Feb 26, 20233 min read

Hearty Mushroom Ravioli for Lent | Kitchen Witchery with Sara

Cold days mean warm, hearty food, and damn if I don't love a good mushroom dish.

One Pot Meal, Easy Dinner, Healthy Dinner, Lent, Mushroom, Hearty Food, Homemade, Ravioli, Kitchen Witch, Kitchen Witchery, Witchcraft

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Just like that, it's the Lenten season—and for anyone observing, that means that there's no meat on Fridays, and fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, specifically. But if you're like me and you live with people who don't observe this time of year—yet you find yourself cooking for everyone—it's helpful to have some easy one pot meals that you can choose to put meat in (or leave the meat off until the end).

For me, that's a dish like Mushroom Ravioli, where you can roast up some chicken sausages in a toaster oven, fill your bowl with veggie-and-noodle goodness, and then add the meat into the pot for everyone else. You can also honestly skip the meat entirely if you're vegetarian, or you can just toss it in all the same with your veggies and cook it all at once. You can just buy the raviolis themselves from the store (or get normal cheese ravioli), and they're as easy as boiling a pot of water on the side of your mushroom concoction.

(Yes, I know, that technically makes it two pots, but boiling water and putting a noodle in it doesn't count in my opinion; just wash it out quick after you mix everything together, and you can pretend it was never there in the first place.)

Lent is this sort of home stretch in the winter season for me. It's the last chance we have to really buckle down, reflect, and get ready for a year of festivity and action. As such, you'll need your strength in any way you can get it, and you'll likely be wanting to focus on keeping yourself healthy to make it to summer. (At least, your ancestors did. Now you can just go to Stop & Shop or Walmart and pick up some more food. Not the same severity of life and death as it used to be, I'll tell you that.) Still, that's why Mushroom Ravioli is so good.

Especially when it comes to magic, as we're looking at ingredients that inspire strength, luck, love, and lots of health and longevity.

Magic in Mushroom Ravioli

So the baby bella mushrooms you get in the store are actually pretty cool. They're one of three stages of mushroom growth, the first being those teeny white button mushrooms, the second being your typical baby bellas, and the final being those fat portobello caps. As such, they're reminiscent of that maiden, mother, crone theme, with the ones we're using—the baby bellas—being in the mother aspect.

These are therefore great for life, longevity, fertility, and keeping the family healthy.

With that and the rest of your ingredients, now's the last stretch of winter, and that means the last stretch of endurance and fortitude until the earth defrosts enough to plant crops. (Yes, I know: we have grocery stores now. But in the cycle of the year, hearty food is, in my opinion, a symbol of "stocking up" to survive the cold.) And of course, with lots of fire, air, and water, alongside planets Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and the Moon, you have a full house of energies to bring you vitality, luck, sharp senses, and camaraderie with your loved ones.