At some point in this still-new year, I fell COMPLETELY BEHIND. How did this happen? I have five million emails lurking, unanswered, in my in-box. I have a laundry room stuffed full of dirty clothing and towels and the other mysterious things that show up in laundry hampers – and REALLY, no one in this family works on a farm or shovels coal or has some weird medical condition where they MUST CHANGE THEIR CLOTHES 15 TIMES A DAY, so WHERE does all this laundry come from, I ask you? I have a computer desk that’s barely visible under the teetering stacks of junk, tons of baking to do, Important Things To Write, friends who want my company for some mysterious reason, and – AND! – The Boy is having a huge birthday party this weekend. I did find time, at some point, to let my eyebrows beetle luxuriously across my forehead, and time also to grow a commendable mustache.
Send help.
A friend of mine recently – on the sixth – gave birth to a teeny little baby girl, this little six pound dark haired baby. They had thought that she was a boy and so were rather short on pink sleepers and little dresses, so I dug out all of our baby clothes from the attic this weekend and sorted them out, finding the smallest and girly-est outfits I could. The Girl and I delivered our many, many bags of Extremely Feminine Baby Clothes, and then The Girl asked, quietly, if she could hold the baby and sat with her eyes soft, this tiny baby small even in her arms. It’s funny how small they start out – and then there’s this weird thing that happens where the first year seems to take a whole decade of your life and then you blink and your child is very nearly grown-up.
Sometimes conclusions to my posts comes easily for me – a cruel line, or a quick sappy punch – but not today. I’m a bit sick, a bit sad, and more than a bit slow today, stuck in January. January is the oatmeal of months, this time you just have to sigh and wade through and then you come out the other side and hey, there’s February. I ate a bowl of oatmeal this morning – bleh! – but on the weekend, I made a huge batch of tiny little sour cream pancakes, these delicious airy mouthfuls, all maple syrup and cheer.
Sour Cream Silver Dollar Pancakes
4 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 cup cake flour (you CAN use the regular sort of flour, but your pancakes won’t be as ethereally weightless. They’ll still be GOOD, though.)
2 cups sour cream
3 tablespoons sugar
Stir the eggs in a mixing bowl until they’re light and fluffy. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well – and if you’d rather, you can even do this in a blender, for even FLUFFIER results.
Heat a frying pan or griddle until it’s hot, and add a light layer of vegetable oil. Drop a tablespoon of batter on the griddle, enough to make pancakes about as long as your thumb (unless you have freaky long thumbs. If so, aim for a bit smaller.). When there are a few bubbles on top of your mini pancakes, gently flip them over and cook briefly.
This makes about a zillion tiny little pancakes. Enjoy.