Today is an important day in the Christian calendar, Shrove Tuesday. But I live in a country that embraces and recognises many religions, Christianity, Catholicism, Hindu, Muslim, Judaism, Buddhism, Jedi just to name a few. My home country also recognises and respects the right not to follow a religious doctrine. You can be an atheist or agnostic in Australia and not be considered unusual.
But what does this mean when we recognise, celebrate and even have national holidays because of these Christian events on our national calendar? Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Christmas Day, Shrove Tuesday?? We hard-working Australians who do not believe in God or a God say “Thank you very much” and we enjoy the day (or days) off work that these days of recognition afford us.
On these days of holiday some of us do absolutely nothing. We might just go vegetarian for a day because we grew up being told that you didn’t eat meat on Good Friday and this is a hard habit to break. Some of us make the effort to visit family or friends and share in some of the fundamental good theory of religion, that of cherishing loved ones. Others visit the holy shrines known as shopping centres because, sadly, we’ve forgotten the art of visiting family or friends.
On Shrove Tuesday at my house we eat pancakes. Why this day has become known as Pancake Tuesday is a job for Google…..
Pancakes are eaten on this day because they contain fat, butter and eggs which were forbidden during Lent. Shrove Tuesday is celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday and is therefore the final day before the commencement of Lent, a Christian festival leading up to Easter Sunday (Easter Day).
I remember when I was little, mum used to make us eat a ‘real’ dinner before we could have pancakes. We eventually rebelled and convinced her that we didn’t want the ‘real’ dinner as it didn’t leave us enough room to eat lots of pancakes. (We didn’t have pancakes very often, only once or twice a year) It took a long time but we eventually won this battle. 🙂
Tonight, because it was Pancake Tuesday and for no other reason that this, we just had pancakes for dinner. And they were delicious.
A photo a day for 365 days.........and beyond 
In the olden days my family used to have pancakes every sunday night for tea (which is what the evening meal is called in tasmania). My father would cook them. Then eventually we kids took over.
Its all fizzled a bit because gluten free pancakes are not as nice.
Our favourite version was what i call the sinner simmul special because we got this topping from our friends the simmuls. Try it, its a killer!
Spread hot butter over your hot pancake, add golden syrup and then sprinkle on sugar and lemon juice. ( unbelieveable, but sadly not on g.f.)
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Butter, golden syrup, lemon juice AND sugar???? Going to have to try this combo.
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