Thursday 4th February

The first thing to realise is that Pancake Day is a whole week earlier in France.  Easter is still the same as all over the world but pancake day, jour des crepes is not the beginning of Lent over here (Actually they do still have Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) festival next week but never mind.  So, we had our French Pancake Day two days ago.  Our very good friend Christine was having a special crepe night at her Chouette (Owl) Restaurant, and just for good measure our friend Rob (Elvis) Russell was playing too.  Christine had advertised that it was just crepes so we had eaten earlier and turned up around eight for our crepes.  But Christine had later decided to have a full menu and most people were eating one of four courses.  Never mind, we just had crepes and they were delicious.

But….of course, delicious as crepes are, they are not English pancakes.  They are smaller and very thin and tend to be cooked earlier and then folded and warmed up later.  As a boy we always had pancakes on Shrove Tuesday and we would eat them hot and straight out of the pan as Mum cooked them.  English pancakes tend to be thicker and fluffier.  We used to soak ours in lemon juice (plastic Jif as I remember) and loads of sugar.  The French like crème and Chantilly and all sorts of jam and Nutella with their crepes.  You also get a plate of 8 crepes at a time, far too many really – but needs must.

Rob sang beautifully all evening, and the highlight was an English, French rendition of “Wooden Heart” with Christine singing, and then a French ladies chorus of “Champs Elysee” and “If I Had A Hammer”.   In fact our table was the only English one, all the other were French guests, but we were made to feel really at home on this French Pancake Day.  Another brilliant night in Eymet.