pancake day party

…only a little early. Joanna came up with the great idea of having a pancake party on Shrove Tuesday (tomorrow) so we sent out all the invitations via text and the wonderful facebook, only to realise we were busy on Tuesday. Luckily the promise of pancakes is a big incentive for visitors and nearly all our guests said they could still come on Saturday so we just moved it forward a few days!

It was a wonderful celebration of our Britishness in this foreign country, with French-style crepes and thick American pancakes with chocolate chips and bananas (inspired by Jack Johnson’s song). We had more people in our house than we have ever had yet – 17 in our teeny weeny flat!! Feeding them involved making five quantities of American pancakes (from my friend Laurel’s recipe – I made them for her kids when I babysat one evening), and four quantities of crepes (from James Martin‘s recipe. I love this man!).

What was really great was that we had invited pretty much every person we know in this city – four of our guests we had only met last Sunday! But despite them being assorted from three different churches and two workplaces, everyone got on really well and we had such a fun evening, not getting to bed until well after 1am.

And the final bonus was realising that so many people had taken us up on our request to “bring your favourite pancake topping” that we have enough nutella to last us until the end of our stay here!