French crepes

France has a famous pancake style called crepes. Thin and wide wheat flour pancakes.  Crepes are well known throughout Europe as very thin pancakes normally covered in something sweet like sugar.  Crepes are made with a thin batter. A thin batter makes a thin pancake a thick batter makes a thick pancake.

The Nice Carnival in France is one of the world's major carnival events.

 

Mardi Gras is French for ‘Fat Tuesday’. This refers to the beginning of Lent. A time for going without. The story goes that a famous prophet called Jesus went walking in the dessert with no food for 40 days and then found something special. Now people celebrate this by eating eat thin pancakes crepes and have street parades with floats and music.

 

Christians give symbolism to the four ingredients:

• Eggs ~ Creation

• Flour ~ The staff of life

• Salt ~ Wholesomeness

• Milk ~ Purity

 

Each year, a special theme is chosen and artists create floats and other figurines in traditional papier-mâché for the colourful parade. The parades take place day and night. It starts the week before Lent and uses up all the food to make pancakes.