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Do pancake day like a Spaniard
Spanish pancakes
Pancake day (aka Shrove Tuesday) may be a uniquely Anglo-Saxon tradition but Spain loves pancakes too! Here’s some utterly useless but fun ways to give your pancake day a Spanish flavour:
1. Learn the lingo
Pancake in Spanish is normally a Crepe, or sometimes a Panqueque.
2. Don’t take your clothes off
Pancake day in Catholic countries, including Spain, is better known as Mardi Gras – or Fat Tuesday. It’s an ancient festival involving alcohol, dancing and not much clothing.
Spain doesn’t really do Mardi Gras but many regions do celebrate Jueves Lardero, normally the Thursday before Ash Wednesday.
It’s more of an omelette celebration than pancakes or booze but it shares the idea of clearing out the larder with our Shrove Tuesday.
3. Give your pancakes a Spanish twist
Fed up with lemon and sugar? Try this alternative pancake recipe which includes oranges and brandy:
- Make some pancakes the way your mother taught you.
- Melt 50g of butter and 50g of sugar in a pan.
- Add orange rind and allow it to caramelise – do not burn it!
- Add 5tbsp of cognac and the juice of one orange, allow mixture to reduce a little
- Dip pancakes in your sauce, fold into quarters
- Pop on a plate and drizzle a little more sauce on top for presentation
4. Watch viral sensation Julio
We spent minutes researching this article on Google and we couldn’t help tripping over videos of Julio, a nice man from Alcudia who has his own unique style of making pancakes. A lot of tourists seem to like filming him. Here’s Julio in action…
Honesty, cuddles and cars (plus a little money off)
Stuff we did this week…
Web projects have a habit of taking far longer that you’d like, then they happen all at once. This has been a great week for getting some improvements nailed down. Here’s what we added:
Join us on Facebook!
We made enquiry data public – owners have to rely on their own enquiries or (worse) tittle tattle to figure out what’s really happening in the market. We decided to break the secret code of holiday rental websites by releasing our enquiry statistics. Public, live, honest and great for helping you target your campaigns – bookmark this page!
We got cuddly and social - we’re finally on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus! It’s taken us a while to figure out how we wanted to approach social networking without being one of the lame sites who start a page, do three posts then disappear. We’re keen to “do social” in an honest, sustainable, chatty way so please come and say hi.
Car hire: Sorry it took 10 years! - about a zillion car hire firms have asked to partner with us over the years. Most had either patchy coverage or poor technology and we never found anyone we could heartily recommend. That all changed with this Car Trawler engine; it works beautifully on site and is producing some genuinely good deals. Apologies for the delay!
We’re plugging a competitor. Surely not?!
We think you’ll like this deal with HomeAway for $75 off their US listing fees. To grab the discount, follow this special link and enter the code FEB75 when you pay.
Before you think we’ve gone nuts, there’s a few good reasons we mentioned it:
- There’s no need to whisper, we know most owners advertise on multiple rental sites.
- HomeAway.com has great US coverage. They offer a way to expand your audience beyond Europe.
- Our competitors charge twice what we do! We figure owners need all the help they can get.
- If you insist on using another site (smirks), at least this will save you some cash and get us a small commission. Nice.
Get in quick – the offer expires 29th February!
The banned Ryanair ad
Other news this week
Illegal holiday homes to be regulated within three months – the Junta in Andalucia is taking their first step to clearing up the confusing mess that characterises Spanish property law. They’re hoping the regulation of 250,000 illegal homes will be complete by May (via The Olive Press)
Spain’s credit rating cut again by Moody’s – the Eurozone car crash continues and Spain is suffering badly. There’s no denying our favourite holiday destination is going to have a very tough few years ahead (via ThinkSpain)
Ryanair ad banned for being ‘sexist’ – the firm we all love to hate before grumbling and flying with anyway has got into hot water by using their famous air crew calendar girls in an advertising campaign. Luckily the ban created some nice cheap publicity (via TravelMole)