Happy Mardi Gras, Carnival, and Shrove Tuesday!
ChastMastr
Shipmate
in All Saints
What are people doing to celebrate?
🎷🦐🥞🎭🥳🎉
🎷🦐🥞🎭🥳🎉
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I was listening to "Prayer for the Day" on Radio 4 and learned something. Although I knew the origins of both "Shrove Tuesday" and "Mardi Gras", I'd never realised that "Carnival" comes from "saying goodbye to meat" for Lent. Makes sense though!
Pancakes will follow the ringing, when we get home again.
This week we are already in Lent (ahead of the West for once). For the first week in our church we have daily evening services, and for four nights (Monday - Thursday) we read parts of the penitential Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete. This is a good test of the bibical knowledge which is required to understand all the allusions - almost every verse refers to people and events recorded in the Bible.
IIRC, pancakes were included.
There was also an opportunity to make one's Confession to a holy Priest (before the meal, I suppose).
I gave a neighbour who is pregnant and not feeling great a wee care package of lemon juice, syrup and nutella for her pancakes. I'm not sure if she actually likes any of those, but she posted on Facebook that she was feeling low and wanted a pick-me-up, so at least she knows I tried.
I might make apple fritters later. (In France anything involving fried batter is considered appropriate for the occasion.)
What is the medieval Doom? Is it related to the video game? Or the “good” doctor?
Does one just put lemon juice on them, or lemon juice and sweetener, or…?
The more conventional batter - flour, egg, milk, plus sliced spring onion, went very well with the Gong Bao chicken. This btw is the origin of the now widespread Kung Po chicken, but a much subtler dish.
@Sandemaniac has just failed to toss his latest pancake, offering part of it to the floor...
And also doom! I'm liking the idea of a Medieval first person shooter, presumably with a crossbow.
In the sense of wall paintings, a Doom is a painting across the chancel arch, where the whole congregation could see it, with Christ in majesty at the centre flanked by the Apostles. To one side, usually the left, the righteous are lifted from their tombs by angels and raised to heaven while, on the other side, the sinful are dragged from their tombs by demons and fed into the gaping jaws (literally) of hell.
Here's the one in question.
They would all have been painted over in the course of the Reformation, hence referring to them as medieval, as later church wall paintings were very different.
I look at pancakes and crepes as at least relatives, myself.
The song from the one and only scene I’ve seen from Maid Marian and Her Merry Men is now in my head:
https://youtu.be/O1g_1EJrfnU?si=04rk1R3RfhwpRzkp
Thank you, I knew I was missing something obvious last night, but it simply wouldn't extract itself from the relevant neurons.
Not necessarily a funny pancake day song, more a reflection of my desire to spread the gospel of Half Man Half Biscuit
Finally, neither of us seems to have mentioned that Combe has some very, very nice bells, easy to ring for their weight, and as bells cast as a set (from the remains of those destroyed when a bonfire in the manor garden spread to the ivy on the church tower) they sound very mellifluous - once you are out of the direct line of the louvres, in which they are simply LOUD!.
Pannekoek recipes use all-purpose flour, a little vinegar and baking powder for a fluffier texture although the batter should b4e fairly substantial. They are, IMO, closer to flapjacks or crumpets than English pancakes or crêpes.
There is no other way, and I duly consumed my pancakes with lemon and sugar last night. The kids, on the other hand, had theirs with maple syrup, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and M&Ms.
Mmm...Camembert...
I've eaten pannekoeken, similar to those you describe, when in the Netherlands. I seem to recall a wide variety of fillings, sweet and/or savoury.
If you get the chance to watch more I highly recommend it.
That song is a great favourite of the littlest twanglet we have a version for bin day!!
Managed to use the Pancake one as a warm up for a kids music group yesterday.
* most do, but a reasonable number don't...and not just Fridays.
It will be strange to celebrate Carnaval during Lent but the locals put so much effort into their floats and costumes, it would really be a terrible shame to mothball them for a whole year just because God answered our prayers for very-much needed rain.
AFF
Updated early today - our Carnaval is "cancelado por el año". I feel so sorry for our little town whose people put so much thought and creativity and expense into our Carnaval.
If it rains again through Semana Santa it will be a true disaster!
AFF
Hope your businesses aren’t too badly impacted.
Thank you dear. I know there are a lot of disappointed people but Semana Santa would be a much bigger catastrophe. Crossing fingers for good weather that week.
AFF
(as an aside, we here at primary and high school have swimming and athletic "carnivals", where we race, throw the shotput/discus/javelin, high jump... annually. I was talking to a Ukrainian about this who was terribly confused as the only "carnival" she had encountered was that along the line of Brazil's and she was wondering how swimming races were combined with that! 😁)