Today is Pancake Day in the UK – it is a day celebrated throughout the world as the day before Ash Wednesday which is the first day of the Christian season of Lent. Traditionally Lent is a period of 40 days leading up to Easter when some Christians will fast (or maybe just give up some particular thing), and on Shrove Tuesday (pancake Day) people will have a great big meal to prepare themselves for the forthcoming fast.

Pancake Day is the British version of this day – in some other countries it is called Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras)which is also when you can find festivals throughout the world – the best and most famous probably being in Brazil (especially Rio and Salvador) and New Orleans.

Pancakes are thin cakes – made of a mixture called batter (which is made of eggs, flour and milk and then fried or heated in a pan). Different countries have different versions of what pancakes are - and also what you should put on (or in) them. English ones would normally have lemon juice and sugar!  There is also a tradition of tossing the pancakes – which is throwing them up in the air in the middle of cooking them and catching them in the pan again. You have to be very careful not to get them stuck on theceiling when you  trying this. There is also a tadition in England of a pancake race – where you have to run against other people holding the pan and the pancake and make sure you don’t drop them!

You can watch a film here of a traditional pancake day race…… Youtube pancake day race

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Life in London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.