If you live in Michigan, you must factor into your Fat Tuesday agenda the buying and eating of at least one fat-laden jelly donut or “paczki” . If you don’t live in Michigan, you might have never heard about these rich donuts and why we flock to donut shops or our local grocery store to load up for one last indulgence for Fat Tuesday. I was thinking this morning that the day is rarely referred to as Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday anymore around these parts. We call it “Paczki Day”. Just looking at all those delightful jelly donuts packs on the pounds, no matter what the flavor. You might be scratching your head if you need to spell the word “paczki” and please don’t pluralize it by adding an “s”. Pronunciation is dicey as well. A “paczki” is pronounced “poonch-key”. They are easy eating though. The best paczki I have ever eaten were from the now-closed Oak Leaf Bakery on Oak Street in Wyandotte. Customers would line up outside before dawn to get their “paczki fix”. Now you buy ‘em weeks before Fat Tuesday, which takes a little of the anticipation away. Well how about saluting pancakes? When I was a kid, pancakes were always a lazy Sunday morning breakfast. My mom would make up several batches of batter so she was ready to start making pancakes once the griddle got hot. Waiting in the wings was a bowl of sweet butter chunks and a tin of corn syrup. I really don’t ever remember drowning my pancakes in maple syrup, as we only used the sweet, gooey corn syrup which we dribbled over the pat of butter and down the stack of pancakes ‘til it pooled onto the plate. And no Canadian worth their salt would dream of eating their Sunday morning pancakes without a side of lightly fried, sliced peameal bacon. If you’ve never tasted peameal bacon, please don’t confuse it with the item the grocery stores package and sell as “Canadian Bacon” … no, that is not the genuine article. Peameal bacon is pork loin with a very thin ridge of fat which gives it flavor and it is encrusted with peameal, more commonly referred to as cornmeal. Peameal bacon is delicious and I had never tasted more traditional strips of bacon until we moved to the U.S. in 1966. Every time we went back to visit my grandmother, we’d have to stop and buy some to have while we were there. The only time we ever had a sweet dinner, like pancakes, was for Pancake Tuesday. This picture of pancakes swimming in syrup makes my mouth water, yours too?