Lent, the Christian season of penance and introspection leading up to Easter Sunday, begins on Ash Wednesday. In most Catholic cultures, Lent is a season of ritual fasting and the preceding few days were considered a time to use up all the rich, fatty foods in the larder before they became forbidden. The Tuesday night preceding Lent, known – depending on where you are – as Mardis Gras (French for “Fat Tuesday”), Shrove Tuesday (“to shrive” means to confess one’s sins), or Carnival (theoretically derived from “carne vale,” Late Latin for “farewell to flesh”) was the culmination of a period of feasting and festivities.