Pan Cake Day / Lent

Who's joining me for lent this year? Get ready to bury yourself in stacks and stacks of pancakes first because Shrove Tuesday is this week 🥞 Otherwise known as Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday begins on the 26th February and launches the start of Lent for the following 40 days! Shrove Tuesday marks the last day before Lent, which for Christians is the traditional 40 days and 40 nights of abstinence ahead of Easter one of my favourite times of the year. Christians often mark Lent by abstaining from a whole range of rich foods such as butter, meat and milk, and in more recent times has seen people cut out treats such as biscuits, crips and chocolate similar to our popular lifestyle Detox program. Pancakes are historically eaten on this day so households could use up the sugar, fats and eggs in their cupboards before the fasting season began. Some also believe the four ingredients in a traditional pancake represent the four pillars of Christianity, with the flour representing the 'staff of life', the eggs 'creation', milk as 'purity' and salt as 'wholesomeness'. The world 'shrove' derives from the old English world 'shrive', meaning “to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of confession and penance", while the practice of flipping pancakes is attributed to an apocryphal story in which a woman rushed to church to confess her sins mid-way through making pancakes😂🙏🏼 Will you join me this year? To try it is to love it!