Happy Pancake Day!

You may know this as Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, or the start of Lent, but when I was growing up it was Pancake Day in our house.  It's a tradition we followed in Nova Scotia that apparently came from the UK and stems from trying to use up the eggs and fat in a household before the start of Lent.  We never really observed Lent, but we kept up with the tradition of Pancake Day by having pancakes for dinner.  Perhaps it was because I had three brothers and sisters and some flour, eggs, milk and a little fat goes a long way to feed a big family.  We didn't just have pancakes - actually, now that I think about it, sometimes I think it was just pancakes. Hey, it was a big family.

I do love pancakes so I try to continue the tradition.  Tonight I whipped some up and made a couple of special pancakes.  Here's a T for Todd:

I know - it's a little rough, but the thought is there.

One thing we loved as kids - and was a pretty easy thing for Mom to do to humour us - was the Mickey Mouse pancake:

See it?  It's a Mickey Mouse pancake!  Or a bear pancake, or a googly-eyed frog pancake or three pancakes that just ran together.  Again, the thought is there.

I actually don't recall if Mom did this or not but one other tradition people used to do was put coins in the pancakes for kids to find.  Looking back on that now it just makes me think, "Mothers put small choke-sized objects into food items?!"  If someone did that now, Child Protection Services would take the kids out of the home.  Seriously though, back then if we thought money was in those pancakes the tiniest speck of non-pancake would not escape our attention.  

But still...