PANCAKE Day on Tuesday. Traditionally a feast day before the start of Lent on Wednesday when we were all meant to confess our sins and be shriven.

Other countries celebrate Mardi Gras with feasts and carnivals, filling the streets with music, costumes and colour. We toss pancakes, run races with frying pans and have football games.

Traditionally, the first pancake went to the eldest unmarried daughter. If she could turn it neatly and in one piece, it was a sign she would be married before the next Shrove Tuesday.

Pancakes are easy peasy to make. All you need is eggs, flour and milk, a bit of butter and whatever you choose to put on them. Tossing them is half the fun. What's a Pancake Day without half a pancake on the ceiling and the other half on the dog - even if it wrecks your marriage chances?

It's not exactly rocket science, or even time-consuming, but as we've all got so lazy, there are lots of ready made pancakes on the supermarket shelves, or even pancake mixes.

But first we have to eliminate pretenders. Let's be racist about this. Scotch Pancakes aren't really pancakes but are what we know as drop scones. They have excellent qualities, but are a regular winter teatime treat rather than a Shrove Tuesday speciality.

Anyway, we've been wielding our frying pans...

ASDA SMART PRICE BATTER MIX 11p

BEST BUY

ASDA BATTER MIX 34p ; GREENS PANCAKE MIX 95p

With the two Asda packs you add an egg, or eggs. The Greens mix just needed water and came with sachets of not very nice chocolate sauce.

The actual pancakes were all quite good and pretty indistinguishable so we recommend the 11p bag from Asda as cheap and cheerful - as long as you have an egg in the house.

AUNT BESSIE'S TRADITIONAL PANCAKES. Eight for £1.49

These were frozen, could be microwaved or fried. They're quite thick and microwaved they just went very unappealingly soggy and solid. However, fried they were much better. For those who like their pancakes thick.

MARKS & SPENCER Toffee Apple Pancakes £2.49 for four

Pancakes like small soggy tissues or rehydrated cardboard - pretty disgusting really. Lots of appley and toffee filling for those with a very sweet tooth. We were not at all impressed.

MARKS & SPENCER Lemon Pancakes. Six for £2.29

Same soggy tasteless pancake, like an unravelling paper napkin, but good sharp lemony sauce. But £2.29 is an awful lot to pay for a bit of sauce.

TESCO American Style Pancakes. 95p for four

Don't know about American - these were just big Scotch pancakes with delusions. They came with two generous sachets of maple syrup. And were fine in a sickly sweet sort of way - but not proper pancakes.

WHAOU! Chocolate Crepes. Six for £1.49

These are French-style pancakes, very thin, wrapped round a chocolate filling. Individually wrapped for the lunchbox market. We found the filling sickly, but children liked them. Also worked quite well microwaved and served with ice cream. But don't know how you go about sorting out your marriage prospects.

LES FOURRANDINES French Crepes with chocolate and hazelnut filling, £1.99 for six

These are meant to be microwaved, which is a shame because they would probably be quite nice but then go horribly soggy. Nice filling though.

LES GOURMANDINES

OUR FAVOURITES

Sweet French crepes with a hint of vanilla.£1.84 for eight

Microwaved - as suggested - these are just soggy and unappealing. However, fried, with the tiniest bit of butter, they turn out to be surprisingly good. Very thin and crisp and French

DID YOU KNOW?

The world's biggest pancake was cooked in Rochdale in 1994. It was 15 metres across, weighed three tonnes and had an estimated 2,000,000 calories. Try tossing that lot....

Not today, thank you very much...

IF you're fed up with junk mail/faxes/phone calls/e mails there is a way of stopping them. Well, if not stopping them, at least cutting down on them.

Junk faxes were the thing that annoyed me most because I was having to pay for the paper and ink cartridges to print them up, just to then throw them straight in the bin. However, I registered with the Fax Preference Service last year and since then have not received a single unwanted fax. So it does work.

Registration for all these services is free and you can do it online.

The Mail Preference Service was set up nearly 20 years ago to stop that flow of junk mail thudding on your door mat. It will take a couple of weeks to take effect and it won't stop mail from banks, charities, credit card companies that you've previously done business with. But it's a start.

LETTERS: Mail Preference Service, Freepost 22, London W1E 7EZ. www.mpsonline.org.uk

FAXES: Fax Preference Service tel: 0845 0700 702 www.fpsonline.org.uk

E MAILS: www.the-dma.org/consumers/consumerassistance.html

PHONE CALLS; Telephone Preference Service tel: 0845 070 0707. www.tpsonline.org.uk

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