Pancake Day

As my friend Jono observed at lunch today, Shrove Tuesday is supposed to be the day you use up your eggs and milk before Lent starts, by making pancakes; but these days people go out and specifically buy the ingredients (basic though they are...) for their party. Ah, the irony of life today.* I thought there'd be an annual peak in lemon sales, but Jo reckons most people buy little plastic lemons of concentrated lemon juice instead. (I'm familiar with them from my childhood, but honestly thought they were a last remaining hang-over from post-war rationing, long gone now...)

Jo made pancakes for dessert tonight. We all had two each (except for Michal - our additional, Polish, house-member - who was going out to a pancake party, and so only had one), and Noah was suitably impressed by his mother's pancake-flipping skills. The kids get chopped-up pancakes with jam for lunch on a semi-regular/occasional treat basis - a habit Jo picked up the year she au-paired in Bavaria. I'm a sugar-and-squeezed-lemon-juice purist. And while the rest of the Catholic world celebrates Mardi Gras (literally, Fat Tuesday - a pre-Lent carnavalesque celebration that goes way beyond Protestant England's pancake parties) Michal swears that in Poland they don't do Fat Tuesday, but they do do a day called (when translated into English, obviously) "Fat Thursday" at some other point in the year he can't remember. But we don't believe him...

*In fact, (ironically, given that last comment?) that ancient library the Bible is full of irony, to the extent that I think it is God's favourite form of humour. (Which might make it well worth cultivating.) I don't think he's very keen on sarcasm, though.