Category Archives: Carnevale

Feb 17 2015
14 Comments
Ash Wednesday, Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Pancakes!

Pancake Maker

To begin with: my apologies. We lost a good friend and mentor in late January, Arthur Jaffe, it was difficult to get back on two feet once that happened. Arthur was a great guy: the type of person we all want to emulate, the type of person who reminds us that it is important to appreciate each day, and that, after all, is what this blog is all about. He was a subscriber to the blog and a believer in it and in me and was looking forward to seeing the Convivio Book of Days as a real book someday, for he was a man who loved books and left a real legacy of them.

And so I missed writing to you about St. Valentine and about St. Agatha and who knows what else. But I was at the Finnish bakery in Lantana the other day, the place packed with tall Finns speaking a tongue I do not understand, and on the top of the cases was something I had never seen there before: round pastries that were bursting with whipped cream. I asked the Finnish woman behind the counter about them. “We make them every February,” she said. “They are filled with almond paste and whipped cream. You should have one.”

She said they were not affiliated with any particular holiday (“No, we just make them every February”), but it was a day or two later, in realizing I had forgotten about St. Agatha’s Day, that I realized the Finns at the bakery were probably tuning into a tradition perhaps long forgotten, for the shape and the filling happens to be exactly like that of the pastries that the nuns of Catania in Sicily make for St. Agatha’s Day, which was on the 5th of February. The story is gruesome (in her martyrdom in the third century, St. Agatha’s breasts were severed) but the pastries are delicious (meant, as they are, to evoke what was lost by the saint) and people have been unapologetic about these things through the ages. Why wouldn’t we bake something like this in February?

I also missed writing to you about Carnevale, and now, today, it is Mardi Gras, its festive conclusion. It is known in some places as Shrove Tuesday, and tradition would have us eat pancakes for supper tonight. Pancakes for supper? Yes, please. That alone is cause for celebration. The idea is it is a supper designed to use up the last of the eggs, the last of the butter, the last of all that was restricted in earlier days as we enter the somber season of lent, which begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. It was a matter of necessity as much as of observance in those times, for by this time of year, the stocks of food from the harvest were probably quite depleted. If folks were to make it through to the first harvests of spring and summer, a little restraint now was an important thing.

But that is tomorrow. Tonight, we celebrate. Tonight, we have pancakes for supper, and we remember the importance to love each day.

 

Image: De Pannenkoekenbakster (The Pancake Maker) by Jan Miense Molenaer. Oil on canvas, 1645 [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

 

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Mar 04 2014
1 Comment
Ash Wednesday, Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Pancakes for Supper

Pancakes

Tonight the festivity of the Carnival season comes to a close. It is Mardi Gras, Martedì Grasso… Fat Tuesday in English, Shrove Tuesday is the more common name. It is the last night for excess, for the morning will bring the solemnness of Ash Wednesday beginning the forty days of Lent.

Mardi Gras is not a big deal for most of the United States; we are not a Carnival people, by and large. There are dramatic exceptions to this and the Mardi Gras celebration at New Orleans is probably what comes to mind first for most Americans. An old acquaintance of mine from Alabama would be quick to point out that the earliest organized Mardi Gras celebrations occurred in Mobile. In fact, celebrations marking the end of Carnival were prevalent in Mobile and New Orleans as well as Pensacola and Biloxi… places that were colonized by the French and the Spanish long before English influences took hold.

While the English were not big on Carnival celebration, there were, nonetheless, traditions to be followed to mark the transition from Ordinary Time to Lent, for the fasting of Lent came out of necessity: by the end of winter, stored provisions were running low and the bounty of spring and early summer was still many weeks away. Even if there was no Lent, with its stern restrictions on meat, as well as milk and cheese and eggs and butter (Lent was more restrictive earlier on), these restrictions would probably have been a necessity all the same. Carnival in Latin-influenced countries became a time to use up what was left and to use it up in grand style through community-wide celebrations that lasted for days or weeks. In England and its colonies, this translated into one day of excess, and the excess took the form of pancakes.

Pancakes for supper? Why, yes. This is what Shrove Tuesday is all about. (Well, also it’s about confessing your sins and getting right with God––but it is pancakes that most folks will associate with the day.) And so for most of us in the United States there are no masks and parades and beads for Mardi Gras… but for a lot of us, there are pancakes on the menu tonight. It was, early on, a way of using up all the eggs, milk, and sugar that remained in the larder before the 40 fasting days of Lent commenced, and the tradition of eating pancakes the Tuesday before Lent continues on even now.

In Germany, the tradition calls for doughnuts tonight, and the night is known as Fasnacht or Faschnacht. The idea is the same: using up all the remaining lard, sugar, and butter before Lent begins. But whether it is pancakes or doughnuts, there is something special about eating breakfast for dinner, or about eating homemade doughnuts after dinner. It’s a little something, nothing dramatic, just something that marks the day, something celebratory, reminding us of the importance of enjoying what we have. Tomorrow comes Lent. Tomorrow we are reminded of the brevity of things. The reality is we are very fortunate and we should do our best to remember the gifts we’ve been given… like this, another Mardi Gras, another Fasnacht, another Shrove Tuesday. Laissez les bon temps rouler!

 

Image: “Throwing the Pancake on Shrove Tuesday in Westminster School,” from the Chambers Bros. Book of Days, Edinburgh, 1869.

 

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Feb 15 2014
Carnevale, Lent, New Year, Sant'Antonio Abate

Carne Levamen

One Perfect Valencia

Carnival, or Carnevale in Italian, has its official beginning today in Venice. Carnevale is the last great indulgence before Lent enters the scene, enrobed as it is in purple and somberness. There are no set dates for the beginning of the Carnevale season. There are places in Italy where it begins as soon as Epiphany is done, and others where it begins with the sausages and salame of January’s Feast of Sant’Antonio Abate. Carnevale is, after all, the annual using up of the provisions of winter. Traditionally, the supply of meat would be finished during Carnevale until spring, and this is the origin of the festival’s name, for Carnevale means “good-bye to the flesh” (carne levamen in Latin). Nowadays most observers pass on meat on Fridays, but Lent once was a time when no meat at all was eaten, for the full forty days, and so it truly was a good-bye to the flesh.

Carnevale has its connections to celebrations of the new year, which, for the early Romans, was the First of March. The Romans were the ones who eventually moved the start of the year to January 1, but old habits die hard, and many new year traditions, including the wearing of masks, carried over across the ages. The old year was dying, the new one being born. Masks provided anonymity in a festival of excess, and masks are still a big part of Carnevale celebrations, especially in Venice.

There is also a great tradition of mock battles throughout Italy for Carnevale, with the most famous in the city of Ivrea, where trainloads of blood oranges from Sicily are brought in each year as weaponry. It is said that of all the tons of oranges the people of Ivrea buy each year for Carnevale, not a single one is eaten or squeezed for juice. Instead, they are used as missiles in battles across the city over the course of three days of Carnevale. It is a battle based on historical events––a 12th century revolt against two tyrannical rulers who had imposed taxes on marriage and on the milling of grain. The revolt began on the wedding night of a local miller’s daughter, Violetta, by Violetta herself, and it carried on for three days before freedom was won.

During these three days of Carnevale, the windows of the entire city of Ivrea are boarded up to protect against the onslaught of oranges. The battles are fierce, oranges flying through the air, aimed at anyone who is not wearing a special red cap of neutrality. People emerge with bruises and black eyes, but the fun is undeniable. The city is said to smell wonderful, as the perfume of countless oranges wafts through the air.

If it seems excessive, well… it is. But this is the point of Carnevale. It is no time to be frugal, not with meat, nor oranges, nor celebration, nor emotion.

 

Photograph, “One Perfect Valencia,” is provided courtesy of Convivio friend Paula Marie Gourley. She photographed the orange in a California orange grove. There is an ages-old battle amongst orange lovers, too: California oranges tend to be bigger and thicker skinned than those of their Florida brethren, but Florida oranges, subject to our rainier climate while they grow, are definitely juicier. I imagine the oranges of Sicily are similar to California ones, since it too is a drier climate. But I imagine the people of Ivrea would be REALLY impressed by the amazing splatter properties of a Florida orange.

 

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