Happy Pancake Day!

I have very happy memories of Shrove Tuesday in our kitchen at home. We’d line the whole floor with tea-towels or old sheets, mix up a huge vat of pancake mix and take it in turns to lob the pancakes as high as we could, not minding if they fell on the floor. There were definitely a few that stuck to the ceiling! We had different fillings out on the table for our meal – I seem to remember we had to have one savoury and rest could be sweet. It is such a beautiful memory I have always kept it alive.

I cook vegan food at home. There are dozens of vegan pancake recipes (adding baking powder for thick bubbly pancakes, sugar, veg oil etc). I keep it super simple: just stirring flour and soya/rice milk together until I get a good consistency… I prefer spelt flour, half wholemeal/half refined. Here in India I use rice flour to avoid wheat. Sometimes I add vanilla essence, cinnamon, nuts or soft fruits like blueberries… Boom! Our toppings can be bananas, desiccated coconut, agave syrup, date syrup, hummus, cashew crème (soaked and blended cashews with lucuma/mesquite and a touch of cinnamon and agave). If you have a dehydrator there are amazing raw pancake recipes too (mango and banana mashed and spread out to dehydrate for example).

The meaning of the pancake…?

Mabon, my son, and I were chatting about pancakes meaning the beginning of Easter on the way home from kindergarten today. Shrove Tuesday hails the beginning of Lent from the Christian tradition. These 40 days leading up to Easter are traditionally a time of fasting, abstinence and penance. My understanding is that pancakes were made to use up the eggs, being considered a luxury that would be cut out in Lent.

In the past I have enjoyed the challenge of giving something up, but recently I prefer to add a discipline or loving way of being to the month, which seems to be more something Mabon, aged 5, can get involved with. I have been studying the five Yamas and five Niyamas recently, two of the eight limbs of yoga from Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras written in 200 AD. This lent I am going to take one aspect a week to focus on, or equally one yama could be chosen for the whole 40 days:

Yamas (External Codes of Conduct/Attidudes/Virtues for conscious living)

Ahimsa – Non-violence, non harm

Satya – Truth

Asteya – Non theft

Brahmacharya – Conserving Primordial energy

Aparigraha – Non-attachment, being un-possessive

Niyamas (Internal Codes for living/Precepts for individual discipline)

Saucha – Purity

Santosa – Contentment

Tapas – Disciplines, austerities to dissolve personal limitations

Svadhyaya – Self study

Ishvara Pranidanah – Surrender to God

 I have a strong suspicion Mabon will have much to teach me on embodying these guidelines! I will write up the experience each week... Here goes: Ahimsa!