Week One, Day One: Simplicity, Wholesome Frugality

“Monastic kitchens always strive for a healthy and balanced diet, fully aware from past experience that the monk and the nun must be properly nourished to serve God well. The human body is the temple of God, and its dietary needs must be respected.” *

Each week this month my eating will be inspired by a different monastic community. This week I will be eating with the wisdom of Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourette. He is a Benedictine monk who lives and works at Our Lady of the Ressurection Monastary in upstate New York. Yes, monks do live in 2010! Among other things, Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourette is a cook and a gardener, as well as the author of several cookbooks. I am going to use his cookbooks as my inspiration this week. “If we were to reconstruct a typical monastic daily fare . . .it might be something like this: Breakfast would simply be coffee and one of two slices of bread, lunch could include. . .soup,. . .salad, Whole Wheat Buttermilk Bread, and tea.” Supper could be a casserole, a vegetable, desert (fruit) and tea. Thank goodness they drink a lot of tea! That might be my saving grace.

Sunday 8:30 am: This morning I ate toast and tea. I hadn’t gone to the store yet, so I ate the bread we had on hand which happened to be “Old Fashioned Buttermilk”, basically white bread. I also read the reflection for May 2 in Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourette’s book, Blessings of the Daily: A Monastic Book of Days while I ate, sharing the table with the seedlings that are waiting to be planted in my garden.

1:30 pm: For lunch I made “Minestrone Monastico” soup from Brother Victor-Antoine’s book Twelve Months of Monastery Soups. It has carrots, white beans, noodles, potatoes, celery, and onions in it. I will be able to eat it for quite a few meals this week. I drank water with it and sang grace to myself.

8:00 pm: For supper, there was a little bit of leftover pot roast from last week. I figure it would be silly to waste it, so I combined it with the soup that I made this afternoon, and my partner and I ate the combo for dinner. It’s like the idea that the most environmentally friendly building is the one that is built already. At first I thought that for this project I would have to abandon all the food that was here at my house already. For the most part I will be, like the cereal which I dearly love, and the tortilla chips that I am so fond of. Today went well, I was more aware of my body and probably ate less than I would have on this rainy, dark day. I am nervous about the morning, I am not a morning person and am worried that I won’t get up in time to eat at the table before I leave. We will find out tomorrow!

 
*Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourette  From a Monastery Kitchen. Liguori/Triumph, 2002. p 3.