Today at work:
“Kowie guess what?”
“What?”
“I run as fast as lightening cause I poop in the potty.”
Makes me wonder how many potential gold medalists in track never made the cut cause they didn’t drop a pre-race deuce.
My Latest Musical Obsession:
Damien Rice…yet another thing to add to my “Irish Stuff I Love” list.
And finally, a little something from Belgium:
CB and I had been having an ongoing debate over what constitutes an actual pancake. He kept telling me about these so-called pancakes he was eating. He told me they were thin and stuffed with other food items (i.e. ice cream, fruit, etc.) to which I said, “That’s not a pancake, that’s a crepe.”
“No, it’s a pancake.”
“Bullshit. Pancakes are fluffy and thick and you eat them in stacks and they suck up syrup and butter and OMG I must make you real live pancakes when you come to America!”
“Well, ok, but these are still pancakes.”
“Crepes!”
CB sighs.
I did make pancakes for CB while he was here in May, and he said they were ok. I take his word for it, although he does eat mostly anything, so they could have been awful and he was just eating them with tolerance.
So while I was in Belgium CB insisted on taking me to get “pancakes” in Gent. On the way there I continued to argue.
“Thin pancakes are not pancakes. They’re crepes.”
“So what you’re telling me is, even though this food originated here in Europe (Brittany to be exact) the way it is now, if someone takes it to America and over time the recipe changes into something totally unlike the original but you choose to keep the same name, then the new version with the old name is more authentic than the original version?”
“….yes.”
“Cause that’s not imperialistic or anything.”
“Hun, I’m American. That’s what we do.”
We finally get to the pancake place and I order a “pancake” with ham, cheese and pineapple. CB got some ginormous double pancake monstrosity with egg, ham and cheese.
These are no ordinary pancakes. They are huge buckwheat envelopes jammed full of hot, gooey, cheesy goodness (well, there was a varied selection of stuffings, but both of ours had cheese), buttered and greasy and I was barely able to move after eating and I didn’t even eat the majority of it.
“So what did you think of the pancakes?”
“Good, but I still refuse to call them ‘pancakes’. ‘Belgian pancakes’ maybe, but not pancakes.”
CB sighs.
Is Belgian Waffle. Is good. Very very good. I totally will call it a waffle, and most likely will never deign to even look in the direction of an Eggo again.
5:03 am
Eggos have never been waffles. They are wanna-be waffles. They dream of being waffles. But they are not waffles.
However, those massive things are NOT pancakes. They dont even call them that in Italy. They are crepes. Deal with it CB. (And no, Im not really american)
5:37 am
heh heh…Canadians have some intrinsic value after all!
♥
6:42 am
Canadians = Defenders of the TRUE Pancake
9:36 am
see http://www.funsocialstudies.learninghaven.com/articles/pancake.htm
I know up there it’s kinda a tradition to all hate the French (Even quite some canadians, maybe because they still have that old English tart as a monarch) but the french crêpe just translates into pannenkoek in Dutch or pfannkuchen in German, pancake in English and crepe in Spanish.
The fact that you folks added soaked sponges to the variety and started stealing a french word for the other versions of a pancake to differentiate comes in handy, but doesn’t legitimize the imperial global right of having the only true pancake.
I mean, no wonder Atkins was born in the land of the fluffy hotcakes, griddlecakes and flapjacks. Ok, he might have died because of a heart failure because of other excesses there but still … we in Europe consider your flat muffins pancakes, we just think they’re ranked quite low on the OMG-pancakes! scale.
1:28 pm
See, I told you he was just being tolerant of my pancakes.
8:47 pm
Yeah, right!
Well, there’s a tough one, wat is and wat is not? In my humble (Belgian) opinion, you’re both right. Crêpes is the french name for very thin pancakes, usually served with a sweet or a “savory” (hope this is the right word) “garnishment” ( I’m not sure of that one either!)
However, this has very little in common with that leather-look like thing on your plate there, if you pardon my expression!
I had real American pancakes for breakfast, several years ago when I was visiting Florida, and they were little thick yummie soft gooey and very sweet, served with syrup and all that… Mjummmm!
This also has very little to do with “the monster” on your plate there!
It is just another recipe I think!
I like the “American pancakes” as I shall call them, and I like the crêpes. For future references, what you had there, that buckweat monstrosity is not typically Belgian, they are not Belgian Pancakes, please do not remember us that way!!
So, I guess, you’re both right, right?
9:52 pm
Heh, so I was confused because I thought what we ate was a “typical” Belgian pancake. I have now been informed by CB that it is common in Gent, not Belgium as a whole and what we had were Breton pancakes. Rest assured they were very very good. And the waffles made up for any other misnomered food items I might encounter in Belgium.
8:49 pm
[...] I took this argument home to CB, a most formidable opponent when it comes to comparing cultural/language [...]