Fish Friday No. 1

A new weekly series for Lent.

Fish Friday Series

I’m kicking off a new ‘Fish Friday’ series for our upcoming Lenten season!

When I was running Let’s Love to Cook on Instagram, I did a weekly Fish Friday post during Lent for two years and received great feedback on it, so I thought I would revive it here on Substack. My goal is to share a family-friendly seafood recipe for you every Friday over the next few weeks leading up to Easter, and I’m kicking it off this week so you have a recipe idea for our first Lenten Friday next week.

Christmas is absolutely magical, especially as a mother, but I’ll be honest, Lent is my favorite season and Easter my favorite holiday. There is no other time of the year that pushes and inspires me to be as close to Jesus as I am during Lent; Jesus fills my days with our Lenten devotions, the constant reminder of his upcoming return, our hearts and minds counting down the days to Easter Sunday, opportunities for deeper prayer and faithfulness through additional celebrations such as Palm Sunday, Good Friday, attending Stations of the Cross and so much more. With my children, we listen to a daily children’s Lenten story on our Hallow app, we read sweet Easter-themed books, we read so much about Jesus and why we celebrate Easter, they choose something to give up or work on just as we do—last year my son gave up maple syrup, a pretty good one! Our devotion and attention to Jesus during Lent is honestly how focused we should be throughout the year, but Lent just has that extra ‘oomf,’ a season of going deeper.

Pair all of this with spring, new growth, nature blooming, the sun shining, a fresh season, spring foods, spring colors… it just makes for a wonder six weeks, for me, anyways! To top it all off, my birthday actually falls on Easter Sunday this year, and that feels like a gift in itself. While I’m a believer that after a certain age, birthday’s are more of a quiet affair, I’m looking forward to a birthday spent attending my favorite church service of the year, the one that always leaves me wiping away mascara during the first hymn, watching my children run around the yard hunting eggs in their pajamas, getting dressed up in our Sunday best, enjoying a day with family, eating delicious food and spending a day celebrating our faith that continues to be a cornerstone of my life.

The Hallow App

Before I dive into the first seafood recipe of this series, I thought I would share a note about the Hallow app, as it was a huge piece of my Lenten season last spring and I can’t say enough wonderful things about it. This is not sponsored in anyway, no commissionable link, nothing like that. The Hallow app is amazing, 100/10 recommend having it year-round. I use it to pray the Rosary throughout the week, I use it during Advent, there’s music channels on it that I enjoy, children’s programs my kids listen to, so much content to enjoy on their app!

The Hallow Lenten programming is incredible, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I was moved to tears listening to last year’s Lent Pray40 challenge (Sister Miriam’s descriptive storytelling leaves me sobbing in my car when I listen, so powerful!) and I’m really looking forward to this year’s series. Last year’s program was focused on the story of Takashi Nagai and the book A Song for Nagasaki. Nagai was a Japanese doctor who found himself in the rubble of the bombing at Nagasaki, he lost everything, after having already lived a hard life, and the daily series focused on his incredible faith. This year’s Lent Pray40 series is focused on the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the series will be highlighting the story through the famous novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The series is a reminder that ‘no matter our sins, no matter our struggles, no matter how far we’ve strayed away from Him…God is always waiting for us with open arms, running out to us while we are still a long way off (from Hallow’s website).

Hallow also has a series for kid’s during Lent and Advent through their Saint’s Alive program, and my children LOVE this series! We listen every day, typically during breakfast, and the episodes are anywhere from five to ten minutes long. The program is narrated by children and they tell an interactive story of sorts. Last year, siblings Paul and Mia and their parents took a trip abroad to Paris, for their father’s research in writing a book. They learned all about famous French saints while working on personal goals during Lent; older brother, Paul, found that he was often ashamed or embarrassed at sharing his faith with others, and through their adventures he found confidence in talking more openly about God, while sister Mia was focused on living with daily gratitude. This year’s Kid’s Lent program is about Paul, Mia, and their friends, Brad and Grace, searching for the truth about miracles and how God is always at work in our lives. We’ll hear saint stories, vocation journeys, there’s games to play, prayers to say as a family and more. It says the series is for kids ages 6-12 but my children really enjoyed listening last year, when they were four and two!

All that to be said, I really encourage you to give Hallow a try if you’re looking to go a bit ‘deeper’ into celebrating Lent this year. I believe the app gives you a 90 day free trial, so you have nothing to lose!

Shrimp Scampi

Shrimp Scampi, from A Month of Dinner: Vol. 1, is one of the most well-loved dishes from A Month of Dinner. Even now, close to four years since I released the recipe collection, I still get messages from friends saying, “Just made your scampi! My family’s favorite!” and that always brings a big smile to my face.

Seafood can be hard with the kiddos. Heck, seafood is hard for many adults! I used to cook a lot more seafood than I do today, but one episode of food poisoning from bad sushi really did a number on me and my desire for seafood has significantly waned since then, unfortunately. Lent is always a good challenge for me, personally, in diving back into cooking seafood and it opens the door for my children to expand their palettes in eating more seafood as well. As I’ve said before, I’m not a short-order cook, I don’t cook multiple dinners to appease everyone’s taste buds. Our kids eat what my husband and I eat and there is one dinner served to everyone. So during Lent, if I’m cooking seafood, the whole family is eating it (or at least trying it).

If your children are skeptical of seafood, as mine can be, something that helps is offering sides with the seafood that you know your children will eat. Maybe that’s a side of sweet potato fries or fruit, maybe that’s breaking down the meal, like this scampi, for example. Rather than serving the shrimp mixed into the pasta, you could serve the shrimp and the pasta separated on their plate. Buttered noodles go down pretty easily for most kids! You could even do a side of garlic bread to ensure full bellies.

Yes, this is a carb heavy meal, but it’s made-from-scratch and food is meant to be enjoyed, not restricted!! Please allow yourself to enjoy this meal. There is white wine used in this recipe, the alcohol cooks out, so you can serve it to your children. The recipe calls for 3/4 pound of shrimp, I do one pound minimum for my family of five. The larger the shrimp, the better, in my opinion. Small shrimp cook much faster and tend to get tough or chewy. If you can find jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined, go that route, frozen or fresh!

Shrimp Scampi
Prep time: 40 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Serves 4

Linguine, however much you’d like
3/4 pound shrimp, peeled & deveined (for my family of 5, I would do 1 pound minimum)
4 garlic cloves, 2 sliced, 2 minced
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 lemon
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped Parmesan
Good bread

1. Boil water to cook linguine. Cook pasta while preparing shrimp.

2. In a medium bowl, mix together the 2 cloves of minced garlic, 1 Tablespoon olive oil and salt. Add shrimp and toss. Cover and chill for at least 30 minutes.

3. Heat 2 Tablespoons olive oil in skillet over medium heat and add shrimp mixture with all the garlic and oil to cook. Careful to not let garlic or shrimp burn! With a slotted spoon, remove shrimp to a plate when slightly underdone and leave as much oil as you can in skillet.

4. Add sliced garlic, red pepper flakes, wine and fresh squeezed lemon juice to skillet. Stir occasionally and let mixture reduce slightly.

5. Add butter, stirring, and let sauce thicken, about 5 minutes.

6. Add shrimp back to skillet and toss in sauce, letting shrimp fully cook.

7. Place pasta in bowls and top with shrimp, sauce and chopped parsley. Serve with good, crusty bread for dipping and a great glass of dry white wine!