Fast & Feast

What this is

Fast and Feast tells you plainly what today permits, and gives you recipes that suit it. Open it on any morning and it will say where you are in the liturgical year, whether oil is allowed, whether fish is allowed, whether anything is, and what you might cook.

Every recipe carries its fasting classification, checked by hand against its ingredients before it is published. Nothing here is guesswork.

Why it exists

I stood in my kitchen through my first Great Lent with no idea what to make.

Not lost spiritually. Lost at the counter. Which days permitted fish. Which days permitted oil. What you actually cook on a strict fast day when meat, dairy, oil and wine are all set aside and you have never done this before.

There are calendars that will tell you it is a strict fast day. That was never the hard part. The hard part was standing there at six in the evening, knowing what I could not eat, with no idea what I could. A rule without a meal is only half of an answer.

So this exists to close that gap. The day’s rule and the food for it, in the same place.

Where the recipes come from

The recipes come from Orthodox kitchens rather than from a test kitchen.

The founding collection was given to us by the Women of St James Antiochian Orthodox Church, who cooked and gathered these dishes for their own parish over many years. They are credited on every recipe that came from them. Others come from Orthodox cooks and clergy who have shared what they actually make during the fasts.

Some are Syrian, some Greek, some plainly American parish potluck food, and we say which is which rather than dressing anything up. We would rather publish a real recipe from a real kitchen than invent a prettier one.

How the fasting rules are decided

The calendar follows the Revised Julian reckoning, kept by most Greek, Antiochian, Romanian, Bulgarian and OCA parishes in North America. The Paschal cycle is reckoned the older way, as it is throughout the Orthodox world, so Pascha falls on the same day for all of us. Support for the Old Calendar, kept by Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Old Calendar parishes and running thirteen days later for fixed feasts, is coming.

Each recipe is classified by the strictest day on which it may be eaten: strict fast, oil and wine, shellfish, fish, no meat, or fast free. That classification is checked against the ingredient list by hand, and nothing is published until it has been. Where a single substitution would change the answer, we say so on the recipe.

Chef Jonathon Strand reviews the recipes as our culinary director. Questions of liturgical practice go to clergy, not to us.

An honest word: Orthodox fasting practice is not uniform. Jurisdictions differ, monastic practice differs from parish practice, and your priest may direct you differently for reasons of health, age, or your own situation. What is here is guidance offered carefully. It is not a rule over you. Your spiritual father is.

Who is behind it

Garrett Conliffe builds and runs Fast and Feast. He is an Orthodox catechumen, which is to say he is being taught, and he built this because he needed it and could not find it. He works in sales operations, is a single father, and made this in the hours around both.

Chef Jonathon Strand is our culinary director. A Reader in the Orthodox Church, he is an accomplished private chef and the owner of Mustard Seed Chef LLC in Denton, Texas, with over two decades of professional experience. He began in his grandmother’s kitchen, peeling apples and baking granola, and went professional in 2002 with Bon Appétit Management Company and Benchmark Hospitality. He has cooked for high profile fundraisers, major vineyard events, and clients including Warren Buffett, and has taught cooking at Lane Community College. His work draws on Pacific Northwest, Asian, Southern and Mediterranean cooking, with an eye for heirloom local ingredients, wild edibles and fresh seafood. He makes sure the food here is worth cooking.

Isaac is the software engineer who built the foundation of this app. He is Orthodox, he is the man who first invited Garrett to the Church, and he gave his work to it rather than billing for it.

Fast and Feast is under the patronage of St Euphrosynos the Cook, whose feast is kept on September 11. He was a monastery cook, unlettered and mocked by his brothers, who prepared the food for everyone and never took the best of it for himself. A priest saw him in Paradise and came away holding three apples from its garden. When the brothers ran to the kitchen to honor him, he had already gone. He is the patron of cooks, and his icon hangs in Orthodox kitchens everywhere.

What is coming

Fast and Feast launches in full for Great Lent 2027, with saved recipes, a liturgical meal planner, and a great deal more food.

The recipes are free and will stay free. That is the whole point.

Contributing a recipe

If you cook something during the fasts that your family loves, we would like to publish it, with your name and your parish on it if you would like them there.

Recipes from cradle Orthodox kitchens, from converts, from monasteries, from any jurisdiction. Anything you send is checked the same way everything else here is before it goes up.

Write to us on the contact page. We would be glad to hear from you.