Today and then on Tuesdays during Lent, I’m going to talk about my faith and spiritual practice (or lack thereof). So this is the time to look away if you’re not interested in this topic. No worries, there will be an allotment post tomorrow and I’ll see you then!

Lent starts tomorrow, which means tonight I will be eating pancakes! Before we get to pancakes, I’ve been giving some thought to what I’m going to do/take up/give up this Lent.

Lenten practice is supposed to be about making ourselves better for Easter, I’m not sure that I want to ‘offer up my suffering to Jesus’ but if I deny myself something and use the money saved to do some good, that works for me. I don’t want to use Lent just to clean up my diet, but I am going to use it as a time to consider what I eat. So I want to do 2 eating related things:

• give up sweets and chocolate;
• be much more mindful about ultra processed foods. I’m pretty good at this but I want to stop buying food instead of cooking it and buying lunch at work because I can’t be bothered to prep properly. So I’m going to do my best to cut it out by using the Nova food classification and cutting out Nova 4’s

Lent shouldn’t just be about denial, so I need to take some stuff up too….

• I’m going to stop buying flowers and put that money towards my other food related thing;
• Three items or £3 donated to the food bank every week. (I do donate to the food bank outside of Lent but not as regularly as I should);
• Attend the volunteer days at the allotment on 7^th March and 4^th April; and
• Gratitude journal, I think in a time that we think about being better people I should work to remind myself of the privileges of the life I have right this minute.

That done let’s talk about pancakes. The best pancake recipe is Delia Smith’s, I have two courses of pancakes tonight, savoury and sweet because we used to have this at home. I make up a bunch of pancakes and stuff them with mince or chicken in white sauce, then pour white sauce over them, add cheese and bake in the oven. One year I made lasagna but with pancakes instead of pasta (I regret nothing!). For pudding, I eat them with bananas and maple syrup (which is bizarre because I am not keen on bananas!) instead of lemon juice and sugar.