Pancakes.
The tradition of Shrove Tuesday didn’t hold much weight in our house. Not that we didn’t mark it with the ritual eating of pancakes; we did, but we also marked every Thursday with them too. Part of childhood routine that parents must find themselves marking their days by - on Tuesdays we had 40p to go to the shop and buy sweets with after school. On Wednesday mornings my brother had a cooked breakfast to keep him going through swimming at school later on (I think I stayed in bed and stuck with Shreddies). On Fridays we had crisps in our lunchboxes. And on Thursdays we had pancakes.
My dad was best at them. My brother and I would sit at the kitchen table looking expectantly at him and the pan, condiments at the ready - sugar for us both, orange quarters for him, lemons for me - and then we’d wolf them down one by one as they arrived on the table. Dad would get the cold ones at the end, normally the ones that were a bit more burnt than the rest.
I’ve been thinking about North Staffordshire oatcakes all week, pancakes must be some kind of relation to them - a close cousin perhaps? There’s so little food in the house that I had porridge for lunch, and to tide me over until dinner I decided to make pancakes. I ought to ask which recipe my dad uses - but damn, Delia, this tastes like home.
