Afternoon Delight: Pancakes

 I am passionate about pancakes. It’s true. My dad jokes that I eat with my eyes (like I could read a cookbook and I’d be full), but I truly enjoy food. Especially now that I’m sober; might as well be fat and happy (but not too fat. I’ll settle for a big Spanish butt).

I grew up eating pancakes. My old babysitter would make them with food colored smiley faces. Small children enjoy things like that (I wish I could go back to those days when a pancake smiley really made me smile). The flavor of a pancake was heavenly to me. I know it’s all syrup anyways (the more the merrier). 

Hence I grew to like any bready breakfast food with syrup, like French toast and waffles, and learned to make them when I got older. At the bed and breakfast I worked at straight out of college, the manager made waffles literally every day. She had her own secret recipe that made them extra crispy and fluffy (I’m going to divulge: bisquik, ice water, and heavy cream. I tried making them at home…didn’t work! So go ahead and try! (The real secret: southern charm. I don’t have it)). Once in a while I got to eat a waffle smothered in real blueberry syrup, which was like the only perk of that job (the wine? I could take it or leave it. But the mini ham cheddar jalapeño biscuits, I gobbled them up. I do like food, dad). 

Lately, I’ve been making myself one big pancake for breakfast (I always offer one to John, but he doesn’t eat breakfast (usually I don’t, but sometimes I wake up sugar crazed)). I have made the batter from scratch before, when I was a bored teenager, but I find the box mix is just fine: just add water or milk. I like to use milk. I feel like it makes it richer. But the real richness is in the syrup. Yeah, a pancake is just a vehicle for golden liquid sugar. Oh well. I just use Walmart brand butter flavor. My grandad always liked granulated sugar on his pancakes, like he was eating crepes. He was a sugar addict, too.

This afternoon I was thinking I could really go for a pancake right now. So I made one. And it really hit the spot. I make them so big, like the size of a small pan, that sometimes they more than sate my appetite, but I like this method better than making several little ones. My brother said thats not a pancake, thats a flapjack! Whatever you want to call it — a cake, a carb, a vehicle, a worthless slab of dough — it brightens up my day and speaks to my inner child, and reminds me that diets suck, and in the end, just like love, sugar wins (still can’t kick this soda habit…and I don’t wanna!).

It takes me as only as fast as the pan heats up to crank out a quick delicious meal or snack. So I’m going to highly consider midnight pancakes when we run out of ice cream.

I hope that someday I can make pancakes for my kids (the nonexistent ones), the big ones, with colorful  smiley faces. Why not? It’s something to look forward to, being that I don’t have any nieces or nephews, and someone has to further the bloodline (unlucky me). And I’ll wait til they’re older to tell them what afternoon delight is. Unless they figure it out themselves (they will be smart after all. But hell that song stumped me for a long time). 

Long live the pancake, all hours of the day!


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