melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2011-03-09 01:45 pm

(no subject)

Yesterday was Shrove Tuesday! My second favorite holiday of the Christian year. Who else got shriven? And by shriven I mean stuffed to bursting with pancakes, doughnuts, fastnachts, malasadas, or other unhealthy fried bread of choice? :D (p.s. why is there no H50 Malasada Day fic yet?)

I was offline pretty much all day yesterday helping with the pancake supper at church. And by "helping" I mean mostly "taking pictures" because the local paper put in a notice that they wanted people to send in photos of church Shrove Tuesday suppers to publish in the paper and I got appointed as official photojournalist.

It's was really weird, because when I take photos of events and things to post on here, I am used to taking photos that have no identifiable people in them, because I was trained that you don't post people's pictures online without explicit permission, for privacy reasons. But the local paper wants the photos to have people in them, because the whole reason they do this kind of thing is because people will buy extra papers when someone they know got their picture in.

And in fact, I know for a fact that some of the people I photographed yesterday, and then sent off to the paper, with full first and last names appended, are people who would freak out about sex criminals and identity theft and whatever else if they thought I was going to post the photos unlocked on my website. And yet they happily mugged for the camera when I said we were sending them to the Gazette. Despite the fact that the Gazette is putting them on their website.

I don't know sometimes, man.

So anyway, I sorted out the ones with identifiable people in them and sent them to the paper. Here are the ones without people in them, for anyone who has wondered what a Shrove Tuesday celebration at an American protestant church is like:


Ingredients
Walnuts, bananas, and blueberries, ready for the batter-mixers to get there and start mixing them into batter. (Our chief batter-mixer is about 97 years old and we cannot start until she is ready.)

fruit cup
Cups of canned fruit cocktail ready for serving. (We used to do baked apples but then someone decided canned cocktail was easier.)

sausage
20 POUNDS OF SAUSAGE.

table
Table decorations - we go for a vaguely Carnival theme with beads and bright colors mostly because there *is* no real decoration theme for Shrove Tuesday, except maybe just a general Spring thing, and that gets saved for Palm Sunday and Easter.

flip
Pancake-flip action shot!

bananas
Slicing bananas for the banana pancakes.

batter
Batter mixing action shot! (We go through about twenty boxes of dry pancake mix a year.)

Pour
Pancake-pouring action shot!

My dinner
Banana, blueberry, walnut, and plain, + sausages + butter and syrup + fruit + milk.



Alas, these pictures only go through about halfway through the evening, because somebody knocked my camera off a table while I was be-gloved and flipping pancakes, and I didn't get it working again until I got home. So you don't get any pictures of the bit at the very end where me and pastor's kid were under orders to use up the rest of the batter and started getting creative with pancake shapes. :D
holyschist: Image of a medieval crocodile from Herodotus, eating a person, with the caption "om nom nom" (Default)

[personal profile] holyschist 2011-03-09 11:40 pm (UTC)(link)
I suddenly want to try making pancakes with baked apples in them.
holyschist: Image of a medieval crocodile from Herodotus, eating a person, with the caption "om nom nom" (Default)

[personal profile] holyschist 2011-03-12 10:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I may have to try it! Probably drain the apples some first so they're not too liquidy....
fenellaevangela: pink flowers (Default)

[personal profile] fenellaevangela 2011-03-10 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
That sounds like a nice time :-D I threw some pancakes and bacon together for my family but a big event sounds a lot more fun.

In fact, I was the only one in the family who remembered it was Shrove Tuesday XD
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2011-03-10 01:54 am (UTC)(link)
Awww, I wish my church did cool stuff like that! I mean, I didn't even have any food yesterday that was in the spirit of Shrove Tuesday! And now I'm craving pancakes....

Also, I am fascinated by your observation about photography and the internet/newspapers. It is so true!
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2011-03-13 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
I know! It's tragic.

Except I'm graduating from university in a month and a half (aaaah!) and moving cities, so I will no longer be at the same church. So....not so much a possibility, then, with me starting one!
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[personal profile] qem_chibati 2011-03-10 09:32 am (UTC)(link)
I did! Crepes (with chicken and avocado) for lunch, pancakes (with potato) for dinner, pancakes (with chocolate and strawberries) for desert. I was happy :D