1. Dr. Smucker’s Thrice-Performing Chastity Pants:  Now With Toasting Compartment
  2. Strategic placement of fennel bulbs behind the ears, according to the Swiss Gendarme Method
  3. A simple cockle broth.  Fresh out?  Substitute pennies.
  4. Bertram’s Baking Soda Surprise:  required kitchen implements?  One can.  One spoon.  Faith.
  5. Tarts!  It’s day five!  I mean!  Forgiveness is sweeter when you’ve earned it, isn’t it?  It is.
  6. A Day of Onions.  This may or may not be related to item five.  We recommend sharing.
  7. More tarts.  It’s the day of rest.  From Lent.  You will have leftovers from day five.  If you don’t:  Herring.
  8. Timothy’s Improved Non-Pilling Hair Shirt:  Now With Additional Briar Pockets/Jam Holster.
  9. Remember Arne, from the fair?  And that pig?  That was a blue ribbon pig.  But, today, you’re having carrot sticks toasted in a thin spray of Pam.  Try calling it ‘bacon’s cousin’ in honor of Arne.
  10. This is typically the day when the horror sets in, and Auntie Marge locks herself in the under-stair closet with a a crock of hazelnuts, screaming ‘I REGRET NOTHING’.  We recommend taking in a film, and snacking on peanut husks instead.
  11. Look.  We don’t know why Uncle Klaus thinks it’s hilarious to dress up in fishnets and run around the yard trying to ‘tempt’ the neighbors.  But, we won’t tell when you finally subdue him with a drop of milk and bourbon.  Lent has its allowances.
  12. It’s not even the halfway point, is it?  But, it is time for the dinner that features cans of anchovies, arranged at the stations of the cross.
  13. Cream of wheat.  No gimmicks.  What?  We are reasonable people.  This is what reasonable people eat.
  14. Red onion poached in milk.  We are taking Alliums seriously this year–we suggest that you do too.
  15. Hard boiled eggs–shell-on.  Calcium.  Very 2011.
  16. I spent the morning offering massage to the neighborhood dogs, and was amply rewarded with a bologna sandwich from Mrs. Travis.  The spirit of the season has the tang of yellow mustard about its mouth.
  17. Check under the bed.  Are the potato chips still there?  Furtively salty in the darkness?  Good.  You’ve passed the test, and will go west into the kitchen, and diminish.
  18. There’s no reason you can’t still have a pinata.  Just pack it with acorns, and hand out goggles.
  19. Hardiston’s Elastic Compression Calf Supports With Canada Mint Heel Inserts
  20. You’re halfway there!  Celebrate!  With margarine molded into the shape of an Easter ham.  It’s good to have aspirational food.
  21. We’re all scratching our heads at this point.  We never assumed you’d make it to day 21.  Fava beans?
  22. Shaved asparagus, frozen into cubes, makes an excellent all-day reminder of the ways in which virtue has its own otherworldly aroma.
  23. You might start to question your plan to have Grandma Mallory wander the backyard for forty days and forty nights at this stage in the game, but, so long as her marmalade pouch is still visibly taut, she should be just fine.
  24. We know what you’ve given up.  You know what you’ve given up.  But, the people at the wedding that you’re crashing decidedly do not, so, indulge.
  25. An entire meal can be built around no more than a single sourdough pretzel, a will of iron and a bag of frozen peas.  That’s what I was told.  I have my doubts.  But, day 25 is no time for doubting–get in there and DINE, dammit.
  26. On this day, we will show up to test your resolve by placing crisp onion rings on the pointy hats of all of your garden gnomes, and interleaving all of your undergarments with Cadbury mini eggs.  We call it ‘Feeling the ‘We’-Ness’:  you feel the sting of deprivation, and we feel as though we’ve left snacks all over your lawn.  It feels good.
  27. You haven’t given up your XBox have you?  Why are we even talking right now?
  28. If you get there in time, Duncan won’t have thrown away the crust basket at DiNuccio’s Pizza.  He will make you do the Lardo Lambada to get them, but you’re desperate, here at day 28.
  29. Followgoode’s Anti-Vanity Truss:  Public Transportation Nasal Irrigation Set Sold Separately.
  30. Thirty!  Can you feel it?  The hollow rumbling?  It’s success.  Or the pinto beans.
  31. We typically start to feel that we’re in the home stretch, and get a little cocky, and wake up to find ourselves packed like country hams into the front cannoli case of Angelo’s.  But, if you don’t remember what happened, it can hardly be called a slip-up.
  32. Brian once chewed enough gum during Lent to build a scale replica of the set of Molto Mario.  The TMJ also enabled him to abstain from eating anything larger than a dried pea for the following year.  Our legal counsel has prevented us from making any concrete suggestion concerning these facts, but we are just putting the information out there.
  33. Quail are small, and mostly bone.
  34. Fentiman’s Forgetfulness Syrup:  Airport Bagel Flavor.
  35. Five more days–five more steaming bowls of cod liver oil.  Clean as a whistle.
  36. Bitter dandelion tea.  You’ve always wondered how Professor Lingerman wrote that novel about Allen Ginsberg, and, here it is.
  37. We enjoy the visual interplay of frozen blueberry and Dixie cup–but not as much as we enjoy eating both elements.  It’s Day 37!  You see fiber in places M. Night Shyamalan never dreamed of!
  38. Can it be over so soon?  No.  Not soon enough.  What is this?  A cracker?  No.  It’s a toasted square of the Union Greenmarket Pennysaver.
  39. You have begun to leave drool on your pillow, and it has taken the shape of Our Lord consuming a crisp-skinned duck breast.
  40. Forty!  The Potato Chips!  Hasten Unto Them!  We ate them.