-this! butterscotch sauce. I'm adding fish to that list, more fish to try. I can't wait to see what Lent is like over there.