Lamb, Lobster, and the Deacon

We like lamb in our household. It’s expensive so we limit it to special occasions. We always have lamb and artichoke stew on Christmas. We typically have roast lamb or lamb curry during Bright Week (the week following Pascha) and we’ll usually do kabobs on the grill at least once in the summer.

We have two places within reasonable driving distance where we can find holiday lamb: HyVee (the regional chain grocery store) and Sam’s Club. HyVee is hit and miss on the lamb supply and with Pascha five weeks after Easter this year, we figured that would be a miss. Sam’s always has lamb in stock, so we went to Sam’s to get a boneless leg of lamb for our upcoming curry and were shocked at the prices. Beef strip steaks cost $13.50/lb. Sirloin is over $10 and ribeyes are $17.00/lb. Boneless leg of lamb is $5.48/lb. A couple days later I was HyVee and curious. They too had leg of lamb in stock and, like Sam’s Club, it was only a third of the price of ribeyes and half the price of a tough beef rump roast.

I visit with the meat manager on occasion, and since he was behind the counter, I asked him if there was a glut of lamb, given the price differential with beef. He said there wasn’t, and in fact, they had a hard time keeping the leg of lamb in stock.

I follow the commodity markets. (I live in farm and ranch country after all. The noon news in this area always includes commodity prices.) I remember that last fall the spring beef futures were through the roof, but the supermarket prices rarely track with the futures price, so I didn’t give it that much thought. The bottom line is that last year’s drought and range fires decimated the cattle stock. Prices, according to the meat manager, plummeted last fall when ranchers and feeders reduced their herd sizes and consequently have skyrocketed this year. As a result, customers are turning to lamb as their red meat alternative.

Our old, grumpy deacon (long retired) used to complain loudly (to his cadre of male friends, not the women—he knew who buttered his bread in the parish) that during the fasting seasons, the women’s group would always go to Red Lobster and eat lobster. Yes lobster is canonically okay during the fast, but the real point of the fast is not to be canonically rigid, it’s to embrace the spirit of the fast. Back when the canons were formulated, lobster (and shellfish in general) were garbage fish and Dn Bob would preach loud and long (again, to his male friends, not to the women) that the reason there was a shellfish exception during the meat-free fasts is that limiting your protein intake to fava beans and shellfish was a big sacrifice.

(I’ve heard that story elsewhere, but it has the feel of later generations providing an arbitrary theological explanation for earlier conciliar actions. But when the deacon got on his soapbox down at the local Thai dive where we had lunch, I was certainly not going to interrupt him for a fact check! As an aside, the deacon was a child protective specialist during the week. At one point he arrested the owner of that dive and put their kids into protective custody. In the end, everyone decided it was a cultural misunderstanding. The owner loves the deacon, the deacon loves the family and the restaurant, and they laugh about the incident, and the owner’s “criminal past” all the time. Very weird, but that’s why the deacon would hold court at the Thai joint when he wanted to rail against the clergy or kvetch about the women. For my part, I mostly ignored the deacon because this place’s chili-garlic sauce is top-notch and makes the pho divine.)

But back to the lobster. In the intervening centuries, the role of lobster in our culinary life has flipped. The fasting canons are ridiculously out of date (according to the deacon). What used to be a sacrifice has become a special treat we can only afford during the Christmas, Lenten, and Apostles’ fasts. The canons encourage us to feast during the fast and return to the lowly hamburger and fries during Bright Week.

I used to roll my eyes when the good deacon would get on his lobster crate. But this Bright Week, I will feel the same tension as we sit down to eat our lamb curry. This is a special feast that is probably going to stretch on for months and become little more than ordinary dinner. In the meantime, may you Orthodox readers have a blessed Great and Holy Week.