Chicken Fried Steak: A Lesson in Moderation

While watching TV last night Denny’s aired a commercial for some gigantic, industrial, over-processed and super cheap breakfast deal.  I am usually revolted by such things, and me and my wife often make fun of the gross food that is displayed on TV, especially after just finishing a brie and pear melt on fresh sourdough bread you baked yourself!  But one thing caught my eye in that commercial that led to a bit of a heated venting session from my wife about a time in college I seemed to have overindulged myself.  The guy in the commercial was having some chicken fried steak for breakfast!

I love chicken fried steak.  Whether you call it chicken fried or country fried I really don’t care.  I have it maybe once a year now because we only eat free-range, organic meat (want to know why? Email me or send a tweet to @everydayliturgy). Unfortunately, my wife hates the appearance of a perfectly good steak breaded and smothered in gravy.  She is repulsed by chicken fried steak.  She conveniently reminded me of a time in college that the cafeteria had chicken fried steak for dinner.  I apparently went nuts, took three chicken fried steaks and proceeded to make a chicken fried steak sandwich, a chicken fried steak salad, and had the other as an entree.  I do have somewhat of an excuse: our college cafeteria was awful and I usually ate salad twice a day.  So a good meal was a rare treat.  But that doesn’t excuse my my lack of moderation when it comes to breaded and fried foodstuffs.  I showed a lack of moderation, something my wife must have seen as a glint in my eye after that commercial (case in point: I did look up a recipe for chicken fried steak later).

Lent is about fasting.  What fasting has taught me consistently over the past few years is that I need to grow my habit of fasting at different times into a year long habit of moderation.  If I can go 40 days without something do I really need to gorge myself the other 325?  Or in other words, do I really need three chicken fried steaks?

I don’t.  None of us do.  We can make it through the fasting.  And when we have, we don’t need to overdo it.