pancake day

For food lovers in the UK, today is a great day, up there with Christmas and Easter. For today is Shrove Tuesday, or as most people now call it: Pancake Day.

Traditionally Shrove Tuesday has been the last day before Lent and therefore a last chance to eat before a time of fasting. However ever since pancakes were introduced into the celebrations, this has been taken to extreme measures. Pancakes are one of those foods that are so delicious that you carry on eating them even when you're full up.

Sitting down with your trouser buttons undone? You can fit another couple of pancakes in. Lying on the floor groaning? Oh well, there is always room for one more.

The Fillings

The recipe for pancakes (which you can see below) is fairly standard, but it is the endless choice of fillings that really spices things up. You can always complete your pancakes with savoury fillings, but we are all about the sweet:

As part of Foreign Fridays, we explore a different country each week through its most unusual, amusing and odd facts. If you want your country to appear, then simply get in contact with us either in the comments below or through Facebook or Twitter.

This week it is the turn of the England:

The world record number of people to simultaneously flip pancakes together is 890, set in Sheffield a week before Pancake Day in 2012.

Tuesday next week is Shrove Tuesday. Traditionally a deeply religious day, it is the day before the start of lent. However, as with most religious festivals these days in Britain, it is now all about food. And in England, one food in particular: pancakes.