I know I’ve been writing about politics a lot lately. But believe me, there is much more to my life that that. My blog, BlissFullU.com, is to support myself and others in that sometimes-elusive quest to live our life with bliss.

Many things bring me bliss: my friends, family, and felines…nature…reading good books…art, theater, and musics…and many others. Life is usually a beautiful experience when I really tune in and pay attention to what a gift each day is.

One practice I have to increase my bliss to celebrate EVERY holiday I can. I try to add in some facet of most holidays to make an otherwise ordinary day a little special. It brings me bliss to cook (most of the time) and to eat, so our holiday celebrations often center around food.

But even for a quasi-professional holiday celebrant like me, last week was A LOT! The alignment of the February holidays this year has just been incredible. It took Fire Horse energy to get through all the special meals I made last week.

Of course, it started on Saturday with Valentine’s Day. And Valentine’s Day started with the Loving Forward Together rally, which I’ve stated in an earlier post was FABULOUS (see https://blissfullu.com/2026/02/17/a-storge-valentines-day/ for details). Both my husband and my son were out of town that day, and I had already celebrated with my girlfriends the weekend before at a Galantines activity. So I kept that celebration simple. I picked up a heart-shaped pizza, made a small salad, and ate while reading my book of the moment. It was pretty good for non-homemade pizza, it was fun, and it was easy. It was a nice Valentine’s treat for myself.

Sunday began with a celebratory occasion for our spiritual center. We had our first Sunday service at our new rental location, and everyone LOVED it. We go out for lunch after the service one Sunday every month to celebrate the people with birthdays in that month. So our “Lunch Bunch” went to a restaurant I had never been to before. I don’t eat out that much, so when I do, I like ordering something I don’t make. I ordered a Nashville Hot Chicken sandwich, because one thing I never ever cook is deep fried stuff. It came with a mountain of french fries, which I rarely eat because again, I’m not going to cook those. It was a tasty meal–or meals, actually, since I took home most of the sandwich and the fries and had them for my lunch at school two or three times.

But we weren’t done! Sunday was also Parinirvāna, or Nirvana Day, in Mahayana Buddhism. This is supposed to be the day that after years of remaining on Earth since attaining enlightenment to teach others how to do the same, the Buddha left this physical plane to enter total Nirvana. Since I had a big lunch, we celebrated Nirvana day with pickled vegetables and some Samosas, the Indian pastry that most commonly contains potatoes, peas, and onions (with lovely Indian spices of course). True confession: I bought these frozen from our favorite Indian grocery and just cooked them; I did not make them.

Monday we were back to national holidays, since it was Presidents Day. The week before this last week, my sister in law from up North was visiting, The night before she was driving back, she kind of made a joke about me making pimento cheese sandwiches for her to eat while driving home from the South. I haven’t made pimento cheese for a long time, but I made some and turned it into sandwiches for her trip.

The thing was (she didn’t even know I was doing this, so this was totally my decision), I gave her all the pimento cheese. And I kind of missed having a pimento cheese sandwich. So I decided for Presidents Day dinner (it was supposed to be a school holiday but became a snow make-up day, so I was teaching during the day) I would make pimento cheese sandwiches and a vegan tomato soup. It felt like an old-fashioned, gentile Southern meal like what Martha Washington might serve today. The truth is that they didn’t have pimento cheese during Colonial days. In fact, it started out as an industrialized food product in the late 1800s. It was something that people bought but never made, kind of like Cheese Whiz. But for some reason, around World War II, Southern women started making their own versions of pimento cheese. And that is what makes it a traditional Southern food.

Thus, I made some pimento cheese. I think it was even better than the cheese I had made for my SIL’s travel because this time I used local cheese from a wonderful cheese maker at our Cary Farmer’s Market, BoxCarr . And while I wanted my SIL’s pimento cheese to be more classic, my son and I like spicy food, so I used a spicier cheese.

I never buy white bread, BUT, on this occasion, I did. I got white sandwich bread for the first time from the DELICIOUS bakery near my house. I felt if I was making the cheese extra spicy, I should stay more classic with the bread.

This is a terrible picture, but it was a good meal.

Thank goodness I wasn’t teaching Tuesday, because that was totally a holiday-o-thon. I tried to celebrate a different holiday for each meal and I still couldn’t fit them all in.

I had a pancake (only one so I didn’t overeat) for breakfast in honor of Shrove Tuesday, the European holiday honoring Lent begining the next day. Traditionally families made pancakes that day to eat up sugars and fats they intend to give up for Lent.

Then for lunch, I wanted to recognize Mardi Gras, the Louisiana version of Shrove Tuesday. The people there have a TOTAL BLAST before giving up partying for Lent. I made myself a cajun smoked salmon with remoulade sauce mini Po’ Boy sandwich. Because I was trying to pace my eating, the sandwich didn’t look very good because I was trying to downsize it. So I didn’t take a picture. But it tasted delicious.

But the big event of the day was Lunar New Year to usher in the Year of the Fire Horse. (For more details on that, see my post https://blissfullu.com/2026/02/23/welcome-to-the-year-of-the-fire-horse/ ). My son and I are learning to cook with the fancy new wok we just got, so dinner was a vegetable tofu noodle stir fry with oranges for dessert.

Tuesday was also officially the beginning of the Islamic holiday of Ramandan. However, I had to save that for Wednesday.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a Christian tradition of giving up some earthly pleasures in preparation for Easter, in addition to more time spent in prayer and reflection. Wednesday was also the first fast day of Ramandan, in which Muslim don’t eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. Those two days rarely align, so it seemed like a particularly spiritual day.

To honor both those holidays, I fasted during the day on Wednesday. However, I did drink water because I was teaching, which meant I was talking a lot, which meant I felt the need to stay hydrated. It was something I was doing to symbolize my support and connection with both Christian and Muslim believers, but not actually practicing either religion, so I figured that would be OK.

Because Ramadan is based on a lunar calendar, it shifts through the months from year to year. It can take place in the summer, when the sun doesn’t go down until after 9 PM. Fortunately for me, the official Raleigh end of fast time was 6:00 PM, and I was hungry. I made a Moroccan lentil and rice stew spiced with harissa and hot sauce, which is supposed to be a traditional recipe for iftar, the meal to break the fast during Ramadan. However, we ate it with some scallion pancakes meant for Lunar New Year that didn’t get around to dealing with on Tuesday, and the Mardi Gras cookies I couldn’t find on Mardi Gras because I left them in the car. Oh well. It was a diverse and festive dinner.

Lunar New Year lasts for up to 15 days, depending on the country. Ramadan lasts for 30 days, and Lent for 40 days. But I was not committing to THAT many days of holiday bliss! However, Thursday night we had a meal for Losar, the Tibetan version of Lunar New Year. We had probably the most iconic Tibetan dish, vegetarian dumplings called Momos (again, bought frozen from the Indian store, not homemade). I served them with a sauce and some fresh snow peas left over from our stir fry.

Made it to Friday, which wasn’t any national or international holiday that I knew of. But it was the night of a celebratory tradition in our spiritual center called Home Group. Once a month, someone hosts a potluck in their home, where first we eat, drink, and catch up with each other. Then we have structured prayers, meditations, activities, and discussions related to the spiritual theme of the month. It is a time when we celebrate wins together or ask for support around challenges that we are facing. So it’s always a special evening.

We have one loyal member who follows a gluten-free vegan diet for health reasons, so I try to make main dishes that can accomodate her. I remembered that around Christmas I found some gluten-free vegan pasta in the shape of a unicorn! There aren’t usually a lot of fun options for gluten-free vegan pasta, so I grabbed a pack, knowing it would come in handy some day. Then I had a brainstorm! I would use that pasta to make a Fire Horse pasta dish for Home Group. (In case you’ve lost track, the new year celebrated by Lunar New Year is supposed to be the Year of the Fire Horse.)

OK, so I know it doesn’t look that inspiring. But it’s the thought that counts. I made it with a SPICY (Fire, right?) tomato sauce filled with chunks of tomatoes, peppers, and onions, so it was fun and tasted good. I served with with cheese on the side for those who wanted it.

We finally got back to Saturday, in which I announced a personal holiday–FREE RANGE LEFTOVER WEEKEND. The rules were that people could help themselves to whatever leftovers they wanted whenever they wanted….but I was NOT making any meals. That was nice too. I did make a salad, because a lot of what was left was kind of carb-heavy. As much as I liked making all those special meals, it was nice to take the weekend off from cooking.

So that was my week of Holiday Bliss. We traveled all over the world and had diverse cuisine from many different cultures. We got to spend a lot of time cooking and eating with others. Plus, what I probably should have said in the begining, this was not just a party experience for me. It was a spiritual experience as well.

In our spiritual tradition, the Centers for Spiritual Living, we believe that the same spiritual laws run through all religions and all religions lead people to the same divine essence, just in different ways. We have a brief ritual every other week called the Blessing of All Faiths in which we honor all the major world religions. We end that ritual with the words “May Peace prevail on Earth through the followers of all Paths. And So It Is.”

So to me, this was not just about eating different foods. It was about honoring and connecting energetically with believers of all the different traditions we celebrated. We had our usual prayer of gratitude before eating, and in my head I repeated that final line from the Blessing of All Faiths.

I totally enjoyed a week of fun cooking and eating. But I was also celebrating world connection and unity among all people and all faith traditions. I tried to approach each recipe as a means of expanding love and peace across the planet. And what coud be more blissful than that?