It’s Monday but it’s weird because my husband has taken the day off, so he’s in the kitchen making pancakes right now and I feel a bit unnerved because he’s home. I like having him home – well, of course – but I’m not used to having him around for several days in a row. Add to that our weird, unsettling weekend – oh, it’s too long to go into everything that’s happened – and I’m feeling rather jumpy and not much like myself.
I also feel like eating pancakes.
I AM SO HUNGRY.
My mother – and if you’re related to me, you already know what I am going to say – makes the most freakishly delicious pancakes in the world. They were always what we would have for breakfast on Saturdays, eating startling numbers of pancakes on tv trays and watching HOURS of Saturday morning cartoons. My cousins schedule their trips through town so they can show up at my parent’s house at breakfast. Several times a year – especially in the summer, when chokecherries are in season – my mom will phone us first thing in the morning and invite us over for breakfast, sending us whipping through farm country in our pajamas.
And my pancakes, irritatingly enough, did NOT measure up, especially if you like pancakes that don’t weigh 500 pounds and that don’t have big raw spots in the middle. Nasty. But my children perversely continued to insist that pancakes were part of their rights as children and I dislike feeling thwarted, so I continued to make batch after batch of rather gruesome pancakes.
Making the switch to using a griddle made a BIG difference. I use the Cuisinart Griddler and I’ve had a lot of success with it, but I’ve also learned how liquid the batter should be (liquid enough to pour quite easily) and when to turn the pancakes (before they scorch a dark, dark black, for one.).
This pancake, for example, is just about ready to turn. And that was an EXTREMELY difficult thing to take a picture of – as was this, a picture of pancakes cooking nicely on the griddle:
One of those pancakes is getting a bit friendly with another pancake. I’m sometimes an inaccurate flipper.
And I just ate a plate of pancakes prepared – and prepared very well – by my husband and YUM, THEY WERE GOOD. Finding a pancake recipe that I really felt was my own made a big, big difference, and we’re all VERY fond of this sour cream pancake recipe, which requires nothing more difficult than separating eggs. I’ve taught The Baby how to separate eggs, which she does the way French chefs do, I’ve been told – by straining them through her fingers. So there’s nothing daunting about separating eggs, should you have never done so – my three year old child does so calmly and effectively (and also messily, but whatEVER. The point of life is not to keep yourself as clean as possible.).
I think that if I had a manifesto, it would have a large section about cooking being not only a very essential skill (what on earth do you eat if you don’t cook and how healthy can THAT be?) but also that cooking (for the most part) is VERY easy. One of life’s startling revelations is that making pancakes from scratch is just as easy as making pancakes from a mix – and they are ASTONISHINGLY better. And the skills that you’ll pick up from something like making pancakes (separating eggs, beating egg whites, folding batter and the like) will lead easily to bigger and better things, until one day relatives will drive fifty kilometers out of THEIR way first thing in the morning to eat something that you are famous for, which is a very pleasant state of affairs.
Now I’m going to go finish my breakfast.