Did you enjoy having a little toss the other day? I’m talking pancakes of course.
We all know the story behind Shrove Tuesday even if we’re not entirely sure what a shrove is. Many, many years ago the baby Jesus wanted to get away from it all with a nice break and decided to make sandcastles in the desert.
Before he went the locals decided he’d need feeding up before going out there.
“Would you like a nice plate of fatted calf?” they asked.
“No thank you,” replied Jesus.
“What about a nice bit of steak? Scotch egg? Findus crispy pancake? Artic roll? An Easter egg?”
“No, what I want is some really thin fried batter with a bit of sugar and lemon on it,” replied Jesus.
“We’re out of lemons Jesus. All we’ve got is this old plastic lemon with juice in that we haven’t used for a year.”
“That will be fine as long as I get to squirt it myself. Oh and you’re not allowed to turn the pancake with a spatula, you’ll have to flip it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the son of God and I say so.”
That is why we still eat pancakes to this day. This year I decided to have a complete meal with two savoury cheese and ham pancakes and then two sweet ones with sugar and lemon. To make it interesting I added a Jack Bauer sense of pressure. Once the first pancake was ready I slid it onto the plate and immediately poured the next load of batter into the pan. I now had the time it took for the next pancake to cook to eat the first one. I did this through all four pancakes whilst imagining being shouted at by a terrorist.
Terrorism lost that day, indigestion had a minor victory.