Every year during Lent, Catholics and other devout Christians aren’t allowed to eat meat on Fridays (or Ash Wednesday), as it is off-limits to signify Jesus Christ sacrificing his life for all of us. Or maybe it was the Easter Bunny? I can’t remember.
Anyway, that’s why you can’t walk five feet without seeing a sign for a fish fry in the six weeks before Easter.
But when you think about it, this isn’t really a personal sacrifice worthy of honoring Jesus Christ. Not at all. First, even if you absolutely hated fish, you’d only have to eat it one day out of the week – and you don’t even have to eat fish if you don’t want to! You just can’t eat other meat; you could literally eat anything else!
Secondly, let’s say you do like fish… what exactly is the sacrifice here? Unless you are hopelessly addicted to a steak every Friday night, a fish fry might even be a little treat for you. Especially if you’re willing to branch out and try all sorts of different fish during those six weeks.
What I’m trying to say here is that the Lenten season is pretty much a crock of shit. If you believe that Jesus Christ died for you to absolve you of ALL of your sins (yeah, even the ones you’ve never told anyone about), then the least you could do is suffer a little bit yourself to honor him.
That’s why we should be eating reptiles and amphibians for Lent.
Weird politics and history aside, the reason we eat fish for Lent is because they’re cold-blooded creatures. But since everyone pretty much likes fish or can at least wrap their minds around the idea of eating fish, the Lenten menu should be expanded to other cold-blooded creatures like snakes, lizards, crocodiles, tortoises, tuatara, alligators, frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, – all of them.
I want to see these so-called Christians digging into a buffet of turtle meat. I want to be invited to a crocodile barbecue. I want to see people begging to slurp down a snake’s insides to feel closer to Jesus. If you interpret the Bible correctly, you can clearly see that it’s what he would have wanted.
You know how there are species of frogs where you can hallucinate after licking the poison off their slimy little bodies? Imagine how you’ll be feeling when you eat one of those babies. As far as you know, you’ll be playing Mario Kart with Jesus Christ on Mars for the rest of the weekend.
You know those insane videos where an anaconda swallows an alligator whole? I want to see people eat that monstrosity like it’s a turducken on Thanksgiving.
Have you ever seen Cannibal Holocaust? The scene where they butcher that live yellow-spotted river turtle, decapitating it on camera and ripping it limb from limb? That’s the kind of thing that should happen at every local church basement or VFW for six straight weeks in the spring.
And if you really get down to the nitty-gritty of this whole thing, eating a nice fried lizard would be a great way to get historic justice on the dinosaurs for trying to infect our minds with an altered, unholy timeline of Earth’s history. Adam and Eve rode them and Noah just forgot about them on the ark, okay?! What is Christianity without some righteous vengeance?
By the way, I’m not on my own here. There are people in pockets of the country who are already doing this. Those maniacs in Louisiana are enjoying friend alligator, alligator gumbo, alligator sausage po boy sandwiches – to them, Lent is a treat. I mean, these sons of bitches are putting alligator in cheesecake! It’s all backed up by the Archbishop of New Orleans too, who wrote in 2014 that all reptiles would be quite fine to eat during Lent.
New Orleanians aside, most people aren’t adventurous enough to try something like iguana tail soup, a Nicaraguan dish made with iguana meat and eggs. And they especially wouldn’t be willing to try a soup called Levanta Muerto, which translates to “Raises the Dead,” and contains meat from the black, spiny-tailed iguana, including their brains and bone marrow. This dish also contains bull testicles, but I guess you could leave that out during Lent.
And look, the possibilities really are endless, so if fried alligator or a chilled bowl of turtle brains don’t sound appetizing enough, why not try some of these other delicacies:
- Shirako is a Japanese dish that contains the sperm sacs of cod, angler fish or puffer fish. Allegedly, it tastes like custard. Japan is also known for serving plain tuna eyeballs – double yum!
- Let’s not forget about sharks here, either. Sharks are the cold-blooded terrors of the ocean, which makes them a perfect Lenten treat. For example, in Iceland, there is a local dish that involves gutting and beheading a Greenland shark, covering it with sand and stones in a shallow grave, leaving it for 2-3 months, then cutting it into strips and drying it for several more months before serving. You’re more than welcome to take your chances with the severed head right off the bat, though.
- Frog legs are actually pretty popular around the world and, of all the things I’ve talked about here, would probably be one of the least-upsetting dishes to try.
- How about some southern-friend rattlesnake then? Be a good Catholic and go farm to table all on your own; find a rattlesnake farm that allows you to catch your own food.
- Speaking of catching snakes on your own, this might be the most hardcore dish of all and should be MANDATORY to eat during Lent: In Vietnam, there is the practice of literally biting the beating heart out of a still-living cobra’s chest. Then, of course, you drain its blood and bile into a shot of rice wine. Lucky for you, that beating cobra heart is said to be quite the male enhancer.
The list goes on and on, as the rest of the world has been treating reptiles and amphibian meat as part of a balanced diet for centuries. Isn’t it time the United States got on board? Would it be painful? Sure. Would most people despise it? Of course.
But when people who have gotten a little too comfortable with their delicately-seasoned salmon are faced with a plate of raw lizard eggs, you’ll finally find out who the true believers are while the rest sit back, riddled with guilt. And isn’t that what Catholicism is all about?
