Tuesday 12th Feb

Pancakes very much the focus of the day in the Perry household. If I remember rightly the idea is to use up all your left over bits before Lent, hence any flavouring of pancake goes. Today flavouring wise we’re fairly conservative, until Mrs P, under teenage instruction to provide a chocolate option, melts a Mars bar. Good idea in practice, the execution though leaves a little to be desired, as it quickly after melting turns into a solid lump of chocolate flavour. Needless to say the kids eat it anyway, and both attack the empty bowl for the last scrapes.

Chocolate is a theme today as well. Mrs P and I are giving up chocolate for Lent. Six whole weeks without chocolate, as we don’t subscribe to the theory you can have days off during Lent, it’s all or nothing. In principle it shouldn’t be too hard, the only problem is I do like chocolate and eat an awful lot of it. From bars to biscuits, cakes and muffins. The more I think about it the more I realise that finding appropriate substitutes will be a challenge. So in an effort to get through as much chocolate as possible today, I finish a packet of biscuits, a large muffin and a bag of chocolate raisins. This leaves me feeling slightly overloaded, and not really fancying any more chocolate. Tactically this turns out to be a good move, as now giving up chocolate doesn’t seem such a bad idea.

Back to the pancakes and the tossing competition was at its usual standard, one on the floor (me), one wrapped around frying pan handle (eldest), and one on the hob (Mrs P), making the winner by default Perry junior. Not even sure he tossed one, though he certainly ate the most. I think some practice tossing would be a good idea, the funny thing being, despite the fact that we all like pancakes we only eat them once a year, and I suspect we’re not alone in that!

Yours with chocolate withdrawal symptoms already

Jay