Re: Happy Pancake Day! (P.S.)

Oops. Wrong group. This was intended for an RFC thread on pancakes!

Felice

Well,

Happy Pancake Day to you. Don't remember ever having sausages though!

Gillian

First it was Mothers Day replacing Mothering Sunday. Now it would seem that Pancake Day has replaced Shrove Tuesday.

Gill Murray ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

I had pancakes that were more like crepes. If there was jam availabe then sometimes they were spread with a little jam and even luckier, maybe a teeny sprinkling of sugar. A squeeze of lemon is far nicer than jam but citrus fruits like oranges and lemons were definitely not available.

Certainly no sausages available.

Mothers Day is not in March though but I don't really know when Pancake is/was, just remember the pancakes lol

Shrove Tuesday and Pancake day have been one and the same for as long as I can remember and that is a good 40 years. Maybe it's a New England thing?

Elizabeth

I know Shrove Tuesday but I never heard it called Pancake Day in New York so I suppose you're right and it's a regional thing.

Lucille

Guess it depends what you eat on that day. We didn't eat pancakes. My grandmother made something akin to beignets. Since leaving home, it was mostly easier for me to find a donut shop near the office than pancakes. The entire point being, to use up all the leftover fat in the house by frying up a "whole mess of something", be that pancakes, donuts, fish&chips....

Interesting history of "Mother's Day" at

And more about Shrove Tuesday at

Not really, Bruce! In my earlier RFC post I mentioned that my children still call pancakes "shroves"!

(And Gillian: bacon will do instead of sausage. The operative words are "pig meat"!

Felice

Delighted to hear that at least one family is aware of "shrove" or "shrive". I'll not confuse the issue by asking whether Sundays are "in Lent" or "of Lent" nor diverging (thread drift is already into the higher warp drive numbers) and asking whether anyone has a runcible spoon

I don't celebrate Lent or Shrove Tuesday, but I read The Owl and The Pussycat that mentions the runcible spoon. Does that count for anything? L

"Lucille" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

Sure it does. Do you have a pea green boat down there in Florida ?

Well no, but I do have some green pea soup in the freezer !

IIRC, going back to my religious training as a kid (mandatory in UK schools), the reason for pancakes was to use up the "luxury" foods, eggs, butter etc before Lent, which started on the following day, Ash Wednesday. That Wednesday one started fasting, inasmuch as giving up certain foods until Easter. It is a Christian thing, and was very important in the Church of Engaland, (part of the Anglican Communion) when I was a youngster.

Sheena's memory of the pancakes is correct. They were very much like crepes, and we would have them for supper on Shrove Tuesday, rolled up with lemon juice and sprinkled sugar. No meats that I remember!

I had never had the things called "pancakes", here in the USA, until I came here. I made real pancakes for my American husband, and he thought they were awful. I made them like crepes!

To add to it, in the village, maybe town, of Olney in England there is a race each Shrove Tuesday of ladies, flipping their pancakes in the frying pan as they ran. I think it was probably oxfordshire, but not sure. In the past several decades that race is tied in with the ladies of Olney, Maryland, who also race.

I might add it was NEVER called pancake day when I was in England. Always Shrove Tuesday ( and Fat tuesday was definitely not used.

Here endeth the epistle for today!

Gillian

Aw, but celebrating Lent can be good. Whenever one of my friends' mothers put something in front of me that I didn't want, I said "I gave it up for Lent." One mother who loved Brussels sprouts could certainly understand that it might be a trial to give that up for Lent.

Tried telling my own mother that I gave up liver for Lent. That didn't work real well.

It seems strange to me that this is a huge memory to so many. I never heard of Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Lenten season, or any of that until I was in college. In my family there was Good Friday and Easter and that was it. The school didn't serve meat on Fridays during the season but that was the school board caving in to some "Catholic whim" and shouldn't be allowed! ("Catholic" was a pejorative at home.) If our church did anything special for the season, the youth weren't involved and I never heard about it. So imagine my surprise when friends in college asked me what I was giving up for Lent. "Lent to whom? And if I'm only lending it, why am I not getting it back?" A very patient friend finally figured out I didn't have a clue and told me what everyone was talking about. Still had never heard of these across the board food bans though. We just gave up something that we considered a true sacrifice--since we were students that meant caffeine for most.

Called DD's preschool today. Yes, they are having their Valentine's Day party tomorrow (she attends on Mon. and Wed. and they were snowed out last Wed. and had Mon. off for President's Day). I asked if they were concerned about any families being offended about holding the party on Ash Wednesday and the classroom associate on the other end of the line was clueless. I decided not to elaborate. I figure anyone who sends home a note telling us what we are to provide for the "ice cream Sunday's" really isn't going to catch a clue.

"Bruce Fletcher" wrote in message and asking whether anyone has a runcible spoon