I was looking at the calendar and seeing that Lent comes in February this year, which is a bit earlier than usual. People who observe Lent also often observe Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Tuesday or Fat Tuesday. It’s not just an opportunity to confess all your sins (that’s the “shrove” in Shrove Tuesday), but also an opportunity to gorge oneself before a season of fasting. For a lot of people, it’s not just gorging – it’s using up everything in the fridge so it doesn’t all go bad during Lent.

I realized that’s what we’ve been doing for the last few days. We haven’t gone grocery shopping, choosing instead to eat cheese on toast to use up both the cheese and the bread, squash and mushroom soup, lots of salads (using a very loose definition of salad, which is “cold vegetables in a bowl with a sauce of some description on them”).

So now I’ve invented a new game: “Eat, Freeze, Dump.” It’s like the old classic “Fuck, Marry, Kill, ” only with food. And our last chance at the “eat” part happens tonight when we have dinner and then go to bed at about 7pm, because we have to get up at 3:30am.

The other fun game is “what goes on the grocery list when we get home.” The good news is that I don’t have to think about that for a few months yet.