Status updates on Facebook from several friends reminded me that today is Shrove Tuesday, aka Pancake Day. Pondering the distribution of the updates, I noticed that most of them came from the UK, where I celebrated Pancake Day 2005. Prior to that, I wasn’t aware of Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day except as Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is the more common name for the day and celebration in the US — except, notably, as part of some church traditions, whence the remaining status updates about pancakes came.

Seeing all this and recalling fond memories of Pancake Day 2005, I decided to make pancakes tonight for dessert. But while eating them, I realized it’s a strange thing for me to do. It’s isolated from its UK cultural context because I’m in the US, and I don’t belong to the religious traditions that would make it appropriate for me to do it here.

Furthermore, Pancake Day started as a way to use up extra oil and eggs, or so says Wikipedia. But I made Vegan Dad’s sweet breakfast crepes, which have only a tiny amount of oil and no egg (being vegan). They’re also really crepes, obviously, not pancakes, but the pancakes I had in the UK were really a lot more like crepes anyway, so it made sense. (I actually used silken tofu rather than the flaxseed, and it worked just as well, maybe better, so that was a happy substitution.)

I also departed from tradition in using lime instead of lemon for the flavoring liquid (lemon and sugar is the usual).

Not a traditional way to celebrate the holiday, but maybe it’ll become my traditional way of celebrating it!