Fun facts for Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday, which this year occurs on Tuesday March 5, marks an important point in the Christian calendar. Although it is celebrated in many different ways throughout the world, for many Christians, Shrove Tuesday involves feasting on pancakes and, in fact, many people also refer to it as Pancake Tuesday. This because it occurs right before Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of Lent, traditionally a period of fasting for Christians.

Before the fasting, people would therefore use up whatever staple foods they had left in their larder such as flour, sugar, eggs and milk. These ingredients to make pancakes, and it’s a tradition which has survived to this day.

Here are some fun Pancake Day facts to get you in the mood:

1. Pancake Day depends on when Easter occurs and so is a moveable feast. It can fall anywhere between February 3 and March 9.

2. Many towns in England conduct pancake races on Pancake Day. This involves running for about a quarter of a mile with a frying pan and tossing the pancake in it. It is believed the first Shrove Tuesday pancake race took place in Buckinghamshire in 1445.

3. Not all countries traditionally eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. They eat meat which has been preserved in salt in Iceland while in Finland they eat pastries and pea soup. Polish people eat a traditional pasty called paczki while in Lithuania they also eat donuts on Pancake Day.

4. American pancake chain IHOP give away free pancakes on Pancake Day to raise money for charity.

For more facts about customs and traditions check out the books at www.mediahitt.com.

National Chili Day: Six interesting chili facts

National Chili Day is observed each year on the last Thursday in February and celebrates a dish which has become hugely popular across the United States. It’s thought that chili was first brought to the US by Mexican immigrants, but the dish itself has its roots in Spain.

Here are some interesting facts you may not know about chili.

San Antonio in Texas became famous as the first place in the United States to make chili popular. It was thought that a group of travelers from the Spanish Canary Islands who had moved there in the early 1700s began cooking a dish with meat and peppers that were growing locally.

Such was the popularity of chili in Texas that the dish became known as ‘a bowl of red’.

The first recorded chili cook-off is believed to have taken place in Terlinga, Texas in 1967. The cook-off ended in a tie between a cook from New York and a chili maker from Texas, so local pride was maintained.

Hot chili can help you lose weight as the chili peppers can cause a thermodynamic burn inside the body which is turn quickens the body’s metabolism.

There is the same amount of vitamin C in one green chili pod as you would find in an orange.

The 36th President of the United States and Texas native Lyndon B Johnson was a huge fan of chili. His favorite chili recipe actually contained venison instead of beef. The recipe, which was known as Pedernales River chili, proved hugely popular throughout the country so much so that Johnson’s wife Lady Bird Johnson had the recipe printed on cards and sent out to those who had requested it.

Read up on all sorts of food facts and other interesting pieces of trivia with the books at www.mediahitt.com.