A Gardener’s Miscellany
This week it’s:
Pancake Day!
What does Shrove Tuesday have to do with gardening? Read on to find out…
NEXT Tuesday, 25 February, is Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. It always falls 47 days before Easter Sunday, so the date varies each year. It’s the last day before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent – a time of fasting – and so the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before the Lenten fast. Pancakes were the perfect way of using up these ingredients. Putting religious significance aside, there is no better a time to look at pancakes, their ingredients and their gardening connections.
■ There is a lovely creeping juniper (Juniperus horizontalis) called ‘Pancake’. A compact, spreading evergreen conifer with grey-green leaves, it sometimes produces oval, fleshy, dark-blue cones.
Basic ingredients
A pancake is a flat batter cake, fried in a pan, and a traditional English pancake is thin and served immediately. It comprises
