A PSA and a poll about pancakes (46/365)

[white_hart]

For those who are utterly adrift in time and didn't happen to glance at their calendar just now while desperately seeking inspiration for a post, tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day for those of us in the UK (and anyone else who fancies pancakes).

Possibly I should have saved the poll for tomorrow, but I might be too busy eating pancakes then. Also, I want to steal your pancake ideas.

Poll #25296 Pancakes!

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

What kind of pancakes do you have on Pancake Day?

View Answers

Thin crèpe-style pancakes
23 (59.0%)

Fluffy American-style pancakes
6 (15.4%)

I don't celebrate Pancake Day
4 (10.3%)

SEWIWEIC
6 (15.4%)

Sweet pancakes or savoury?

View Answers

Sweet
22 (56.4%)

Savoury
1 (2.6%)

Both!
16 (41.0%)

Do you give things up for Lent?

View Answers

Yes, and I celebrate Pancake Day
4 (10.5%)

Yes, but I don't celebrate Pancake Day
1 (2.6%)

No, but I do celebrate Pancake Day
27 (71.1%)

No, and I don't celebrate Pancake Day
6 (15.8%)

Feel free to tell me about your favourite way to eat pancakes in the comments.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

I love all pancakes but have just been diagnosed with gluten intolerance (since last Shrove Tuesday) so am not sure what the future holds.

I sometimes give things up for Lent and sometimes take things up and sometimes forget or don't have the petrol. This year I probably won't have the petrol.

[cosmolinguist]

My celiac boyfriend has made me (English) pancakes with gluten-free flour. They taste just the same as far as I can tell!

(American-style pancakes work slightly less well than their gluteny cousins, but are still worth trying.)

[girlyswot]

Agreed. My coeliac friends all seem to make very edible pancakes. Failing all that, there is the flourless banana pancake recipe.

[mountainkiss]

Thank you!

[mrs_redboots]

Plenty of delicious pancakes with no gluten - try buckwheat flour for "galettes au sarrasin", or gram flour for socca..... we're not gluten-free, but I like to make pancakes the main course, especially as I have a meeting tonight!

[mountainkiss]

Thank you.

[angelofthenorth]

I tend to take things up for Lent - I think going for a walk 3 times a week is on the agenda

[mrs_redboots]

I'm doing that too, and also a daily #lententhankfulness post on Facebook.

[cosmolinguist]

I wished for tickyboxes on the first question, because ideally I have both: savory English pancakes for the meal and sweet American pancakes for dessert. :)

It won't be either this year, there's no flour and the shopping doesn't arrive until Friday. Ah well!

While I did "give up" (more like "wasn't allowed candy," I didn't get a choice about what I gave up) stuff for Lent as a Catholic child, I didn't do that any more by the time I started celebrating Pancake Day, which I didn't know about until I moved here.

[naraht]

I'm always fascinated by the flexibility of 'giving up'/'taking on' things for Lent that most of my British friends have. I was raised Greek Orthodox and the Lenten fast is pretty much prescribed: meat, eggs, dairy, wine and olive oil (with flexibility for health and circumstances, obviously). We only did that on Good Friday but still, we knew what it was we weren't doing.

Having said that, I'm not 'doing' Lent at all this year because I'm still exploring conversion to Judaism. So maybe I'm giving up Lent for Lent.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah I only encountered British people talking about taking up something for Lent a few years ago (despite having lived in the UK for fifteen years now), it's really interesting to me. As a Roman Catholic child I knew Lent as a time when I had to both "fast" on Fridays and Ash Wednesday (no meat except fish and no snacks between meals) and give something up (which in my case was really just more fasting since I wasn't allowed to choose what I gave up and it was always candy).

[perennialanna]

The talk of taking things up for Lent is relatively new. Lent Books are ancient (required in the Rule of St Benedict).

[perennialanna]

I only sort of like pancakes, and I pretty much never have the energy to cook them in the evening of Shrove Tuesday when it falls in term time. I am quite relieved that Tuesday is now not one of my days with children.

Lent means no alcohol, though I drink so little that I tend to think that doesn't count. It also comes with a Lent Book - often a poetry anthology. This year's is prominently subtitled Lent Book 2020, which says a lot about the last year. I managed all of one chapter then. I am also attempting to get myself into the habit of getting washed and brushed and into pyjamas before going downstairs after putting the children to bed, so that if I must wake crumpled up on the sofa in the small hours I only have to fall into a bed I am already ready for. I never mean to fall asleep on the sofa, but it happens at least twice a week.

[el_staplador]

I have Forty Days With The Messiah (will have to get a dispensation for the Hallelujah Chorus, I suppose) which I've had for years and not got round to.

[tree_and_leaf]

Lawyer is always sad if we don't have the fluffy American kind, and as he is in any case the Designated Pancake Maker (because his are better than mine) that's what we go with.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm giving up meat and alcohol (the meat is a bit of a struggle, tbh).

[mrs_redboots]

You always do give up meat, I've noticed - do you allow yourselves fish, or are you strictly vegetarian? I would, but as it simply wouldn't be any kind of hardship, I don't bother! Although we do tend to eat vegan on Ash Wednesday (main meal, anyway) and on Good Friday unless we are already staying with my mother. Oh, and P.S. lots of veggie and vegan ideas on my recipe blog if you're devoid of ideas - you never know, it might spark something!

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, we allow fish, but try to keep it to no more than twice a week. (We've abandoned giving up meat twice in recent years - once when Lawyer broke his arm badly, and last year when we got Covid mid-way through.* In fact, thinking about it, Lent seems not to be a good time of year for us!)

Thanks for the recipe ideas!

*Mind you, as we were relying on other people to shop for us, AND there were also still weird shortages at that point, we ate quite a weird assortment of stuff. Not that we could taste it, anyway....

[mrs_redboots]

I wouldn't have minded not being able to taste anything - my sense of taste went totally weird and cheese tasted metallic, it was revolting. And coffee tasted of fish! It did recover, but for awhile all I could tolerate was those very bland pre-cooked chicken slices!

We are omnivorous, but it seems that most of the recipes I play with are either vegetarian or vegan. Not quite all....

[nineveh_uk]

The best pancakes are those made by someone else. As I shall be making them for myself I shall leave it until the weekend. Blast, I've just realised I could have cheated and ordered them in this evening's supermarket delivery. That sort aren't brilliant, but better than no pancakes and right now better than the effort of doing them at all. Oh well.

[caulkhead]

I like pancakes, but can welshcakes count too, plz?

[perennialanna]

I do love welshcakes, and so does L. But not tomorrow, because she isn't here.

Obviously I could eat an entire batch myself, but I feel it would be unwise.

[el_staplador]

My favourite way to eat pancakes is with asparagus and hollandaise sauce, but we don't do that on pancake day because asparagus isn't in season. Usually it's with bolognese sauce for the first course and lemon and sugar for pudding, but I think countertony is planning something with chicken and chorizo.

I'm giving up meat and alcohol, and still dithering about joining a Lent group.

[antisoppist]

I make pancakes and scotch pancakes quite a lot as lunch these days (what with children being at home all the time) so it has stopped being exciting. When I was a child, I think Pancake Day was the only day we had them. Lemon and sugar for me, though sometimes maple syrup and chopped banana.

I didn't know it was pancake day and I am not sure I have a lemon. I do have a lime. It will probably be fine.

I have given things up in the past but I don't think there's anything I feel like not doing at the moment.

[mrs_redboots]

I was debating lemon curd pancakes.... when I was little, children were offered jam as an alternative to lemon and sugar to go on their pancake - and, of course, there is always Nutella!

[aella_irene]

I make pancakes which I don't feel qualify as crepes, but are decisively not American style, and have them with lemon and sugar.

We may ALSO do crepes suzettes tomorrow.

I stopped giving things up for Lent after the time a series of bad decisions resulted in anaemia.

[white_hart]

I read the last sentence as "a series of bad decisions resulted in academia", which seemed like a perfectly plausible sentence except o couldn't see how it connected with Lent.

[nostalgia]

Scottish pancakes not those weird flat English things.

[owl]

The Scottish or Irish pancake is apparently known in England as a "drop scone". To me it's the canonical pancake.

[mrs_redboots]

No, it's a scone, eaten at teatime! Not a pancake eaten as a main course or for pudding!

[owl]

This is a pancake (which can be eaten for any meal), the floppy things are crepes.

[girlyswot]

I answered yes for the last one, but mostly I prefer to take up something for Lent. Last year I blogged every day, which somehow magically has turned into a contract for an actual book. This year's rather less ambitious project is a reading one.

[girlyswot]

Also, lemon and sugar is the very best way to eat a pancake.

[ankaret]

Yay book! My autocorrect tried to turn that into 'yayboom' which it somehow thinks is a word.

[girlyswot]

Thank you! I am about halfway through the revisions, but I am very much hoping not to make that this year's Lent project too. ;)

[white_hart]

Yay book contract! That is very impressive. I have been trying to post here every day but it seems very unlikely to result in a book contract, though it does result in more connection with friends which is the main thing.

[callmemadam]

I shan't bother just for myself. My pancakes are French-style crepes, as thin as I can get them and always with lemon and sugar. The trick is to use half milk, half water.
Lent. I don't give things up but try to read something like George Herbert's poems.

[ankaret]

I am not massively fussed one way or the other about pancakes but Peter likes making them. Lemon and golden syrup.

[danieldwilliam]

I like pancakes very much. I prefer the American pancake to the French.

My favourite ways of eating them include
-bacon and maple syrup
-smoked salmon and hollandaise sauce
-lemon and sugar

When I was on a roadtrip in Oregon in the US we stopped for breakfast / brunch in a roadside dinner and I tried to order a long stack of pancakes and got talked out of it by the waitress. She was right, six pancakes was too many. That marked the start of a two week holiday where it was very difficult to not eat too much.

[cybik]

Lemon and sugar and as many pancakes as I can fit in my stomach. Every now and then I consider having other toppings but frankly nothing else is as good.

[mrs_redboots]

Buckwheat pancakes! I sometimes make "galettes complets" with egg, ham and Emmenthal cheese, but this year we had an egg meal last night, so I think I'll do goats' cheese, walnuts and salad. And if I can be bothered (and have time - there's a meeting tonight I have to "go to" at 19:30) I'll make ordinary pancake batter and serve them for pudding with lemon curd. I'll see.... also I have to go out and buy the goats' cheese and green salad.... if I don't, it'll be egg and cheese!

[fencesitting]

I am making Kaiserschmarrn* as A doesn't like normal pancakes. I have never made this before, so fingers crossed!

* https://smittenkitchen.com/2019/05/austrian-torn-fluffy-pancake/

[muninnhuginn]

Just had our vegan pikelets with mango syrup. Made by Looby Loo. Too full to move....

[celestialweasel]

Sourdough pancakes https://www.google.com/amp/s/food52.com/recipes/81824-small-batch-sourdough-pancakes/amp