Pancake Day and Easter Markets : I love European Holidays

Tuesday was UK's Pancake Day.

I did an international version with German flour, eggs, and buttermilk, Irish butter, and American buttermilk syrup.

Never heard of Pancake Day?  Neither had I : so I googled it : http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Pancake-Day/

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, Anglo-Saxon Christians went to confession and were "shriven" (absolved from their sins). A bell would be rung to call people to confession. This came to be called the “Pancake Bell” and is still rung today.

Shrove Tuesday was the last opportunity to use up eggs and fats before embarking on the Lenten fast and pancakes are the perfect way of using up these ingredients.

The pancake has a very long history and featured in cookery books as far back as 1439. The tradition of tossing or flipping them is almost as old: "And every man and maide doe take their turne, And tosse their Pancakes up for feare they burne." (Pasquil's Palin, 1619).

The ingredients for pancakes can be seen to symbolise four points of significance at this time of year:
Eggs ~ Creation
Flour ~ The staff of life
Salt ~ Wholesomeness
Milk ~ Purity

In the UK, pancake races form an important part of the Shrove Tuesday celebrations - an opportunity for large numbers of people, often in fancy dress, to race down streets tossing pancakes. The object of the race is to get to the finishing line first, carrying a frying pan with a cooked pancake in it and flipping the pancake as you run.

The most famous pancake race takes place at Olney in Buckinghamshire. According to tradition, in 1445 a woman of Olney heard the shriving bell while she was making pancakes and ran to the church in her apron, still clutching her frying pan. The Olney pancake race is now world famous. Competitors have to be local housewives and they must wear an apron and a hat or scarf.

Olney Pancake Race. Author: Robin Myerscough. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Each contestant has a frying pan containing a hot pancake. She must toss it three times during the race.  The first woman to complete the course and arrive at the church, serve her pancake to the bellringer and be kissed by him, is the winner.

Easter Markets

Saturday, we drove 45 minutes southeast to the charming town of Seligenstadt am Main to see the Europaischer Ostereiermarkt (European Easter Egg Market) 

The market was held inside the cloister of the basilica, which was great because it was raining again.

These are all real eggs covered with beads.

Here the artist is gluing the beads on one at a time.

These are real eggs of all kinds, perforated with a drill.  So incredibly fragile.

All the eggs are blown out and can be hung from trees.

Insects and . . . 

butterflies (note that those are tiny sculpted, perforated and painted eggs inside of other eggs.  Did you look closely at the prices?  50 € and 35 € for these two. 

This artist sculpts flowers and birds with clay which she puts on the eggs, which may be cut open and filled with more designs.

These are animals made out of eggs

This artist painted the eggs with watercolors.

This Slovakian artist paints or dyes the eggs, then paints the patterns on with wax.

There were some other arts available, including these woven ribbons/belts.  

I bought one of these.

Finally, the settings were as beautiful and creative as the eggs.

http://www.ostereiermaerkte.de/galerie.php