Lent the gorging begin!

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Posted at 3:00PM, 01 April 2010 by Mark Bowerman - Designer, bbcgoodfood.com

Do you remember Shrove Tuesday? I do. Besides gorging myself greedily with pancakes, I look back on it as the last of those halcyon days before Lent began. The final feast before I exiled myself for 40 days and 40 nights into the desert of no chocolate, no cakes, no biscuits and no joy (well almost).

The Holy Lenten fast is one of those features of the Christian church that the not very holy (like me) tend to opt in for - like Christmas but somewhat lacking on the fun front. For me, the challenge of self-deprivation poses a certain appeal and so I find myself in my 11th year of abstaining from another vice as a bit of a nod to Jesus and his good work of resisting the temptations of the devil in the desert.

I've been a little harsher on myself this year: in previous years I have variously relinquished chocolate, chips, sugar in tea or being rude about East Anglia. However, never before did I work one floor down from the Good Food test kitchen - a hidden room where the super cooks conjure their culinary magic. My penchant for the less wholesome recipes has not gone unobserved by them upstairs. Indeed, whenever a newly baked delight emerges from the kitchen, I receive an anonymous tip-off and I'm like a sugar-hungry rat up a drainpipe, arriving instantly on the pretext of having an urgent design-related query.

I'm quite sure that kitchen has never produced so many cakes as in the past six weeks

If the punishment should fit the crime, then I should probably do extra time for bad behaviour and excessive gobbling. Call me paranoid but someone up there doesn't like me - I'm quite sure that kitchen has never produced so many cakes as in the past six weeks. Chocolate, orange & almond simnel cake, anyone? Gaaah! Maybe it just seems that way with the agony of having to decline every sweet treat that comes my way. My friends and colleagues would argue that enduring my moaning is far more agonising, but they don't understand. Being angelic is hard.

Mercifully, though, the finish line is at last in sight. I've been eyeing up the chocolate recipes in Good Food's new Easter Guide and the gates are set to unleash a chocolate flood of biblical proportions.

So, did you give anything up for Lent and how was it for you?

Comments

Knavey

2 April 2010, 9:30PM
Knavey

Well done Mark! I do admire your skill and willpower regarding abstinence from cake, chocolate and biscuits for 40 days and 40 nights. You're now at the summit of your everest and preparing to descend in to gluttony, good man! I did not given anything up for lent but maybe next year I shall. Perhaps sprouts. Enjoy the chocs.

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Cassandra Amy Rose

5 April 2010, 9:30AM
Cassandra Amy Rose

You are SO brave! I could never do that in a million years!

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drusilla

7 April 2010, 12:14PM
drusilla

Me either. Maybe I could give up alcohol for next Lent! (Or would that be cheating, seeing as I'm a teetotaller!) Well done Mark!

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Laura

9 April 2010, 6:16PM
Laura

Some of my colleagues gave up bread for Lent, I gave it up for a day :D Sadly I was born without willpower...

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