Meals during the fast to the day. What is there during fasting?

Every Orthodox person sooner or later ponders how to organize his meals in a fast by the day. He asks friends, studies literature and is often frightened by strict rules of eating and a monotonous diet. In fact, everything is not so scary.

Failure for some time from certain types of food is a spiritual feat

Among our compatriots, there are many who have decided to sacrifice their bloodless sacrifice to the Creator not so long ago. These people have discovered a lot of these products, which previously did not pay attention. In ordinary worldly life, the menu consists largely of protein food of animal origin. Fasting forbids meat and dairy products, as well as eggs.

How to properly prepare for the post?

At what time and what is during the fasting - the question is not idle. The church allows seafood, vegetables, nuts, fruits, mushrooms and cereals. They can be eaten throughout the abstinence period, with the exception of a few special days, which can not be eaten at all, especially on Good Friday, on Pure Monday, on the day of the beheading of John the Baptist, on Christmas Eve and Epiphany. Meals during the fast to the day are painted in each Orthodox calendar. The degree of rigor is regulated by the canons. However, regulations sometimes change. In each temple priests necessarily explain to parishioners that it is possible during fasting, and from what it is necessary to refrain. The most correct thing is to ask the priest for blessing before the fast. He will specify what and when it is possible, and from which it will be necessary to refuse. Some Christians quite rightly believe that the most precise rules are known and performed by the inhabitants of monasteries. To copy their schedule or not, each layman has the right to decide on his own, having previously talked with his confessor spiritual clerical.

Do we need to follow the monastic rule of the laity?

Meals and monks are significantly different. Monks fast on all the rules - they take food only once a day, on the prescribed days strictly observe dry eating, and do not eat meat even outside the posts. The main reference point for all Christians is the forty-day fast of Jesus Christ. Before assuming the mission entrusted by God the Father, the Lord retired to the desert, where he prayed and fought temptations, and supported the physical body with wild honey and acrid. To us, Christ commanded that you can save your soul only by fasting and prayer. Any post should be directed primarily at the desire to comprehend and accept into your soul the commandment "Yes, love one another."

What products are allowed in the post?

Meals in fasting by day for lay people usually looks like this. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday taken dryness, that is, food can not be cooked. In these days, groats are allowed, filled with water and sodden to a soft state, and in the same way soaked dried fruits and water.

On Tuesday and Thursday you can cook hot. It can be a porridge on water or vegetable broth, jelly, seafood, pasta. Do you often cook yourself jelly outside the posts? But they are very useful for health. Kissels can be made from fruits, berries, cereal flakes.

What can you cook from lean foods?

From mushrooms, vegetables and sea creatures, you can cook very tasty soups. Food in the post does not prohibit the use of seasonings and spices. And they are almost always not of animal origin. In the post - it's high time to learn oriental cuisine. Soy sauces, Indian spices, native herbs, nuts, honey - this is all that you can experiment with four days a week, and on Saturday and Sunday you can also have vegetable oil. Eating during the fasting by the day will add to your life a variety. At the end of the week you can stove the strudels. This is a kind of rolls from a very thinly rolled stretch dough. For its preparation, only flour, water and a little salt are used. The filling for them can be sweet, for example, apple-apricot. Take fresh apples, dried apricots or apricot jam, flavor cinnamon or vanilla, and to fill it out, fix it with potato starch. As a filling for unsweetened lean rolls, fresh cabbage can be used. So she does not bitter, boil water and put in it for 3-5 minutes chopped cabbage leaves, then throw it back in a colander. After the water drains, use cabbage in any dish. For stuffing strudel fry on vegetable oil onion and mix with cabbage, to improve the taste, add one grain of cardamom, salt and pepper.

Food in the post can be varied jelly and jellied dishes on agar-agar (seaweed). They can be done for future use, but whether they are allowed on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you will have to check with the priest of your church.

The use of fasting for physical health

Eating during the fast to the day will not let you gain excess weight, but will allow you to eat those foods that you have forbidden yourself in ordinary life. For example, pies with potatoes fried in vegetable oil. Will you say: "Death to a figure"? Not at all! This pleasure you can afford only on Saturday and Sunday. The rest of the days the weight will return to normal. Generally, meals during the fast to the days of the week - this is quite an exciting thing. You will not only greatly expand your culinary horizons, adding new dishes to the diet, but also get rid of dysbiosis, work the gastrointestinal tract, cleanse your body of toxins and toxins. The food calendar in the post sets a fairly strict framework for believers, but it does not make their life dull and monotonous. Posts vary in duration and severity. During the Apostolic, or Petrov fasting, as well as in the Filippovsky, that is, Christmas, quite often fish are allowed. Accordingly, the filling for baking, soups and second dishes become even more interesting. Even in Lent you can pamper yourself with fish on the Annunciation and on Palm Sunday and fish caviar on Lazarev Saturday.

The joy of successfully overcoming the fleshly temptations

Only those who have withstood a multi-day Christian fasting have the opportunity to experience the real joy of eating fast food. Usually the first week after a multi-day fast is continuous. Prohibited for several weeks, the products are perceived in a new way. Fresh cottage cheese with fatty sour cream and condensed milk tastes like a delicate ambrosia. And if you smear it on a cake, the flesh of which is not white, but bright yellow from generously added eggs in the dough? Who can afford such luxuries, as not those who for a long time deprived themselves of the joys of gluttony, abstinence from food and prayer?

The joy of the incarnation of the Lord in the Only Begotten Son and his victory over death are celebrated very widely, no prohibitions obscure these two feasts for those who are properly preparing for them. Believers at this time absolutely freely indulge in the joys of life, not caring about the slenderness of the figure, calories, hour of reception of food and so on. The liberated and purified organism works excellently. All useful substances are used to promote health and the construction of tissue cells of all organs, and harmful substances are removed without delay.

You can no longer wonder when and what is. During the post, these questions had to be solved every day, it's not a secret that, no matter how hard you try, the posts, basically, last a long time, and cooking is not always an option. Snacking and cappuccino snacks are not allowed. That's what the Orthodox eat, most often, water, nuts and dried fruits. Honestly, it's not easy.

And if you can not cope with the prohibitions and regulations?

Visiting worship and reading prayers are very helpful in strengthening the will and spirit. And if you still could not stand the test of fasting, do not despair. It did not work out now, it will happen some other time. The most important thing is for the Lord to see your efforts.