web analytics

Yes, thanks

pancakeday

Shrove Tuesday — wot today is — is known as Pancake Day here in Jollye Olde. They make pancakes, traditionally, to use up flour and eggs before Lent.

Which makes no damn sense, if you ask me. Flour keeps forever (if it’s dry) and eggs is laid by chickens, who will presumably continue to do so despite anyone’s position in the liturgical calendar.

Anyway, you don’t see them eating pancakes here so much as running races where everyone dashes down the high street flipping one in a pan. And they aren’t pancakes, they’re crêpes.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a nice crêpe, except if a certain hypothetical weasel went into a Little Chef and ordered pancakes expecting to get the IHOP Big Breakfast. That was a sad, sad hypothetical weasel.

The English also traditionally had enormous football matches on Pancake Day, ruleless affairs in which the flower of each little town’s manhood turn up to kick the shit out of each other while a football looks on helplessly. A few towns maintain the tradition.

If you’re interested, Brit papers are full of pancake articles today, most of them illustrated by photos of American-style flapjacks oozing maple syrup. Which made Uncle B cross. Teehee.


NB: Zsa Zsa is spending her 99th birthday in the hospital. Is another longstanding Dead Pool favorite about to fall? Don’t count on it; that is one tough old broad.


Comments


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: February 9, 2016, 9:31 pm

Wait—wait. Why would Uncle Badger be cross about American-style flapjacks (or maple syrup)?


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: February 9, 2016, 9:35 pm

He’s not cross about pancakes — I hope he’ll join me in a few later — he’s cross about the steady Americanization of British cultcha. American food, American spellings, American pronunciations. It’s down to TV and movies, probably.

I hear this a lot. I usually get the hairy eyeball from the speaker, being (apparently) the representative of all things American.


Comment from mojo
Time: February 9, 2016, 9:52 pm

Why do I have a queasy feeling about Brits making flap-jacks? Thank bog it’s not the Scots, eh? They’d probably boil the things, just on GP.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: February 9, 2016, 10:01 pm

Oh, well. I understand that. I blame it on the Internet.


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: February 9, 2016, 10:08 pm

As Her Stoatliness says, traditional pancakes here are wafer thin affairs, not these hulking great inch thick doormats. They are. indeed, more like crepes. Only don’t tell the French.

I like both equally, as it happens, so if anyone’s offering….


Comment from Pupster
Time: February 9, 2016, 11:33 pm

http://imgur.com/gallery/dUU92


Comment from scottthebadger
Time: February 10, 2016, 1:28 am

Pancakes with boysenberry syrup! Triple Yum!


Comment from Anonymous
Time: February 10, 2016, 1:42 am

I’ll eat skinny pancakes, but I much prefer the fluffy ones. Waffles are even better!


Comment from David Gillies
Time: February 10, 2016, 4:00 am

I was very confused first time I was served American pancakes in the UK, c. 1980. “Why did they give me a pile of enormous drop scones?” thought I.

Yer ackshual pancakes should be fried in lard and, if you’ve made them thin enough, don’t need flipping.


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: February 10, 2016, 2:12 pm

‘Murricans are baffled by English/Scots breakfast too. Blood and oat cakes? Delicious piggy products prepared half raw? Beans? Maybe a dried out fish, smoked over coal. Cold beans?

Still better than what the Norwegians get.


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: February 10, 2016, 3:27 pm

Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: February 10, 2016, 2:12 pm

‘Murricans are baffled by English/Scots breakfast too. Blood and oat cakes? Delicious piggy products prepared half raw? Beans? Maybe a dried out fish, smoked over coal. Cold beans?

Still better than what the Norwegians get.
*
*
Saw a bumpersticker many years ago: LEGALIZE LUTEFISK. My local Norwegian Seaman’s Church sells the stuff pre-packaged. I’ve never had the nerve to buy and try a food that I’ve heard described as “cod dissolved in lye.”


Comment from mojo
Time: February 10, 2016, 3:52 pm

Unk: try peanut butter on Amurikun flap-jacks. Trust me.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: February 10, 2016, 8:47 pm

Husband wants waffles and/or pancakes every weekend (which he gets almost every weekend). Then he spreads peanut butter on them and drowns them in syrup. His favorite restaurant in Galveston, TX (which blew away in Hurricane Ike) offered on the breakfast menu a 5oz cup of peanut butter for 50 cents.


Comment from Nina
Time: February 11, 2016, 12:21 am

Wolfie, the lutefisk is not nearly as bad as the fish they bury and let rot for six months. My DiL, God love her, actually eats that stuff.

They usually have open-faced sandwiches at breakfast, though, with cheese, meats, vegetables, shrimp or cabbage in mayo, and, yes, various versions of pickled fish.

They’re coming to visit in a couple of weeks. I think I’ll buy some Cheerios.


Comment from scottthebadger
Time: February 11, 2016, 2:28 am

Wolfus: speaking as a Badger with the last name of Olson, I must say that, in my opinion, lutefisk is ghastly stuff. It is best described as fish flavored Jello.


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: February 11, 2016, 3:02 am

The bakeries in Norway make up for everything.

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny