If it’s not perfect, that’s okay, there are a lot more coming along.
-Antonin Scalia

‘m not sure how much I Like this pancake recipe. I got it from The CD Kitchen website, and other than having a little more sweetness and a little less chalkiness, its very simular to krusteaz brand pancake mix. You know, the kind you just add water to.

Anyways, here is the recipe as it reads off CD Kitchen-

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter, melted
2 extra large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat a griddle or non-stick skillet. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, Baking powder and salt. Make a small well in the center of the bowl. Add the milk, melted butter, eggs and vanilla. Gently whisk the wet and dry ingredients together, just until well combined (about 20 strokes). Using a dry measure for each pancake, spoon 1/3 cup batter onto the hot pan (with or without sizzling fat, such as butter, oil or bacon drippings). Cook neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comuntil the top of the pancake bubbles. Turn the pancake with a spatula and cook just until the underside is golden brown.

This recipe for Basic Pancake Batter serves/makes 16 pancakes

A few addendums to the directions-

You do not have to use a nonstick skillet. The only nonstick kitchen Items I have are muffin tins, springform pans and removable bottom tart/quiche pans. I wouldnt have even have those if they hadnt been purchased for me as gifts. I dont like the cooking with items that emit gasses that are toxic enough that they will kill birds.

Secondly, the order in which you mix the ingredients in this recipe does not matter, however I do recommend mixing dry ingredients together first, just because then you can be sure you wont have a really salty chunk of pancake where all the salt stuck when you added in the liquids. I also like to whisk my eggs together before I add them to the mixture. There is no real reason for this outside of my own neurotic thoughts. Also, I think it makes the mix a bit easier to blend in the end.

Thirdly WHO THE HECK USES BACON DRIPPINGS TO GREASE A PAN?!! holy crap. This must be some crazy southern thing that I havent heard of. I like my bacon, but the thought of cooking pancakes in bacon grease just seems crazy. I prefer butter, but if you have to, use a little margarine or some Pam or something. Holy hell, just leave the bacon out of it.

And lastly, the directions say “hot pan” as though that was a notch on your stovetop temperature gauge. This simply is not so. My rule of thumb is NEVER turn the temperature over Medium when doing anything on the stovetop unless you’re boiling water or running a kettle. And even then, once you’ve got the water to a boil and you add whatever it is that you’re boiling, turn the temperature down to medium and let it cook without boiling over.

When you cook any sort of battered food on the stovetop, its probably best to go with the lower end of the medium notch on the temperature gauge. Reason being, the more reasonable the heat, the more evenly the food item will cook, resulting in a uniform colour and texture. Higher temperatures will cause the liquid in the batter to evaporate quickly and whatever rising agent used in the batter (in the case of pancakes, its baking powder and salt) will form large bubbles causing the batter to cook unevenly, resulting in an ununiform colour and irregular texture on the food item.

A great rule of thumb is ” if the butter turns brown, turn it down. ”

So here are the results of todays kitchen adventures-

I’m a pancake stacker, and he’s a spread out pancake kinda guy. I’ve noticed a fair amount of people in restaurants rearranging their plates like this too.

I first noticed it on my first date with my husband though. Of all places on the planet to have a first date, we chose dennys.

A little back story.. We had been talking online for a while. Yes, I met my husband on the internet. I wasnt LOOKING for a husband, merely someone to pass the time with. I’ve got quite a few friends I met online, so I figured why not. I’ll go on a date with a guy. We sent a few photos back and forth, talked online a bit, it progressed into phone conversations. Not once did he cross the line and do anything inappropriate. He seemed like a good guy, so why not meet him.

To be honest, we hadnt planned on meeting until the following Friday, but that Tuesday we were on the phone and I thought, why not. I’m on the phone anyways. I’ll ask if he wants to meet.

I didnt think he would say yes, but he did. OH CRAP! I had to think of somewhere to meet a guy at 3am. A guy off the internet that I had not met before.

I chose Dennys because I knew everyone that worked the nightshift. I was a bit of a club goer in my younger years, and being a club goer, you always have a hangout spot where everyone gathers after the bars close. Luckily half the people working the nightshift were also club goers, so it wasnt like they cared about the group of drunken 20 somethings drinking free refills of soda and sharing an order of fries amongst the whole group.

This was also the Dennys that a couple years ago when the entire town froze over, I got my car stuck in the grassy area of the parking lot and they not only let me keep my car there for two days while the ground thawed, but when my right front tire got buried in the mud and wouldnt budge, four of the guys that worked there came out with shovels, and one of them used the chains from his car and a bundle of rope to pull me out. it was nice. They totally didnt have to do that. I got to know the people there pretty well at that point.

So it was set. I warned him that I was wearing pajamas, and I threw on some jeans and put my hair up in a ponytail and headed out. I expected him to take one look at me and run, OR I expected him to show up and be nothing like what he presented himself as and I would have to have one of the waitstaff escort him to his vehicle. They’d do it. I know they would because I called before I headed out. HA! I was prepared.

I got there and told the hostess what was going on and she asked if I wanted any colouring sheets and crayons to play with while I was waiting. OF COURSE I DID! I also ordered a 7-up and told her I’d order when he got there.

I waited a while. It seemed like forever. Every time I heard the bell ring on the door or heard footsteps walking towards the entrance I looked up. I didnt want to seem like I was over excited though. I wanted to seem casual.

Focus on the colour pages. Focus on the colour pages. Engage in conversation with the hostess. Seem uninterested, it makes you more appealing… Who was I kidding. I was freaking out. My heart leapt every time a male came in alone and settled again once I saw he wasnt who I was waiting for. I was glad every time too. On a purely physical level, there arent too many attractive single 20 something single males walking into a Dennys at 3am on a Wednesday morning.

He said he would be wearing all black. Oooh, mysterious. I hoped he wasnt all gothed out, or emo, or a liar, or too short, or had bad manners. I worried that maybe he had a horrible laugh or girly hands. I wondered if maybe he was creepy and a stalker. What if he was going to follow me home and try to attack me. What kind of a crazy person agrees to meet someone off the internet at 3am on a wednesday morning?!

Me. thats who. I panicked a little quieter at that point, carrying on a casual conversation with the hostess who was now seated in my booth across the table from me. She joked saying if I didnt like the guy I could tell him that she was my lover and I was just looking for a little man action on the side. I laughed. Holy crap, what if I DID have to say that? What if he was weird.

And then I saw him walking away from his car and up to the front of the restaurant. He looked just like his picture, only cuter. Please dont let this guy have a horrible laugh, or horrible teeth, or bad breath, or have tourettes or anything. Oh god what about me? Did I put enough makeup on before I left the house? Does my hair look ok? Did I brush my teeth? oh god, swish the soda around your mouth a little, you dont want to have bad breath. The hostess recognized my reaction to the man now walking in the door and she laid a casual hand on mine saying “its ok sweetie, you look fine”

I think he recognized me. I recognized him. I thought he was cute. He smiled. HE HAD GOOD TEETH! I waived and he came and sat down. I introduced myself. OH CRAP! Should I have gotten up? Do people hug when they first meet each other? WHAT DO I DO NOW?!?!

I have no idea what we talked about, but we must have talked about a lot. We were there for about an hour before we ordered anything.

Originally I had no intention of ordering anything. I’ve got this strange phobia about eating infront of people. I dont do it unless I feel comfortable, and I didnt even know this guy. I couldnt be comfortable eating infront of someone I just met.

He ordered pancakes and a plate of seasoned fries, and some cheese sticks and another soda, and two mugs of hot cocoa. I didnt even have to tell him anything that I would want to eat, he just ordered and said that he figured that would cover snacks for the two of us.

Our hot cocoa came and I quickly slurped mine down. Refill after refill, hot cocoa after hot cocoa, we continued talking and laughing and smiling. At one point he even joined in colouring the colour pages. Finally the pancakes came and he put half the stack on a plate for me, and left the other half for himself. Was I going to feel comfortable enough to eat?

Yep. I rearranged my plate so that my pancakes were stacked on top of each other. I looked over and saw him deconstructing his nicely stacked pile, and laying them out overlapped on the plate. I kinda giggled a little and realized that maybe even pancake arranger opposites can attract.

And the rest is history.

We got married this last June, and things have been wonderful ever since, because they were wonderful before.

So as we ate our pancakes this morning, I chuckled to myself as I drank my hot cocoa and ate my nicely stacked pancake pile, looking across the table at my honey with the laid out overlapping pancakes and thought about our first meeting and how happy I was, and how every time I look at him I feel the same way.

Or maybe I was just having a pancake high. I’m not sure. Anything is possible at this point.
-A.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under January 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.