The Holy Season of Lent is a time when folks may be looking for tasty, easy-to-prepare meatless meals. Over the years, The Monitor’s freelance writer Lois Rogers has created a library of meals in her Keeping The Feast column.

Before “The Sound of Music” debuted on Broadway or morphed into one of the most enduring movies of all time, there was a real von Trapp family. I was so very fortunate to learn their story secondhand from the father of a good friend way back when.

He had become acquainted with Maria Augusta von Trapp when she was in New York as a technical adviser to the musical play, and he worked nights as the accountant of the hotel in which she stayed. She would come back from rehearsals at the theater too energized to call it a night and head to his office.

There, they would swap stories of his days as a Navy officer in World War II and her escape from the very Nazis he fought and how the family – with faith and song – immigrated to the United States with $4 in their pockets and made good on the American Dream.

Because of his ability to pass on her story, it was easy to regard Maria – so devoted to her own family – as part of the extended family. I collected her books whenever I could find one in a secondhand shop and made pilgrimage with my Mom and Dad to the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont.

Just recently, while scrolling through the EWTN online library, I came across a well-loved book of hers that I once owned. Titled “Around the Year With the Trapp Family,” it was wonderful to see that the text can be accessed online.

For anyone who would like to walk through the Catholic liturgical and culinary year as it was with Maria Augusta, this is a work to treasure in holy seasons and ordinary time. That being the case, you’ll find a healthy serving of Maria in the “green soup” featured this week. It’s an anchor of the totally green menu set on many German, Austrian and Slovakian tables on Holy Thursday.

In her book, she advised including dandelions, chervil, cress, sorrel and leaf nettle among the seven herbs meant to represent the seven last words of Christ. She goes on to recommend following up the soup with the traditional dish of spinach and fried eggs. “In Austria,” she wrote, “Holy Thursday is called Gruendonnerstag [Green Thursday].”

“Many people think that the word ‘gruen’ stands for the color. But this is not so. It derives from the ancient German word for ‘greinen,’ meaning ‘to cry or moan.’ Nevertheless, ‘Gruendonnerstag’ will have its green lunch,” she wrote.

I’ve adapted the ingredients according to what’s fresh, green and available in markets around the Diocese now and the recipe for the potato pancakes is not one of Maria’s, but an old favorite of mine.

Table Blessing

Lord Jesus Christ, in your ardent love for your apostles, you desired to share the Passover meal with them on the night before you suffered. During the course of that meal, you instituted the sacrament of the Eucharist, where you offered to us your own body and blood as bread and wine to nourish our souls. Send your blessings upon this table and all those who partake of it. Nourish us with the Bread of Life, until the day we are called to the banquet of eternal life. Amen.

From “Table Blessings: Mealtime Prayers Throughout the Year,” by Brother Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, Ave Maria Press, 1994.