And then there’s our label, with its cosy cottage window and faded blue shutter. Is this a real cottage? Is it really in France? Or is it just someone’s idea of what a French cottage should look like? Well, we have Barbara van Zanten to thank for our French Cottage label. Under the name of Europa Photogenica, Ms. van Zanten is a photographic artist and photo tour leader. She takes people to some of France’s most beautiful places, and the shutters, f-stops and filters do the rest.

The village of Gerberoy is north-west of Paris, near Beauvais in Picardie. It is on France’s list of 100 most beautiful villages. And of all that Gerberoy has to offer, la Maison Bleue is probably the most popular stop for photographers. Built in 1691, this intriguing cottage proudly poses for hundreds of artists and photographers every year, especially when the roses bloom. This stunning little house was just what we wanted for our French Cottage Gourmet Crêpe Mix label.

By the way, if you like the image on our label, and fancy seeing more of these beautiful old houses in France, you should most certainly visit www.europaphotogenica.com. Hooking up with a Barbara van Zanten photo tour will give you a lifetime of wonderful memories, not to mention some absolutely fabulous images for your parlor.

The religious calendar in France, and some other countries as well, has a day in February known as La Chandeleur or Candlemas. It occurs on February 2nd, 40 days after Christmas, and has to do with the presentation of the baby Jesus at Temple, as was the custom of the day. By the 7th century the day was celebrated by having candles blessed by the priest. The participants would light their newly blessed candles and make sure they made it home without them blowing out, to ensure good health and prosperity for the coming year.

But the French will be French, and it has become customary to prepare and eat crêpes, lots of crêpes, on this special day. Why crêpes on February 2nd? Many say it was the custom of Pope Gélase I, who helped establish Chandeleur as a church holiday, to feed crêpes to the pilgrims who visited his church. Whatever the reason, February 2nd has become le jur des crêpes, the day of crêpes, in France.

One of the customs that has grown up around this holiday is that of flipping crêpes to ensure your health, wealth, and happiness for the coming year. Ah, but it is not as easy as it sounds. You must hold a coin (preferably gold, but then who has gold coins these days) in your writing hand, and successfully flip your crêpes with your other hand. Now I don’t claim to be ambidextrous by any means, but I had to give this challenge a try. I have been flipping crêpes for quite a long time, but it has always been with my right hand, which is obviously my writing hand. So, with a beautiful crêpe ready to be flipped, I dutifully held a shiny quarter in my right hand and, with my left hand (and a muttered prayer) I went for it. Glory be, my crêpe made a lovely arc in the air, and came back down right in the pan where it was supposed to be. Yes sir, I’m looking forward to a good year.

By the way, just for fun I flipped a few more crêpes with the left hand, just to prove my first try wasn’t a fluke. I must have a guardian angel watching out for me. I went a perfect 5 for 5 as a lefty, and retired from the kitchen with a smile and a quiet “Thank you.”

Ah, crêpes! Can anyone resist these wonderfully thin and tasty treats, right out of the pan onto your plate, ready to be spread with your favorite jam, lemon juice and sugar, or, especially for the youngsters in the family, that chocolaty heaven called Nutella®. No. Of course not. Crêpes are everyone’s favorite, and not just in France, where crêpes are considered to be the national dish of Brittany (would Normandy agree?), but almost everywhere your travels take you. Spain loves crêpes. You find them in Sweden, Germany, Russia, Italy, and a dozen or so other countries as well.

Now, being such a delicious, versatile and easy to make menu item, one would think that libraries and data bases would be brim full of scholarly works tracking the origins, history, and modern uses of this delightful food. But, curiously enough, that does not seem to be the case, at least not in this writer’s experience. If there is a comprehensive, well documented and definitive work on crêpes, this writer has yet to stumble onto it. Which leads one to wonder, Why? Are crêpes not important enough? Oh please! We’re talking about a food as famous as the Eiffel Tower, as familiar to the world as the Champs-Elysées, as universal as Notre Dame, as emotion evoking as Paris itself! So, it can’t be that crêpes aren’t important enough. Perhaps it’s as simple as this – no one has gotten around to being outright scholarly about the world’s thinest pancakes.

So, having mentioned what we don’t have, on the origin of crêpes, here’s what we do have. One source suggests that crêpes have been around since biblical times, when thin batter was cooked by pouring it onto hot stones. Now I’m not suggesting that people didn’t cook batter on hot stones a couple of thousand years ago. I’m just not prepared to say that the result was a crêpe, that’s all. Here’s another, more plausible beginning for crêpes. Sometime during the 12^th century buckwheat found its way from Hunan Province in China to the northwest part of France, where it thrived and could be made into flour. This flour, when made into a batter, is the basic ingredient of the crêpes made to this day in Brittany, the area south of Normandy that bulges out into the Atlantic.

It wasn’t until the early part of the 19th century that white flour became cheap enough to be used more generally in France. And even though traditional Brittany crêpes are still made with buckwheat flour, it is white flour that, by and large, is the main ingredient for the crêpes we know and love today. Once white flour crêpes became available throughout France, it didn’t take long for them to spread to other countries and cultures, and for creative recipes to pop up here, there and everywhere. For instance, probably the most famous crêpe dish is called crêpes Suzette.

Crêpes Suzette is supposed to have been created by the famous French chef Henri Charpentier in 1894. At that time Charpentier was a 14 year old assistant waiter who was asked to prepare a special dessert for the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) during a visit to Monaco. Charpentier made crêpes and put them in a sauce made with orange juice, butter, sugar, Cointreau, kirsch, orange flour water and cognac. The sauce accidentlly caught fire, but the result was so delicious the prince asked that the dish be named for a young girl in his entourage. Of course, no one knows if the story is really true, but the fact is that crêpes Suzette, made at table-side in most up-scale restaurants, continues to dazzle all but the most blasé restaurant goers to this day.

So is this a definitive history of our delicious friend, the crêpe? Certainly not. But it does give a little glimpse into the life and times of this great food. So let me ask the question again – Anyone for Crêpes?