La Chandeleur in French. The only thing I know about this holiday is that it's crêpe day. That is, people traditionally eat crêpes on this day. We've been following that tradition for years. We make buckwheat crêpes with ham, mushrooms, cheese, and eggs as the main course, then follow up with sweet crêpes for dessert.We didn't do the sweet ones this year. Neither one of us had the energy thanks to this cold we've had.
I know Ken posted his photo of this earlier in the week. Just in cased you missed it...
My watch batteries have been replaced! The jewelry shop in Montrichard was good, except that there was a line when I went in and I had to wait about twenty minutes before the shop owner got to me, then two minutes to have the batteries done.
Thanks for all of your recommendations. I, too, used to go to a shopping mall when in the states where a stand sold watches and did battery replacements. It's been gone for years now, pre-covid, and since then I've been going to the local jewelry shop here in Saint-Aignan, now also gone. I wonder if someone else will reopen it?
It's such a shame when small shops close down, adding to the general air of decline in our towns.
ReplyDeleteYour crêpe looks delicious. In the UK we have pancake day, which is Shrove Tuesday or March 4th this year. I used to look forward to it so much as a child, mum making huge stacks of pancakes in the kitchen for the four of us, taking in turns to eat them one at a time as they were done. It was such a treat compared to the normal routine of "tea" after school - which we would now call dinner or supper!
I love national crepe day. Got into crepes in San Francisco. But my favorites were the sweet ones.
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ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Candlemas before I started teaching... because I wanted to explain to my students about the French Crêpe day, la Chandeleur . I'm sure that I used photos of your crêpes over the years, as yummy examples :)
ReplyDeleteDespite my being an American growing up in America, I always associated Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras, with pancakes... because in New Jersey, that seemed to always be "the thing"... lots of Catholic churches and Knights of Columbus halls doing pancake breakfasts for Mardi Gras (and calling it Shrove Tuesday). So.... the year that I was studying in France, I thought that maybe my au pair family in Paris would be doing crêpes for Mardi Gras... and they looked at me like I was nuts, and saw no connection to that, at all (and, I believe we may have done crêpes on Feb 2, and I probably didn't understand why). Out here in St. Louis, no one mentions the term Shrove Tuesday, they only say Mardi Gras, nor does anyone do pancakes for Mardi Gras. Instead, they do the New Orleans thing of the cake with the baby figurine baked inside (which, to me, should be done on Jan 6, for la fête des rois)... so, the cake is like the southern French brioche des rois and Spain's roscón de reyes for Jan 6, but with Mardi Colors of purple, lime green, and bright yellow. Ha! When I brought this up to someone from New Orleans, and said that they were doing the baby-inside cake the wrong day, whooooooaaaaaa nelly, did I ever get shot down.
It's all confused and fun and I'll eat whatever treat they want to put in front of me, any day :) (Oh, and I had never ever heard of jelly donuts being a thing for Mardi Gras, but that is apparently the treat of choice in Germany and Poland?)
I spent 3 years near Frankfurt but I never heard anything about jelly doughnuts!
ReplyDeleteI think you are supposed to sacrifice something to guarantee the spring?
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