Lancaster Diary
2/11/05
So
last Tuesday was Pancake day here in England. I was curious about
the origins of Pancake Day and none of my roommates seemed to have a
clear idea of its origins so I did some research and here's what the
BBC website said about it,
"Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the traditional feast day before
the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday. Lent--the 40 days leading up to
Easter--was traditionally a time of fasting and on Shrove Tuesday
Christians went to confession and were "shriven" (absolved from
their sins). It was the last opportunity to use eggs and fats before
embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of
using up these ingredients."
Now, to our surprise, pancakes in England are not the same as
American pancakes. Pancakes here are closer to what we'd call
crepes, they're very thin and eggy and are traditionally served as a
dessert with sugar and lemon juice sprinkled on top. Now Jen and I
were unaware of this tradition so we had pancakes for lunch, we
didn't know about the lemon and sugar thing either so we attempted
some chocolate chip pancakes--which didn't actually work out so well
because thin English pancakes don't hold the chips as well as fluffy
American ones. However, later that night our roommates had a pancake
party and I tried pancakes their style, and it was really good with
the lemon and sugar. I think powdered sugar might work better than
granulated but it surprisingly served very well as a dessert and we
had loads of pancakes!
Our
adventure of the week took place on Thursday. In an attempt to get
out of our rooms and get some exercise and fresh air Jen and I
embarked on a walk in some unfamiliar territory. All was going well
aside from an encounter with some ornery geese and the peril of
being pedestrians on a road with speeding cars non-existent
sidewalks and blind corners. Then, on the way back we decided to
explore a new route which led us down a little road and met up with
what I assumed was a public footpath since there was a sign pointing
in that direction that said "public footpath." Now whether it ever
actually was a footpath I don't know, because we climbed a fence to
follow it and ended up in what looked like a field. At the end of
the field was another fence which we climbed over and then we were
left with a choice of two routes. One led us through an underpass
beneath the highway in the opposite direction from where we wanted
to go, and the other was another fenced in field. After
investigating the tunnel which we found was covered in sheep dung,
we decided to head through the field to get back to the main road we
had initially followed. This was easier said than done however when
upon hopping the second fence we found that the ground was quite
saturated and muddy. Despite our best attempts at hopping on stones
and tip-toeing around mud holes we both ended up sunk to our ankles
in mud.
As we were crossing through the last field that would lead us back
to the road, we noticed two things. One, there didn't seem to be a
gate on the other end that we could hop over to get back to the road
and two, there was a flock of sheep on the far side of the field and
no fence between them and us. We hurried through the field and ended
up hopping a rickety, broken down fence to get out. We sloshed our
way home in our muddied sneakers (here's a picture) and decided not
to stray from the road in an attempt to follow non-existent
footpaths again.
P.S.- for all you mom's out there, we threw our sneakers and our
jeans into the wash right away and everything came out clean as new.
Erica
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