Pancaking

Despite my firm belief in NEVER using baby talk with your children, I still have a nasty habit of inventing words. Or turning nouns into verbs, depending on the situation.

"Let's go pancaking" used to mean a trip to the diner, but as each mouth in the house gets older, that bill gets higher and higher. Plus, now everyone knows my mother works there, so I'm afraid someone's going to spit in my food. Ok, not really, but they do stare at me a lot. It's uncomfortable to eat when people you don't know are looking at you funny. I'm hoping they think, "man, that apple fell FAR from that tree."

One can hope.

But anyway, any more when we pancake, (yes, it's a verb now) it involves a thick stack of homemade pancakes with whole wheat flour, eggs, a splash of oil and sugar, and a heavy dash of organic vanilla.

My recipe goes (something) like this...

1 C white lily flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
3 T sugar
1 t salt
2t baking powder
whisk together

add in

2 eggs
1 C milk
1 T vanilla
2 T fat (melted butter or veggie oil)

Mix. It's really thick, and here's when it gets iffy...I add milk until it's the consistency I like. I like pancake batter to be fairly thin, and if pushed, I'd say another 3/4 C to a full cup of milk.

Preheat an electric griddle to 350. If you don't have one of these, get one. Tomorrow. Easily one of the best presents I've ever received, you can cook anywhere from three to five pancakes at the same time, and you all eat together. It's truly amazing.

I add 2 T of oil to the griddle and then swirl a tablespoon of real butter across the top. The aroma of the butter melting into the oil is lovely, the oil helps the butter not burn and smoke.

ladle each pancake on to the griddle and allow to cook until there are bubbles all the way in the center of each cake, flip, and place a small pat of butter on the top of each. Cook another minute, allowing the butter to melt in...

Stack, and repeat with the rest of batter. Cook the whole batch of batter, pancakes are easy to reheat on hectic mornings. Just let them cool in a row and tuck them into a freezer bag.