A DAD'S LIFE:Treat provides a little excitement in the culinary routine, writes ADAM BROPHY
THE YOUNGER loves her bed. She’s never in any great rush to get into it, but dragging her out is a daily project. This is her at six. At 16, I expect her to be conscious about four hours a day.
Last Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, I began the extrication in the usual gentle fashion. Any aggression will cause her to dig deeper into the covers and cling like a limpet. She has to be eased into the daylight. School, she claims, is the reason she never wants to rise. A standard method to accelerate the process is to remind her of activities later in the day.
“You’ve ballet this afternoon. Come on, you better help me get your gear together.”
“Nuh,” she gurgles from in there somewhere, “none today. Teacher said it was cause it’s Pancake Tuesday.”
“You serious?” I’m always caught between two stools in these situations. Relief at not having to do another run in the middle of the day and fiscal indignation because whatever I’ve paid through the nose for isn’t being provided for the flimsiest of reasons.
“Nuh. Only messing.”
Then she sits up with more energy than is normally mobilised before dinner and stares me down. “Have you got the pancake stuff?”
She is disgusted at how ill-prepared I am for one of the biggest days of the year, running only a short way behind Christmas Day, birthday and Easter Sunday in the piggery calendar. But I see an opportunity and tell her to get her clothes on fast so she can check the cupboards in the kitchen and tell me what we need. She’s downstairs in a world land-speed record, rifling the fridge and presses with an intensity that implies a career as chef beckons.
Pancakes have transcended generations. Like Easter eggs and Christmas dinner, they provide a little excitement in the culinary routine. And, like the other two, they’re pretty straightforward, they could be eaten every day, but even if they are they don’t taste as good as on this particular Tuesday when gorging is not only permitted but actively encouraged.
Another habit to have lasted through the decades is the pancake brag. I sit and watch them force as many as possible down when clearly the pleasure is gone and listen to the pancake myths of yore: “Ciara said she had seven last year.” “Donal said his brother had 11.” “How many have you had?” “Six. You?” “Six too.”
I know they’ve had four each; I cooked them, but this is part of it. Pancake lying in my day could get into the 20s and 30s. You’d hear about parents who would cook all day so when the kids arrived home they would be greeted by steaming mounds of pancakes, drizzled in lemon juice, honey, chocolate sauce. No mention of blueberries or pecans in toffee sauce then. Maybe bananas and sugar. These were houses of myth. Homes to gigantic pancake liars.
Some kids attempted blasé. They had pancakes all the time. Their parents had brought home a pancake-maker from the States and they could have them for breakfast whenever they wanted. We oohed at this but knew secretly that these couldn’t be proper pancakes, must have some alteration in their genetic make-up. Nobody could take that sort of pleasure at their leisure.
Even now, when we juice vegetables and smoothie fruit, lace our porridge with mixed berries, double cream and flax seed oil, poach Eggs Benedict and grind our own coffee beans, we don’t mess too often with the pancake. They are offered occasionally as a “show-off” when guests have stayed over, but we know well enough not to indulge, not to spoil the one day when they wear a crown. It’s the same reason turkeys get to prance around for 11 months of the year and that jar of cranberry sauce gathers dust.
There’s a regular complaint that kids’ senses are overloaded. Their access to satellite TV, online gaming and mobile phones means they need everything immediately. Maybe so, but it also means that they need the myth even more. They need the days segregated from the rest to be further highlighted. If only for that reason, pancakes should be outlawed the rest of the year to ensure this Tuesday stays important.
It gets my younger one out of bed. It gets her and her sister cooking. It gets them sitting down at the same time as their parents to be fed. It makes them fib about their own gluttony and, most of all, it gives me an excuse to join in.