I thought Hot Cross Buns were one of the allowed sweeties during Lent, but I'm a ritual-lite brand of Protestant, so I don't know.

Which your dad tries to to toss and sticks to the ceiling/drops on the floor/ breaks his nose with the frying pan.

Every year? Y'all have some brutal traditions.

I knew there was a reason to be a godless heathen.

One of my work friends is Chinese-American and is also Catholic, so she's having a hell of a time trying to plan her eating tomorrow (tomorrow is both Ash Wednesay, a day of fasting, and Chinese New Year, a day of feasting).

Fasting is a sliding scale - Jesus ate and drank nothing, but Christians go from pretty much eating nothing but drinking to giving up milk - but not plain -chocolate.

Paczki sound great, but I can't think of any bakery around here that would make them. We have some decent bakeries, but the South is sadly lacking in great bakeries. I have a theory it's because Southerners mainly baked quick breads like biscuits and cornbread at home.

Not having any idea what okra looks like when it's at home, I would probably feel the same way about whole okra pod-thingies.

Okra is in the hibiscus family and is pretty in a spiky sort of way. Okra blossom: [link]

is both Ash Wednesay, a day of fasting, and Chinese New Year, a day of feasting

Pork rinds. Feasting on nothing. This won't work for our Hebrew buddies, but they are out of this one, anyway.

you don't have to be Polish to enjoy Paczki!

No, but you do have to have the time to get to the kick-ass bakery. I, sadly, am lacking in time. Teppy, eat a paczki for me!!

Sweetie, I ate a paczki for *me,* and I hit my sugar limit, hard as that is to believe. So let's just say that I had half a paczki for you, and the other half can be for me.

And boy, am I in sugar shock right now.

Karl Haas died. I'm kind of bummed.

Also, Happy Mardi Gras. Accept no substitutes.

Not in the right neighborhood for paczki, though I expect I could find some if I tried.

But I'm exicited about Shrove Tuesday and pancakes for dinner. Maybe it is a british thing - I know the tradition in my family comes from the Canadian side.

Anything growing where you don't want it to is a weed, no?

When I was in college I spent a summer working for the college grounds crew. We mowed lawns and trimmed trees and pulled weeds. One morning they sent us down to the new athletic field, where the recently planted grass was infested with cockleburs. I spent a hot, miserable morning pulling cockleburs out of the grass.

In the afternoon, they sent us to the biology department's gardens, where the faculty grew plants for research and for use in botany classes. One of the professors studied cockleburs, because they are unusually sensitive to changes in the timing of light/dark cycles and provide insights into how plants adapt to the changing seasons. My job was to go into his cocklebur patch and pull out the weeds, mostly grass.

So there I am as a too earnest, too inquisitive, and hopelessly naïve student. Spend the morning pulling cockleburs out of the grass. Spend the afternoon pulling grass out of the cockleburs. It was obvious to me that this life thing was going to be built of the absurd.