Pretty Flowers and Pancakes

Things I love about Spring: all the lovely flowers growing. Pancake day.
I thought I would write a post about them both.

Every time I walk through the Meadows and George Square these days there are more crocuses springing up.
The purple ones are my favourite! I'm loving the super-macro function on my camera, which lets you take close up photos like these. The colours are so good, and I love playing with all the different colour and exposure settings, just to see how they turn out. I also really like the way most of the shot is out of focus, like in this one. And then all the tiny details of the veins and stuff that you can see in the petals.
It rained last night, just a light shower, but enough to make me all wet and to make my hair go curly, on the way to the library. It was worth it though, because this morning everywhere was covered with flowers and it was sooo lovely!


The other great thing about spring is of course Pancake Day! Its traditional in the UK to make pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, to use up perishables, like eggs, milk and butter, before the fasting period of Lent. These days people don't really fast in the same way much, because the church isn't so important to them, its more about giving up chocolate or smoking or something. But we still like to make the pancakes because they're yummy!

This was my first Pancake Day that I haven't been at home, and I nearly didn't make any, but then I saw people talking about it on Twitter all day and it made me pretty hungry for them, so I went to Tesco's on the way home.
We didn't have a mixing bowl, so I used a lunch box, and we don't have a measuring jug or scales either, so I was guessing really.
I used 6 rounded dessert spoons of self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 and a half dessert spoons of sugar, and 1 egg, and some milk. Seived everything together, added the egg, then kept putting in a little milk at a time, stirring with a fork, until it made batter that looked like my mum's! I greased the frying pan with some oil on some kitchen paper.
They were pretty good. The first few were rather brown because the pan was too hot, and a little soft in the middle because I made them too thick, but I got the hang of it eventually! Also, I think I should use a spoon next time, rather than a fork, because they made a lot of bubbles. Or maybe they're supposed to. Comments please?

The last two really tiny ones were meant to be heart-shaped but I'm not sure that really comes across... Marsailidh really liked them, which made me pleased because before she said that she didn't like pancakes :D