Super Blueberry Pancake Tuesday

At the Canucks at large household, we like to do things a little differently. May the parading and eating and antioxidizing and voting begin! Of course, we can't actually vote, but we can at least sit by and patiently wait. And we can eat pancakes.

The funniest part about this is that when he was making the pancakes with Kai this morning, Keith didn't actually realize that today is Fat Tuesday. Kai had made the suggestion last night that we should have blueberry pancakes soon, no doubt because of our glorious container of Costco blueberries. Keith decided to go ahead and make them today. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I'm guessing that Pancake Tuesday was discussed at preschool yesterday. (These things aren't always disclosed openly and honestly.)

***edited to add: I've just now realized, though speaking to a couple colleagues at work, that Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday, is not an American tradition, so perhaps some of my readers from South of the Border may be a little in the dark about the pancake eating. Scott - on Sunday when others were saying "Super Tuesday" and "Fat Tuesday", I said "Pancake Tuesday", and I don't know if you heard me, but I just figured it was the same as "Fat Tuesday". It turns out that it isn't, although they are both related to lent. When asked "why pancakes?" by one of my colleagues, I didn't really have an answer. I found these sites, which shed a little bit of light on the pancake tradition, or rather the pancake races. But then I found the following here, which actually explains WHY pancakes, and how the whole crazy pancake race thingy started.

Aren't traditions fascinating?

Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday is the last day before Lent. In earlier days there were many foods that observant Christians would not eat during Lent such as meat and fish, eggs, and milky foods. So that no food was wasted, families would have a feast on the shriving Tuesday, and eat up all the foods that wouldn't last the forty days of Lent without going off.

Pancakes became associated with Shrove Tuesday because they were a dish that could use up perishable foodstuffs such as eggs, fats and milk, with just the addition of flour. Pancake races are thought to have begun in 1445. A woman who was busy cooking pancakes in her kitchen lost track of the time on Shrove Tuesday and when she heard the church bell ringing, she woman raced out of her house and ran all the way to church; still holding her frying pan and wearing her apron.

Many Australian groups and communities make and share pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Selling pancakes to raise money for charity is also a popular activity.