Book of Days Tales

Today is the second Sunday in Lent, normally called Reminiscere Sunday within the Episcopal tradition because of the first words of the collect in Latin. In English: “Remember, O Lord, the mercy, and thy steadfast love. The reading for the day can be the Transfiguration or the Samaritan woman at the well. 

As I mentioned last Sunday, the faithful are not required to fast on Sundays in Lent, but should not go crazy either.

Right now I am playing around with a one-pot dish that I keep adding things to. It started off as a soup based on leeks and shiitake mushrooms because I had some that needed to be used up.  Then I added some white beans, which took several hours to cook, and towards the end of the boil up I added macaroni to make a kind of pasta e fagioli. To make things a little richer I chopped up some belly pork, fried it up so that it was well browned, and added it to the pot. That will be my lunch later.

This dish is reminiscent of what I used to call refrigerator soup in New York – soup made from whatever was knocking around in the refrigerator that needed using up. Seems suitable for Reminiscere Sunday and for Lent in general.  As a small side note, pasta and bean soup is usually called pasta fazool by Italian Americans because fasul is the word for beans in Neapolitan dialect and a number of Italian dishes served in New York originated in Naples (pizza being the classic).