Meals: Saturday Morning Pancakes

One of the things we've tried to do consistently as a family is mealtimes. We try to eat dinner together 99% of the time. Breakfast is a bit more catch-as-catch can, except on Saturdays. When we're not interrupted by kids sports or some other hoohah, we have breakfast together, and most of the time, that breakfast is pancakes.

The recipe I use is from the mid-century gold standard of American cookbooks, "The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook." This is a relic from the time of June Cleaver and Levittowns. I've tried a few recipes from it, and most are bland and insipid (think chile con carne with a whole teaspooon of chile powder! Scandal!)

The buttermilk pancake recipe, on the other hand is very good. I've strayed from it a couple of times, only to hear the family intone, "what did you do with these?" like a Greek chorus.

Anyway, here's the recipe:

1 egg
1 1/4 c. buttermilk or sour milk (I use 2% with 2 t. apple cider vinegar)
1/2 t. baking soda
1 1/4 c. flour (also try 1 c. regular flour and 1/4c whole wheat)
1 t. sugar
2 t. melted butter
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t salt

Needless to say, it goes great with blueberries, etc. added to the mix.











Here's the mix. If it doesn't look kinda like this, you may want to start over. Or you may not.


















If you have a cast iron griddle, get it out and use it for this. If it's properly seasoned, it's the best nonstick cooking surface you'll ever use. Here's my griddle. It's a Griswold, pushing 100 years old. It belonged to my great-grandmother. This stuff literally lasts forever. I'll be passing it on to my kids, and so on.











Cooking them up.











The finished product.

A plateful of these and you're good to go until mid-afternoon.

I like to do this because it's a great breakfast, it's a fun ritual, and my kids will remember how Dad made panckaes on Saturday morning, the same way I remember how my mom used to make pizza from the Chef Boyardee pizza mix every Friday for dinner and we all sat down and watched Rockford.

Good times.