Kosher for Lent

In about a half hour, Mardi Gras will be over and Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, will begin. For several years now I gave up processed sugar, which was tough but good for my health and weight, and I always managed to make it. This year, however, I'm trying something different. Very different, in fact-- I'm going to keep kosher.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of kashrut; I have enough issues about demonizing food without doing it for reasons that are even more arbitary. But since it's part of the lives of some of the people who are most important to me, I'd like to know what it's like to live with. I expect it will be a pain at times-- I do love me some pork, shellfish, and butter in pretty much everything --but I actually don't think it will be that hard. Cooking for and eating with Jared as much as I do means I usually stick to kosher food anyway so we can share. I can't remember the last time I cooked a dish that wasn't kosher except at home with my parents, so it's not like I don't know how to manage without resorting to the trayf.

As to the rules I'm going to stick to, I'm planning on going with what I gather is a fairly mainstream standard of kosher. I won't mix meat and milk, and I'll wait at least a half hour after eating one before I eat the other. While I will abstain from pork, rabbit, shellfish, and all other trayf animals, I will not worry about whether or not it's certified kosher meat. I am also not kashering my kitchen. I do know how to keep a kosher kitchen, as I help Jared to do so in his own kitchen at grad, but at Elsinore it's not practical and we don't have enough dishes for that. This roughly the standard that Jared keeps, so it's the one I am most familiar with.

It's certainly a sacrifice, but that's in the spirit of Lent. And hey-- Jesus most certainly kept kosher; he was the best Jew of all time. :-D