Lenten Cookbook for Franciscans

What if the forty days of Lent were not something to endure, but something to inhabit, fully, attentively, with gratitude for every pot on the stove and every creature whose gifts find their way to your table?

A Lenten Cookbook for Franciscans brings together forty-one original meatless recipes, from a humble Tuscan lentil stew to a Sicilian sardine pasta fragrant with saffron and golden raisins, from a Korean soft tofu stew to a Persian herb frittata, and a spring vegetable stew that closes the fast with the first warmth of Easter. The collection ends as it must: with the almond cookies Lady Jacoba di Settesoli carried from Rome to the deathbed of her dying friend Francis.

Every dish comes with an extended original meditation woven into the act of cooking itself. Poverty, community, care for creation, the wolf of Gubbio, the Sultan’s tent, the Chapter of Faults: each finds its place in a bowl. At the end of each recipe, a lined Personal Reflection page invites the cook to add their own voice.

Spanning more than a dozen culinary traditions, and wire-o bound to lie flat on the kitchen counter. This is not a cookbook that uses food as a metaphor for spirituality. It insists that food is spiritual.