In the past I’ve told you about a few kooky French holiday celebrations after they’ve happened. Today I just found out about another quirky holiday coming up so I’d thought I’d give you a couple of days advanced notice so that you can celebrate along with us. The impending holiday is called La Chandeleur or Candlemas. Since I haven’t lived through this one yet, I’ll give you the rundown from Wikipedia:
In France, crêpes are traditionally served on Candlemas (La Chandeleur), February 2. This day was originally Virgin Mary’s Blessing Day but became known as “avec Crêpe Day”, referring to the tradition of offering crêpes. The belief was that if you could catch the crêpe with a frying pan after tossing it in the air with your left hand and holding a gold coin in your right hand, you would become rich that year.[5]
Apparently, at school today the teachers pulled out some crêpe pans and the kids were practicing tossing gold coins to improve their chance for riches in advance of the holiday. I’ll let you know how it works out both at school and at home, since you better believe I’ll be throwing crêpes and gold coins on what I consider to be Groundhog Day. To be honest, I think that throwing crêpes and coins is much more fun than watching a groundhog. Sorry Phil.
If you’re interested in making French crêpes, there are 2 kinds. The first is called galette which is a savory type of crêpe made buckwheat flour. It is usually used for dinner crêpes with things like cheese and smoked fish inside. The other type of crêpe is made with white flour and is mainly used for dessert crêpes with sweet things inside.
Here are the recipes for both types of crêpes:
Best of luck for many riches this year! Let me know how it goes.
Francophile Update 