Pancake Day!

[monster]

Shrove Tuesday/Fat Tuesday/Mardis Gras

It's always pancake day to me (and I don't let a little thing like not observing Lent put me off! )

In the UK, this holiday is often celebrated by eating pancakes and lots of them -not American-style pancakes, more like crepes. The traditional filling is lemon juice and sugar although many (like me) add a little orange juice too.

In our house we usually start the meal with savory pancakes (often filled with a minced beef-based sauce, although sometimes we get adventurous with salmon and mushroom for the adults), and then have at it with the sweet ones until we just can't take any more. I cannot believe how many pancakes my 9yo girl can pack away Back home, as a kid, some families used to forgo a regular dinner and just eat lemon/sugar pancakes until they burst, but my parent always made us have a main course first and the pancakes for pudding/dessert.

Tossing the pancakes was always a huge part of the tradition, as was bragging about how many you'd eaten at school the next day.

Actually, it's so much fun, we probably have pancakes for dinner at least once a month, but still -any excuse

Round here, though, (SE Michigan -notably in Hamtramck, Detroit), the big thing is Paczkis (pronounced poonch-key) -a polish immigrant tradition. They're like huge filled doughnuts. Same principle though -lots of fats and sugar before the start of Lent.

Do you do anything? Eat loads, dance naked with lots of beads? I mean different from your normal day?

Being devout non-believers, we're just stealing the celebration, and will in fact be having our pancake Day tomorrow, on the first day of Lent, because tonight is just not convenient. Fourty days of going without some things wouldn't do me any harm, though
(grief, it's posts like this where I feel so mid-Atlantic. Which spelling to use? dessert or pudding? regular or normal?