A pile of pancakes made by my great babushka

So, day 1 of no meat. I am having some left over pancakes for breakfast, smeared with jam Ukrainian style. I used Delia's trusted recipe (http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/cuisine/european/english/basic-pancakes-with-sugar-and-lemon.html), but added sugar. Her sugar-free mix is a bit too spartan for my Eastern European sweet tooth.

Here they are.

The kids, Tim and I ate masses last night. (Tim made a bacon and mushrooms and bechamel sauce with cheese to go with them - our last taste of meat for weeks, which was delish and I even have some left overs for the kids).

Baking pancakes made me think of the story my babushka (grandmother) used to tell me about her mum.

Russian Orthodox Shrove Tuesday is spread over a whole week of pancake eating madness and is a true winter festival, called Maslenitsa.

My babushka grew up in a village in Western Russia called Solntsevo. She was a child number 10. So lots of cooking for her mum anyway, but every day of Maslenitsa was marked by one occasion or the other - on one day her maternal grandparents would come on another - paternal, then godparents, neighbours - you name it. They just came pouring in to eat some pancakes.

So her poor mum would wake up at 5am and make a two or three massive piles of pancakes. When babushka showed me the the height of the pile - it looked like at least 20cm (10in) high.

Now, I made 4 portions of the Delia's pancakes mix and the pile only came up to maybe 5-8cm. How much baking would would 2-3 20cm piles involve - I can only guess.

OK, off to work to be inspired by my veggie colleagues. (And to do some work too).