Griddle Me This Batman

It's been a long week dealing with Commissioner Gordon and some Joker and I am exhausted. So all I will offer you today is a recipe, which will be my breakfast Saturday. Yes, I know, it's pancakes again.

I was thinking while finishing this year's tax return that I could list my occupation as "professional pancake stylist" because there ARE a lot of pancakes on here.  But it's my favorite weekend breakfast and I'm always experimenting with new recipes

Griddle Cakes are another term for American and Canadian Pancakes.  In Scotland, there are also griddle cakes, but the ones I had there were a bit thicker, sometimes studded with currents and served with tea  (yummy!)

This weekend's pancake:  A tweak to my all-time favorite World's Fluffiest pancake (pictured above, recipe on the right sidebar) with the addition of honey and spice (and a slight bit more of leavening as the honey adds moisture and weight to the batter). And I doubled it.  Because I can

Buttermilk Honey Griddle Cakes. With a lighter, sweet taste, they don't need a ton of syrup (but you're going to use it anyway). They were worth the 30 minutes wait time (or you can make the batter tonight, and tuck in the fridge, just give it time to warm to room temp before cooking or you will have flatjacks)

2 cups flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup honey (warmed so it blends easier, I microwaved 15 seconds)
1/4 teaspoon cardamom or cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 and 1/2 cups "buttermilk" (add 1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice to  the 1 1/2 cups milk and let sit 10 minutes)
2  eggs
1/2 of a stick of unsalted butter, melted (don't even think of using cheap "spread")

Mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Whisk milk, vanilla, and honey in a dish, whisk in eggs and then add to dry ingredients all at once, stirring only until mixed (will be lumpy) Cover with plastic wrap and let mixture stand for 30 minutes. Add butter after melting and cooling slightly.

Cook on a buttered or oiled pan on medium heat until golden brown on each side (I love my cast iron, but use your favorite). Makes 20 nice sized griddle cakes (cool the leftovers and freeze for a quick breakfast on a busy day, better and so much cheaper than the frozen pancakes at the store)

5. Heat a nonstick pan on medium heat.
6. Add some of the butter and then 1/3 cup batter.
7. Turn heat down to medium-low.
8. Cook until the top of the pancake bubbles and flip, cooking until the other side is lightly golden brown, about 2 to 3 minutes per side.
9. Repeat with the remaining butter and batter.
10. Serve with maple syrup.

Read more at http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipe/buttermilk-griddle-cakes/3083/#eR8clKmKdpJvfhOE.99

Barkley Memories - Dine and Dash Dog

 I don't care if Top Gear is on.  I can't steal your socks if you don't take off your shoes.  

On Adulting

After a wonderful couple of days off, my Monday was, as my Mom would say, "interesting".

It was early morning.  I had to be in my expensive midnight blue "court suit" so I could perhaps help win one for the good guys today.  

I stepped out into the drive to the truck where I'd left it. The air was calm, the east was still grey, but it will soon burst forth in crimson garb any moment, the sky suddenly red with the firing, the burst of sun, before it finally, after hours of heat and volley, marches back into the West, wearily but not defeated. Overhead I hear the sound, the sound, a winged formation of geese performing their own maneuvers in grey, laying the field for a retreat from winter. I stopped in the drive to look up and admire them, the precision, the form, the beauty. Honk Honk!

I thought, "wow, I wish I had my camera".

What I actually said was CAC!  (you may need to brush up on  your Gaelic).

I know a fair bit about blood spatter, such as the greater the height from which a drop falls, the more it will spray out in a star-like shape. Let me tell you, blood has NOTHING on goose crap from 50 feet.

The jacket was going to have to go to the cleaners, probably the pants as well. I had no choice but to change into my only other clean suit,  the "oh we are so going to lose" brown one.  I'm not saying it was ugly or out of date, but. . .

Suit notwithstanding, the rest of the day went OK so perhaps my misadventures this morning were an anomaly.  After work, I  looked forward to running a couple of errands and then getting home to a furry dog, a happy husband, and a large bottle of Single Malt.

One of those stops was the car wash to get rid of the goose spatter. The bat truck was ever so shiny as I pulled out onto the road.

Honk honk honk! No, I hadn't cut anyone off.

SPLAT.

Damnú ort geese!

Day's like these it's just best to go work out and get rid of some stress. I usually do 90 minutes with a personal trainer on Thursday, repeating the reps on my own on Saturday, but why not go to the gym tonight.

I made the mistake of foregoing my usual swimming and exercise bike and joining a new class that consisted of skinny soccer moms performing what I do believe was the dance scene to Saturday Night Fever to new age music.  I completed the class with all the fluidity and grace of a stepladder and crept back to my car, hoping no one got pictures.

The geese were nowhere in sight.

The last stop, the grocery store.  As I enter the store, I see an older gent with a beard and a cane having trouble with one of the powered carts. It looked like he'd had knee surgery, so I figured he was new to the carts.  I stopped and helped him, telling him I'd had to use one recently and then, with a conspiratorial wink said "don't go too fast, they track your activities".

Apparently, he took my "being in the know" seriously because the next thing I knew he was following me around the store happily chatting away about Elvis's current location and how the aliens abducted him last Fall while squirrel hunting and took him bowling on Mars.

I lost him in the Tampax aisle.

Quick! To the parking lot!

Honk! Oh good, I just cut someone off. There's the finger! Wave!

But you know, as I headed inside I thought to myself -no one ever said being a grown-up was easy. There are machines and body parts that break, usually resulting in more bills to add to the bills you already get just by existing. There's dealing with other people and man's general nature to evoke religion or politics to justify what their ego or glands insisted upon no matter the outcome. There are battles and defeat and then there is glory.

But isn't it better to get out there as you are, to take chances, to fight, then to sit home on the couch, living on the sweat of the taxpayer or simply your own inertia, until nothing is left of you but silent, sentient meat that knows not the difference between trial and triumph?

No, you get out there and try.  You may get help along the way, not by your government, but by those that know and support you. But you live. You do it when you have all the energy of youth and health, you do it when all that is left to you, for now, is the grooved habit to survive. You do it because this is all you really know that you have for sure, this place, these hearts, here now, today, goose poop and all

So for me, I'll get up, get out, get dirty, get bloody and occasionally make a complete fool out of myself. Then I will come home with a smile, for I have lived. Then I can simply sit with those two souls that share this house that love me and tell them everything (even if one of them looks at me like "Blah Blah LORELEI, Blah Blah LORELEI).

Sometimes being a grown-up is hard.  But as  I sit here,  my furry pal by my side and Partner in Grime on the way home, even if late, I realize the rewards are worth it.

Sunday Canon Fodder - Range Life Memories