Must have pancakes for dinner.
I did not grow up in a Catholic culture and so I am still learning about local customs…bumping up against yet another of them today. Pancake Tuesday. Historically for the faithful, Lent meant abstaining from eggs and all dairy products, so all of these had to be used up before Ash Wednesday, hence pancakes for dinner on Tuesday evening.
Well, when in Dublin, do as the Dubliners do, right? We’ll have pancakes for dinner. The Kiddies love ‘em anyway, it’ll be a popular decision in our household. ‘You better stop at a shop, Mom, cuz we don’t have any syrup left,’ chirps a young voice from the backseat.
Hmm….he’s right. Dash to our local shop cum newsagent round the corner. Check the shelves. No syrup. Um, do you happen to have maple syrup?’ I enquire, thinking that if Pancake Tuesday is such a popular cultural tradition then surely every shop will carry some. ‘We don’t carry maple syrup because we don’t generally use it.’ comes the polite reply, followed by, ‘And where are you from?’ Well obviously not here, I think, tipping my hand to my out-of-town-status. Rats.
So the nice young shop clerk informs me that pancakes are generally eaten in Ireland only once a year on this special Tuesday…thin crepes-loosely-called-pancakes drizzled with sugar and lemon juice or perhaps honey.
‘You don’t do that in America?’ Ah, how can I tell this young man that pancakes are an integral part of the North American breakfast, slathered in butter, drenched in maple syrup and partnered with sausage or bacon and eggs? If the Kiddies had a mother who would cook pancakes every Sunday morning, they’d be completely satisfied. So, what’s the draw of such a food? Well….it’s probably growing up on stories…legends….of how those who settled the American frontier, like Laura Ingalls Wilder, feasted on pancakes.
“When Almanzo trudged into the kitchen next morning with two brimming milk-pails, Mother was making stacked pancakes because this was Sunday. The big blue platter on the stove’s hearth was full of plump sausage cakes; Eliza Jane was cutting apple pies and Alice was dishing up the oatmeal, as usual. But the little blue platter stood hot on the back of the stove, and ten stacks of pancakes rose in tall towers on it.
Ten pancakes cooked on the smoking griddle, and as fast as they were done Mother added another cake to each stack and buttered it lavishly and covered it with maple sugar. Butter and sugar melted together and soaked the fluffy pancakes and dripped all down their crisp edges. That was stacked pancakes. Almanzo liked them better than any other kind of pancakes.” (excerpted from Farmer Boy)
Such was the stuff that I, as a North American girl, grew up on. So what did we do without maple syrup to drench our pancakes? Well, good ol’ American ingenuity gave us a fairly reasonable substitute voted unanimously delicious by the pancake-devouring-Kiddies…Golden Syrup with a hint of Black Treacle warmed in the oven to a nice pouring consistency.
