Oy, why is it that I'm always missing things? February 28 was Pancake Day, and I forgot all about it. My first pancake day celebration was in February 1996, when I was spending my junior year abroad in England. I had already endured several months of culinary strangeness from my flatmates, and had been witness to myriad crimes against food. (Salad cream is scary enough as it is, do you really have to stub out cigarettes in puddles of the stuff?) Don't get me started on the used teabag collection. Although everyone knew how everyone else took their toast. I liked it "gently brown, no beans". Anyway, I was the only person in my flat who really cooked, so I was surprised to enter the kitchen one afternoon and find all my flatmates in a frenzy of stirring and frying what appeared to be... pancakes. Sure, they were using a mix, but it was still cooking. Pancake day! What a wonderful tradition. If you don't want to read the Wikipedia article linked to above, I'll tell you that Pancake Day is also Shrove Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent, aka Mardi Gras. So, since you're supposed to fast during Lent, all your eggs and milk would spoil unless turned into sweet, sweet pancakes and gobbled right down. Apparently the traditional toppings are powdered sugar and lemon juice, and the pancakes themselves are more crepe-like than American-style pancakes. All the former British colonies celebrate Pancake Day, except the United States! Are we really that jaded that we can't celebrate Pancake Day? We'd rather lift our shirts in exchange for plastic beads than eat a pancake or two. Oy. Can you keep a secret? I'd lift my shirt for pancakes. Girls Gone Wild - Pancake Edition