Fasting on a Budget: How to Eat Well and Get Enough Protein for Less

Here is a fact that surprises new converts every year: the fasting table, done right, is among the cheapest good eating there is. The foods at the center of an Orthodox fast — dried beans, lentils, rice, grains, seasonal and frozen vegetables — are some of the least expensive calories and protein you can buy anywhere. Meat and dairy are what make a grocery bill expensive. Take them off the plate for the fasting seasons and, if you shop with any sense at all, your costs go down, not up.

This matters because fasting is for everyone — students, families, people working two jobs, monastics who live on almost nothing. The Church never intended the fast to be a luxury. So let us be practical and direct about how to keep yourself fed, full, and strong through a long fast without spending much.

BEANS AND LENTILS BY THE KILO

This is the foundation, and it is almost embarrassingly cheap. A kilogram of dried lentils or chickpeas costs a fraction of what the same weight of canned costs, and a fraction again of what meat costs per gram of protein.

- Brown and green lentils: roughly 9g protein per cooked cup. No soaking required; ready in 25 minutes.
- Red lentils: collapse into thick dal and soup. 30 minutes, no soak.
- Dried chickpeas: soak overnight, simmer until tender, and you have the base for hummus, curries, channa, and roasted snacks. Far cheaper and better-textured than canned.
- Black beans, pinto beans, white beans: buy whichever is cheapest where you live.

A kilo bag of dried beans yields six or seven cups cooked — several meals' worth of real protein for the price of a single fast-food sandwich. Cook a big pot at the start of the week (see below) and you have removed the main cost and the main excuse at once.

RICE AND GRAINS IN BULK

Buy your starches in the largest bag you have room for. Per serving, the price collapses.

- White and brown rice
- Rolled oats — breakfast, and a thickener for soups
- Bulgur, barley, and whole wheat — the backbone of Middle Eastern and Slavic fasting cooking
- Pasta — read the label, but most dried pasta is simply flour and water and is fasting-appropriate

Beans plus a grain together form a complete protein at almost no cost. Rice and beans, lentils and bulgur, hummus and bread — these pairings have fed fasting Christians for centuries because they are nourishing and they are affordable.

SEASONAL AND FROZEN VEGETABLES

Fresh produce is cheapest when it is in season and grown nearby. In Lent, that means cabbage, carrots, onions, potatoes, beets, and whatever greens your region offers in early spring. These are the cheap vegetables of the Orthodox heartland for good reason.

Do not overlook the freezer. Frozen spinach, peas, green beans, corn, and mixed vegetables are picked and frozen at peak ripeness, cost less than fresh out of season, and never rot in the drawer before you get to them. A bag of frozen spinach stirred into dal or soup adds iron, folate, and bulk for pennies.

CHEAP PANTRY UMAMI

The difference between sad fasting food and food you actually look forward to is depth of flavor — and depth is cheap if you know where to find it. Stock these and a pot of plain beans becomes a meal worth eating:

- Tomato paste: a small tin of concentrated, caramelized umami. Fry a spoonful in the pot before adding water.
- Soy sauce: salt plus glutamate, the savory backbone of countless dishes. (On strict no-oil days it still works fine; it is not oil.)
- Dried mushrooms: a handful, soaked, gives a broth meaty depth for very little money. The Slavs have leaned on dried mushrooms during fasts for generations.
- Onions, garlic, salt, and whatever spices you can buy in bulk from an ethnic grocer, where they cost a quarter of supermarket prices.

A SAMPLE LOW-COST WEEK

Rough prices vary by country, but the proportions hold anywhere. For one person for a week you might buy: 1kg dried lentils, 1kg rice, 1kg pasta, a tin of tomato paste, a sack of onions, a few carrots, a cabbage, a bag of frozen spinach, oats, a bottle of oil for permitted days, and a jar of pickles. That is roughly the cost of two restaurant meals, and it makes:

- Breakfast: oatmeal, most mornings.
- Lunch: lentil soup, or rice and beans, batch-cooked and reheated.
- Dinner: pasta with tomato-and-mushroom sauce; lentil dal over rice with frozen spinach; cabbage-and-potato braise on oil days.
- Snacks: bread, pickles, a handful of cheap nuts or seeds if the budget stretches.

Keep the fasting rules straight as you economize: no meat, dairy, or eggs through the fast; fish only on designated fish days; shellfish — often the cheapest seafood at a frozen counter — is permitted on all fasting days and is a real budget protein where you can get it; oil and wine only on the days your jurisdiction permits them. On strict days, simply cook the beans and grains in water and season with salt, tomato paste, and herbs.

Fasting on a budget is not a hardship to be endured but the most natural thing in the world. The poor of every Orthodox land have always fasted, and they ate beans and bread and cabbage and were fed. Buy dry, buy in bulk, cook a big pot, and let the pantry do the rest. For questions about how strictly to keep the fast given your own circumstances, ask your priest or spiritual father — that counsel is always free.