Note: I am resending the last newsletter where the seafood prep guides were mysteriously invisible in the e-mail version. The links to the guides have been reformatted, I tested the edited email and it looks fine now.
I’m referring to Lent, of course. When Spain colonized the islands in 1521 and named them for Prince Philip (who later became King Philip II), the colonizers brought Catholicism with them. Spain left in 1898 after selling the country to the United States but the Catholic church stayed and grew. Today, we still have a large chunk of the population that follow Lenten traditions including abstention from meat until Easter.
My family doesn’t abstain from meat during Lent, so, I won’t play the hypocrite by writing anything that insinuates otherwise. In fact, we stay away from seafood during Lent because prices soar. And, in 2026, the price increases will likely be higher because of what’s happening in the Middle East. Any increase in gas price is always followed by higher cost of everything else that needs to be physically transported to reach the consumer.
Price increases notwithstanding, I can see blog traffic for my seafood and vegetable recipes rising. People are always looking for good meatless recipes for Lent. I have plenty of those now because my older daughter, Sam, went vegetarian for several years. In those years, I learned (it wasn’t easy for a carnivore like me), and I stopped cooking uninspired and often lifeless no-meat dishes. My meatless recipes these days are anything but boring.
In the past, when commenting was still on (and Sam wasn’t a vegetarian yet), and readers asked for meatless recipes for Lent, I just pointed them to the seafood and vegetable sections (although, in the latter, vegetables are often combined with meat, seafood or chicken) where there are already dozens of recipes to choose from.
But my blog is more organized these days. So, instead of giving you recipe lists, let’s go and look at what many recipe blogs are curiously silent about.
I understand that, in some countries, seafood is sold in sanitized fashion. Headless and shelless shrimps and prawns, fish fillets, fish stock out of a carton, shucked mussels and clams… All very convenient, I must admit — even I am a fan of blast-frozen fully cleaned shrimps.
But there are dishes that just don’t make the grade unless you start at the beginning — fish with head and tail uncut, mussels and clams in their shells, shrimps with the tails left on… The why is easier to understand when you’ve prepped seafood in their natural state. Recipes are listed at the end of each guide.
