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.

But - in what way is Lent a fast? I thought it was a period of "giving up" on things (like alcohol, meat, chocolate, the like).

Yeah, it's fasting-lite.

Trivial, out-of-nowhere factoid:

Stonehenge is technically not a henge.

Okra is in the hibiscus family and is pretty in a spiky sort of way

And, okra is tasty!

My local 7-11 actually had paczkis today. Which scares me a little. How good can 7-11 paczkis be?

But - in what way is Lent a fast? I thought it was a period of "giving up" on things (like alcohol, meat, chocolate, the like).

Nilly, on Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent, which is tomorrow) and on Good Friday (the last friday of Lent, 2 days before Easter), [some] Catholics fast for 2 meals, or they have fruit juice during the day and then a proper dinner in the evening -- things like that. [Obviously, exceptions are made for people who are sick, diabetic, frail, elderly, and young -- they don't have to fast.]

On Fridays in Lent, [some] Catholics don't eat meat (beef, pork, poultry), but fish is allowed.

And then there's a tradition of people "giving up" something for the 40-day period of Lent -- no chocolate, no sugar, no alcohol, no TV -- basically the idea is to give up something that it's a real sacrifice to give up.