fortyfour: pancake day

At the end of last week I wrote a huge to do list – I think in total it had about 50 things on it – mainly to do with writing blog posts and getting them scheduled in the right places (I decided that if I could schedule the Sunday posts earlier in the week then I could have a “day off” from blogging and still stick with in my “blog each day for a year” challenge with MellyWho (who is awesome and could do with a comment hug so please jump over there and drop her a comment – she’d love it!).

Anyway, so I got thinking about traditions and what makes a tradition – so in true style I ran off to the OED website for a dictionary definition.

NOUN

• [mass noun] the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way:members of different castes have by tradition been associated with specific occupations
• [count noun] a long-established custom or belief that has been passed on from one generation to another:

So I’m pretty sure that a lot of the traditions outside of Christmas are pretty much our own inventing rather than picking one families traditions over the other. Pancake day is one that both sides of the family did but in their own ways.

If Shrove Tuesday fell in half term (which it did for part of the country but not for Bedfordshire this year) then we’d often have a cooked dinner followed by pancakes but not any particular pancakes – they were Grandma specials! She’d often make them on the Monday then stick them in the freezer and defrost them Tuesday morning or something like that. I just remember there being pancakes and then Rich and I feeling stuffed for the rest of the afternoon! If Shrove Tuesday fell during school term then we’d have pancakes for tea. Even the fillings were a treat, Grandma, would often get cherry pie filling especially. I’d have that with ice cream every time – probably increased the feeling of exploding!

Now we’ve both grown up and haven’t been to Grandma’s on a Tuesday for tea in a while but we have taken the traditions to our own groups – I’m not sure whether Rich had pancakes or not but Our Sidekick and I had the pancakes sorted.

I got in from work and we got started on the pancakes. As unimpressed as he was I got Our Sidekick to read the recipe and weigh out the ingredients while I did bits around the kitchen. We then swapped positions and I cooked the pancakes. Rather than sitting down between rounds we pretty much munched through our pancakes while the next ones cooked in the pan.

Ingredients

• 110g/4oz plain flour
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 200ml/7fl oz milk mixed with 75ml/3fl oz water

1. Sift the flour and the salt.
2. Make a well in the middle and crack the eggs in there. Whisk in the eggs. It’ll go a bit doughy and might stick to your whisk.
3. Add the milk/water mix and stir in all the flour.
4. Add a little bit of oil or butter to your hot pan. Grab a ladel and put some of your mixture into the pan. The first pancake always tends to be a bit dodgy – I’m not sure why but there is some logic to it or so I’m told!
5. When the mixture has “set” and gone a golden sort of colour flick the pancake over and finish side two. Serve with your choice of filling. My favourite is chocolate buttons, banana and vanilla ice cream or cherry pie filling and ice cream.