Yesterday was Pancake Day! AKA Shrove Tuesday. Pancake Day is the third best day in the world, the first being 'Talk Like a Pirate Day' and the second being my wedding anniversary. Who doesn't love a day devoted to food? I was going to include 'Nutella Day' in my catalogue of great days, but I believe it was only recently invented and frankly it was probably devised to sell more Nutella rather than bring people together in the spirit of cooking and eating. Pancake Day does so much more. It ticks all the right boxes: indulging in the joy of eating, trading hilarious pancake stories, smothering carbohydrates in chocolate, flipping flat things in frying pans and trying to eat floppy food off a fork while syrup dribbles down your chin.
In honour of Pancake Day, I devoured the above pancake complete with caramelised bananas and dark chocolate sauce and...then...ate my salad for lunch. It is rare that I eat desert first, but this was the day to do it. Ah, what a day it was! In the UK, not only do we eat pancakes, but we throw them up in the air and race with them in frying pans as illustrated by the annual Parliamentary Pancake Race in Westminster:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/gallery/2014/mar/04/mps-and-peers-flip-out-in-pancake-race-in-pictures
Who doesn't love their politics mixed with some frying pans? And while we are flipping those bad boys, how about devising a formula for the perfect pancake? Because we love combining pointless academic study and deserts:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/secret-perfect-pancake-discovered-1.358297
Other than just enjoying pancakes this week, I have:
- Imitated a Swede and eaten a Semlor. In Sweden, people celebrate the start of Lent by eating a brioche-like-bun filled with sweet almond paste and cream (like the one pictured below). Luckily I have a Swedish colleague and she brought some Semlor for us to sample yesterday morning. I loved it and I found that the best way to express my joy was by barking 'S'E-MM-LORE!' in a loud Swedish accent much to the hilarity of my colleagues.
- This week I witnessed around 300 people take Gynaecological and Obstetric exams. Like you usually do. Ah, nothing says fun fun fun like Gynaecology! I work at a prominent business school which just happens to be right next to a prominent college of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (right across the street in fact). Every week our students have lectures in this hallowed hall of reproductive learning. Partly because there is not enough space on our campus to house all of our hundreds of business students. This means that twice a week (sometimes twice in one day) I am required to go sort out our rather demanding lecturers and sleepy students in a building that contains not only endless photographs of new born babies and bronze statues of breastfeeding women, but a whole exhibition of cases containing ancient birthing equipment such as surgical saws and massive forceps. It is enough to put any women (childbearing age or otherwise) off the idea of childbirth or cervical smears. This week the building was populated by hundreds of anxious nurses, doctors and medical students all taking exams to pass their courses in gynaecology and obstetrics. I wish them well. Never have a I seen so many OBGYNs in one place. I hope they all pass those tricky exams, since I might find one of them treating me one day and I want to feel confident in their abilities.
- I learned this week that I am shit at football. In fact I already knew this from previous years of crap kicking and once trying out for the school football team when I was 9 years old. On that particular occasion I missed the goal, kicked the ball over the school wall, broke a car window and started off a car alarm. More recently my complete lack of eye/foot coordination has reinforced to me how I am never going have a career in the famous sport or earn the ridiculously inflated sums of money that professional footballers do. Ah well, at 30 years old, it was a bit late for me to become a professional athlete anyway. And at least I don't have to sell my soul to whatever little devil really inflated rich people do. But I do feel I could improve. It is hard to stay motivated in doing something if you suspect you may never actually get more skilled at the task in question. Are my kicks not getting a little better? Am I spending less time running after the ball, arms and legs flailing like a victim desperately fleeing Godzilla? My husband has wisely stayed quiet on this subject. He keeps trying to teach me how to do a 'header.' I have no desire to pitch my forehead at a ball of tightly compressed air, covered in mud hurtling towards my face. Instead I assume the protective foetal position and run away from the oncoming football with my head in my arms. To be fair to my husband, he is also shit at football and spends most of his time running after it himself (is that fair?!). Since my other half did not grow up with brothers or sisters (except for some distant much older half-siblings), I feel obligated to tease him mercilessly now, so that he can have the full authentic ball-game experience, and so every time he runs after the ball I yell 'Run Fat Boy Run!!!' Which is ironic since my husband is pretty skinny. He has now taken to kicking the ball high into the air and crying 'Run Fat Girl Run!' as a form of revenge. Unfortunately he badly times this by accidentally yelling at me whenever nice bystanders jog/walk/amble by. The look of horror on their faces at a man yelling abuse at a mud covered football chasing woman...is priceless.
- I learned this week that I am shit at knitting. Like football, I have done knitting before and have only just recently started again. Unlike football I think I could improve at this hobby. I find the whole experience very relaxing. I like to knit while watching House of Cards or Star Trek DS9 (strange choice of TV I know, but I am geek). I love all the different coloured wool and I think I might actually be able to get better with practice (see below my current project - a long knitted thingyamajig - note the holes which are accidentally dropped stitches that I can't figure out how to patch up). In fact my desire to improve at this woollen life-skill is so great that I have allowed myself to be recruited by my colleague Anna to knit jumpers for Penguins. Yes, you read correctly. Penguins apparently need knitwear. These poor little sea birds, who get caught up in oil spills across the world, need jumpers to prevent them from grooming their oily feathers and poisoning themselves.
- I also learned this week that apparently the newest theory regarding Stonehenge is that it was built to be some sort of giant xylophone. How historians know this is a mystery. I assume some academic or archaeologist has run around the site while banging on all the stones with some drumsticks in an attempt to play a stone-age version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Personally I like the idea that Stonehenge's purpose remains a mystery. It is this alluring unknown puzzle that fosters such creativity as Ylvis' (the Norwegian musical duo) famous Stonehenge song:
- It was revealed this week that Nigella Lawson is going to be on the cover of the April issue of Vogue. Without makeup. Yep, that is right, the famous baking Venus has posed for photos sans facepaint in a bid to show off her natural beauty. Personally I don't care what Nigella Lawson does and I have not formed an opinion on her appearance. Surely there are more important things in the world to think about (Pancakes people! Pancakes!). But I do object to Vogue treating us (the rest of humanity) as idiots. Take a look at these photos: http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/mar/04/nigella-lawson-makeup-vogue-cover?CMP=fb_gu - now, let me ask you, does that look like someone without makeup on? Please! Of course not! She at least has eyeliner, mascara, blusher and lipstick on. Trust me! I am woman. I don't wear much makeup. I see my face every morning when I brush my teeth and dribble toothpaste on to my clothes! I know what an unmade face looks like! And she is wearing a push-up bra too! Maybe if women's' magazines started showing realistic and truthful images of natural beauty, we would have a lot less inequality in society (for instance I don't see men spending hundreds of pounds on make-up each year) and more confident women and happy teenage girls. And we might all be judged more on what we do and how we act rather than how we look. After all beauty is only skin deep and make-up is not even THAT deep.
On that note, I am going to go smother my face in another pancake....for as we know, youth and beauty is fleeting but pancakes are forever.
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