Originally published at: Church-approved "non-meats" to eat during Lent: alligator, turtle, snake, capybara, beaver, muskrat, puffin | Boing Boing
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Not the capys!
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(not the capys!)
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i got one for ya… give up religion.
nuff said?
stop participating in these ridiculous cults to attain arrogant piousness.
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The wife and I were just talking about this yesterday, Ash Wednesday.
We made some delicious grilled cheese sandwiches with Polish dills. Friday were having fish and chips in the air fryer.
Point is, we’re not really sacrificing if we enjoy it.
Eating liver would be a sacrifice but that’s meat.
On a side note, I love this time of year because I can trash talk everyone on Facebook who gives it up for Lent. I’ll be in trouble in a few weeks but until then…
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Is liver meat? It’s sort of the biological equivalent of eating your furnace filter.
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Do you put slices in the sandwich?
I do the same thing, but with sweet pickles!
In a world were, at least in the US, meat isn’t really a “luxury” there really isn’t much of a reason forgo it on Fridays. But, it is a tradition, and really, most of us could eat less meat.
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Spears on the side. Take a bite of pickle and then a bite of sandwich. I like the pickles nice and cold and crisp.
You’re right about the meat, we were both raised Catholic so it is tradition. Before covid we hit the church fish fry circuit on Fridays. Our favorite was my grandma’s 130 year old church in Detroit. Walking into the basement for fish fry it’s like time stood still from when I was a child. Literally nothing has changed, tables, chairs, pictures on the wall, it’s all the same.
Of all the things we quit doing that’s one of the very few that we miss.
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A 2002 document from the Archdiocese of Detroit confirmed that “there is a long-standing permission to permit the consumption of muskrat on days of abstinence, including Fridays of Lent.” Bishop Kenneth Povish of Lansing described the practice as “immemorial custom” and said that “anyone who could eat muskrat was doing penance worthy of the greatest saints.” A 2002 effort to restrict private sale of muskrats caused a massive outcry: “I’ve never seen so many people upset about an issue,” said a state representative. “We had almost 500 people at the courthouse for hearings on muskrat legislation.”
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Puffins, too! Think of the chicks, aka Pufflings!
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It’s an organ… which would be weird to give up based on the churches’ use of…
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What’s their standing on long pig if you catch one swimming?
I mean if you’re going to all this trouble to make up these mockably laughable arbitrary rules, why not go all in?
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My cousin had her “heart birthday”* party at this community center part of the Catholic church next door. It was built by Serbian immigrants (the Strawberry Hilll area of KC is home to many immigrants of Slavic states - including Weird Als dad!)
Anyway, the community center has a bar and eating area and bowling alley. It looks like nothing has changed in there since at least the 1970s. It was nostalgic even if I had never been there before. All the colors and interior design were very familiar.
*Heart birthday was the anniversary of her heart transplant.
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Lent in New Orleans was always such an obvious cheat.
Eating seafood is not a sacrifice and now you can even eat alligator! All the alligator sausage also has pork in it, but fried or barbecued. And now turtle soup is ok too?
These are all so much more indulgent dishes than chicken.
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I never understood this. Muscles are meat. Some organs are muscular though…like the stomach, because the muscles churn the foods around. 
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Wyandotte has a big Polish population, they have one of the biggest Polish festivals around. My kind of people.
In my neck of the woods (a little North East of Detroit) there were a couple restaurants that served fresh muskrat, as in trapped right out their back door, up until about 20 years ago. I’ve never tried it. The fresh perch walleye/pickerel is to die for.
They’re so cute though. We live on a lake that connected to a very large protected wetland.
These are in our yard.
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Chicago and surrounding areas have it made, though!
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Muskrat - AKA River Rat is the mascot of one of my local high schools. 
Never have I heard suggestions that people should eat them!
@tcg550: River Rats are pretty darn cute!
@jaded: There truly is something wrong with a human pining to chow on “long pig”. WTH?!?
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We may be neighbors.
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