It has be talked about for days, "mum how many days till pancake day?" then"I'm having syrup" and "I'm having lemon" has been said far too many times already that I feel like I have already ate a belly full of pancakes.
So the day comes and being my organised self, we leave it till today to buy the good old Jif.....why did I think this was a good idea? I always have flour in & our chickens keep us in a good supply of eggs so would it have been so hard to pick up a bottle of Jif last week?. We arrive at Tesco to find the space where Jif lives empty, not 1 bottle in sight, searching up and down the isles like I am searching for gold but I arrive back at the shopping trolley empty handed! You can not have pancakes without lemon so the search for Jif begins.
I struck gold! we located lots of happy little fake lemons of Jif in our local shop and I am not surprised that lots still sat in the box when they were priced at 80p per fake lemon. One fake lemon doesn't cover it so I bought 3, I begrudgingly handed over my £2.40 to the cashier knowing I had just been robbed, had I been organised I could have bought a big bottle for less than £2.40. I was also kicking myself that a few days prior to this I had thrown a bottle away because it had passed its used by date, I regret doing this because I am sure we would have come to no harm if we would have used it.
One bag of flour, 15 eggs, a cow worth of milk and a pinch of salt later, pancake production line begins, my husband at the hob and I positioned down the other end of the kitchen armed with strawberry syrup, golden syrup, sugar and that damn Jif. As usual in our house the youngest get fed 1st, T and R request strawberry syrup, okay R doesn't request this but it is what she is having. My husband successfully flips their pancakes into the air much to the kids amazement and then they settle down to their sticky pancakes.
Next up is the eldest 3, they all request different toppings and the kitchen slowly turns into a eye smarting work space(I think my pans have seen better days) My husband quickly gets the pancakes to me to cover in a sticky mess and the kids quickly devour every last bit. C my eldest put away pancakes so quick I am certain she forgot to chew! Whilst walking back from the dining table I catch R rubbing her hair with the syrup coated pancake, just as I go to stop her T wails that he has had enough! He is excused from the table after hardly eating half due to being a bit poorly and as I bend down to pick thrown pancake up off the floor that is when she gets me!. The sticky pancake hits me straight on the head whilst R let out a right good giggle. Not happy with just one piece hitting me she continues to throw the rest in my direction....it will be much easier when she learns the words I have finished!
We both look a right mess with sticky hair that has now gone hard enough that I am scared to move my hair just in case I snap a piece off. We will have to managed with sticky hair for a while because we had still not eaten, about 15 pancakes later we finally sit to eat our own, and they were delicious.
I had planned to take some pictures of the pancakes so I could write up our recipe but in all the madness I failed to do so.
Maybe next year will be less manic and I shall stock up on Jif
I am thankful Shrove Tuesday is just once a year
This is a lesson learned to prepare days earlier before an event rather than have to panic buying on that very day.
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