Fat Tuesday

Having grown up in a counter-Reformation church tradition, Lent, like most Christian holidays apart from Easter and Christmas, passed me by with little notice. To my memory we never had any Lenten observations in my home church. But most of Christendom observes Lent, which begins tomorrow, and celebrates on Shrove (or Fat) Tuesday, today. According to the food writer for the Los Angeles Times, pancake or crepe suppers are part of the tradition:

In England and here in the U.S., many churches mark the day with pancake suppers; it's also a day when people who don't ordinarily make crepes will get out their battered French crepe pan to make the thin French pancakes. As I wrote a year ago in a story about crepes, the tradition was born from kitchen economy: Cooks made pancakes or crepes in order to use up eggs, butter and milk before Lent.

I'll be celebrating Fat Tuesday at the caucuses tonight.