Pancake Tuesday, also known as Fat Tuesday (or in French, Mardi Gras,) was named after the tradition of making pancakes to use up all the eggs, milk, and sugar in the larder before giving up those rich foods for the 40 days of Lent. Suckers.
I'm not giving up anything for Lent, but I made pancakes anyway!
I had to go with the purple lid from my new EasyLunchbox Brights for this lunch!
You can pretend the string cheese nibblets in the silicone star cup are a string of Mardi Gras beads. I couldn't find my natural toffee licorice rope.
I put a dye-free purple star gummy (Whole Foods) on the purple pancakes, and maple syrup (the real kind!) in the green little sauce container on the green ones.
Just to jazz up all the "plain" foods, I added a jester hat pick and some Mardi Gras mask picks (found at a bake shop.)
I wanted to try and use the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold. So I made up my pancake batter (using this recipe - only I used whole wheat flour and subbed in around 4 Tbsp pumpkin mash instead of oil) and divided it up into three bowls. I added turmeric to one, until I chickened out worrying that it would taste too spicy; finely chopped spinach to another (knowing from previous attempts to use spinach as food coloring is useless without a juicer,) and finely chopped beet to the third. None of them got as rich a color as I wanted, and I didn't want to risk affecting the flavor too much, so I ended up adding a bunch of natural food color liquids that I keep on hand. Since the batter was already fairly yellow, I just added a bunch of the blue to make green. And the natural blue is pretty greenish already anyway. And for the purple, I just used the red colorant, since it's made from beets, so it's pretty purpley anyway.
Normally pancakes hate me and try their best to thwart my plans, but these ones turned out okay. They didn't burn, flop in half, bloob out all over everything, or any of the other problems I normally encounter. But other than coloring the batter, I wasn't trying for anything fancy either! The colors are somewhat faded, and the brown from cooking masks what little color there is. Oh well. I'll take that over a batch of ruined pancakes in the compost any day!
I'm not giving up anything for Lent, but I made pancakes anyway!
I had to go with the purple lid from my new EasyLunchbox Brights for this lunch!
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| Spinach, turmeric, and beet pancakes, string cheese nibblets, maple syrup, star gummy, sugar snap peas, raspberries |
I put a dye-free purple star gummy (Whole Foods) on the purple pancakes, and maple syrup (the real kind!) in the green little sauce container on the green ones.
Just to jazz up all the "plain" foods, I added a jester hat pick and some Mardi Gras mask picks (found at a bake shop.)
I wanted to try and use the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold. So I made up my pancake batter (using this recipe - only I used whole wheat flour and subbed in around 4 Tbsp pumpkin mash instead of oil) and divided it up into three bowls. I added turmeric to one, until I chickened out worrying that it would taste too spicy; finely chopped spinach to another (knowing from previous attempts to use spinach as food coloring is useless without a juicer,) and finely chopped beet to the third. None of them got as rich a color as I wanted, and I didn't want to risk affecting the flavor too much, so I ended up adding a bunch of natural food color liquids that I keep on hand. Since the batter was already fairly yellow, I just added a bunch of the blue to make green. And the natural blue is pretty greenish already anyway. And for the purple, I just used the red colorant, since it's made from beets, so it's pretty purpley anyway.
Normally pancakes hate me and try their best to thwart my plans, but these ones turned out okay. They didn't burn, flop in half, bloob out all over everything, or any of the other problems I normally encounter. But other than coloring the batter, I wasn't trying for anything fancy either! The colors are somewhat faded, and the brown from cooking masks what little color there is. Oh well. I'll take that over a batch of ruined pancakes in the compost any day!
Tools of the Trade
What an adorable lunch! My daughter's lunch always comes back with something untouched - I think something like this would do the trick to bring her lunch back completely eaten! Thanks for the inspiration!
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