Today was a good day.

For a start, it was the first day I left the office this year and it was still daylight for my walk home.

However, more importantly…

Today is Pancake Day! My favourite saint’s day of all.

Valentine’s Day is a horrible endurance of emotional intensity and commercially enforced feelings of low self-worth if you’re single.

St Patrick’s Day might have been a favourite but (a) I normally don’t remember celebrating it and (b) it was meant to be my birthday but I was late (probably sipping on an amniotic fluid martini…).

Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday/Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras is for indulging in all those wordly things you want to abstain from or cut down on during Lent, so that’s things like carbs, fat and alcohol. It’s a day I always enjoyed as a child, and unlike other faux-Christian traditions such as Christmas, I continue to enjoy it greatly as an adult.

Except now I can imbibe in an alcoholic beverage at the same time.

So which one would I recommend? A Lemon Drop Martini with Foam would work nicely, especially if you like your pancakes like I do (with sugar and lemon juice).

For a perfect pre-abstinence extravaganza I followed this recipe from the Telegraph.

And after a bit of mixing and frying, the results were as follows (and it’s a pretty easy recipe to follow):

I managed to make about 6 pancakes.

You can serve it with lemon juice and sugar like my childhood, or with maple syrup perhaps, or a thin spread of cold, salty butter.

Perhaps you could also serve it with a lemon drop martini or two. You might as well if you’re going to be cutting out all this frivolity for Lent. Here’s the recipe again if you want to try it