Today is Big Fat Tuesday! It seems we have a big fat everyday of the week recently. But, today it is official. You must get ready for the fast begins tomorrow on Ash Wednesday. And that preparation requires us to eat, consume or do everything in excess before tomorrow when we fast! Much of the world calls this pancake day.  And it has nothing to do with IHOP or Dennys, even though IHOP does a great charity event each year. That event is on February 28^th this year – check it out: https://www.ihoppancakeday.com/pancake-day-details.html

Traditionally pancakes were made in order to use up the final fresh ingredients in the house. The ones that could not be used during lent like eggs. NO eggs for forty days. I wonder if the chickens knew that! How did they hold them in? Well trained I guess.   The first pancake recipe was in a cookbook dated back to the year 1439. But the best part of a great Shrove (Fat) Tuesday in Great Britain are the pancake races.  A pancake day race has been run on shrove Tuesday since 1445 in Olney village in Buckinghamshire.  And there after in almost every village in Great Britain. It is thought to have started when one busy housewife heard the shriven bell at the village church and ran straight there so as to not be late. She was still holding her frying pan! This apparently started the pancake race. Modern runners now dress up in aprons and bonnets while holding a frying pan and flipping a pancake. The rules are that they must toss the pancake at least once to start the race and once to end it. Silly, but really so much fun when everyone lines up on the village green and runs flipping pancakes!

In 2007, it was reported that Earlsdon Cottage, the Warwick Street were treated with perhaps the most decadent pancakes in the world. They were the most expensive at £95 ($185) per pancake.  The batter contained Madagascar vanilla beans and were topped with a Dom Perignon Champagne jelly and fruit mixture  that were flambéed in in £100-a-shot Louis XIV cognac, and a scoop of amaretto ice cream. Chef Alex Lovell created them and the event was a success. Hopefully worth the price tag – wow.

Here is the obligatory weird stuff that comes with a day like this. The largest cooked pancake was made to celebrate the Co-operative movement 150th anniversary. The largest cooked pancake was 15 meters in diameter and weighed 3 tons. It was cooked in Rochdale, England and was estimated to contain over two million calories.  And then in June of 1997, Ralf Laue from Leipzig tossed a pancake 416 times in two minutes. In the 24 October 1999 Mike Cuzzacrea ran a marathon whilst continuously tossing a pancake in a pan. It took Mike Cuzzacrea three hours, two minutes and 27 seconds to complete the event.

Whatever the way Fat Tuesday is celebrated across the world Do you give anything up for Lent. For some this is very sacred and others even non - Christians have adopted the practice in self-control. What will you do? Have you been inspired at least to have pancakes today? Whatever you choose, have a great Fat Tuesday.