Pancake Day
As I write this there are children all over Britain getting very excited about a fairly simple food: pancakes. There are only three basic ingredients for these (four if you count a pinch of salt) and the preparation instructions are "mix together and pour into a frying pan". This makes it easy enough for anyone to make so why do most people in Britain only eat pancakes once a year, much less often than here in Poland?
Imagine life without a fridge, in the days long before electricity. Now imagine leaving some eggs and milk in your kitchen for about six weeks. Not a pretty sight, or a pretty smell, is it? Well, if you are going to stop eating them for forty days it is a good idea to use up any supplies you still have
Why stop eating them? That's to do with something called Lent, when a lot of Christians give things up until Easter. Britain is now mainly secular, but parts of this religious tradition are still practised today. Now, what is a good way to make use of the milk and eggs in one evening? Simple: mix them with some flour and cook them in a frying pan. You can't find many recipes that are easier and it take almost no time before they are ready.
As you can imagine, people go out and buy more eggs and milk just to make the pancakes. As a result the last day before Lent is called Pancake Day. Its older name was Shrove Tuesday. And, like Christmas, it's mainly for the children. Guess what the most popular way of serving them is (the pancakes, not the children)? Believe it or not, spreading jam on them is only the second most popular, and cottage cheese is out of the question. The number one choice is sprinkling sugar and lemon juice on your pancake. The pancake is now a 'special' food so this is why some people only eat them on this one day.
By the time you read this, the results of the 2006 pancake racing competition will be known. This started a long time ago. A woman who lived in a village in England was making pancakes when she heard the church bell ringing for the evening service. She ran to the church so that she would not be late. However, she was still wearing her apron and holding her frying pan. The other villagers thought this was funny and decided to have a race each year. The pancake must be tossed in the air three times between the start and the finish and the prize is a small purse of coins. A town in America competes against a town in Britain each year to see who can be the fastest. The last time I saw the results, America was leading by two races.
Glossary
a pancake naleśnik
an ingredient składnik
a pinch szczypta
a frying pan patelnia
a fridge lodówka
supply zapas
to sprinkle posypać
an apron fartuch
a villager mieszkaniec
to toss podrzucić
a purse portmonetka
to compete konkurować
After Shrove Tuesday/Pancake Day some people give up things for the next forty days (e.g. they give up sugar or smoking). If you give something up you stop doing it. Can you think of other words in English that are connected with stopping?
f _ _ _ _ _
q _ _ _
e _ _
h _ _ _
t _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
f _ _ _ _ _
KEY
finish quit end halt terminate freeze
A frying pan is a kitchen utensil (a piece of kitchen equipment). What are the names for these utensils?
- Something for cutting cheese or carrots into very thin strips a few millimetres wide.
- Something with thousands of tiny holes which you pour flour or sugar through.
- A special type of knife for taking the skin off vegetables and apples.
- A wooden cylinder for flattening pastry
- A long, flat piece of wood or plastic for stirring or spreading food.
- Something for taking soup from a saucepan and putting it into the soup bowl.
- Something made of pieces of wire for beating eggs.
KEY
- a grater
- a sieve (you pronounce it so that it rhymes with 'give')
- a peeler
- a rolling pin
- a spatula
- a ladle
- a whisk