Pancakes with maple syrup, apples and pecans, pages 138-139

How good are you at making pancakes? Do you have a recipe or a mix that works well for you? I've tried lots of mixes and recipes and have found a few that are good, but it seems like the ones I get at restuarants for breakfast are consistantly better.

When I make my own I prefer to use some oats, or whole wheat, or something to give the pancakes something besides fluff. This pancake ingredient list is pretty extensive: buttermilk, yogurt, white and whole wheat flours, cormeal, turbinado suger, etc. And, to top the pancakes, you make a sauce of sauted apples with butter and maple syrup. And, toasted pecans sprinkled on top are the wild ingredient. My maple syrup comes from Canada, I think, but if you are cool enough to have Missouri maple syrup that would be a second wild ingredient.   Hungry, yet? We served the pancakes with our own bacon and Fred's excellent coffee.

I thought the recipe excellent. The batter is thick and I should have cooked them with a lower heat because I was tending to get the outside too brown before I could flip them. But, that's my fault, not the recipes, eh! A double batch made one big breakfast for the four of us plus enough batter for a more regular school day breakfast. The pancakes are indeed soft in the middle as the book indicates, while also being hearty enough to not make you feel gross after you have from a simple starch spike many pancake recipes cause.

I like weekend breakfasts. I like not having a time schedule biting at the tail end of your meal, keeping you tense. I like public radio in the morning, and Fred's good coffee. I like making a wowser breakfast for the boys, and slipping through lunch time without anyone wanting to eat more than a piece of fruit at about 2 pm to tide them over until dinner. I like muffins and waffles and omelets and fresh squeezed juice and going out to eat, and lattes and newspapers and conversation. I heart weekend breakfasts.