The Premeditated Pancake Mix

I try to impress upon our grandchildren that I make the best pancakes in the State of Iowa. Sometimes I say "in the entire country" but that may be stretching it a bit. I tell them this everytime I serve them pancakes. They have yet to complain! (I'm thinkin' I have them convinced!)

My secret? You can read about my secret ingredient (kamut) AND my secret recipe here. And since you can read it there, it is no longer a secret!

Today I will not talk about how cold it got last night for the temp dropped only to a mere 5 degrees F. below zero.

No, today I will reminisce bit about Christmas at our house...the Christmas of the Big Snow...the Christmas of getting up Four Mornings In A Row to shovel snow.

The second morning of shoveling three of us worked outdoors (we had only 3 shovels) and one of us, my daughter, worked in the house preparing a warm breakfast for us.

My grandson likes to sleep late...he's a growing boy...he will be fourteen this spring and last year he grew 4.5 inches. He's skinny...everything he eats goes to height and not to width. He normally would be sleeping late at our house but when I woke him, suggesting we needed to re-scoop what we scooped the day before, he jumped out of bed and dressed for the cold. So there we were, Papa, Grandson and Myself. Outdoors, shoveling snow early in the morning.

This is the point where the Premeditated Pancake Mix comes into the story.

I like to make several batches of my Super Secret Pancake Recipe, combining the dry ingredients only, and storing it in individual plastic bags in the freezer with the instructions for remaining ingredients printed on a slip of paper inside the bag..

A couple of months ago I had made a double-double batch (four times the usual amounts) in a large baggie and had placed it with instructions in the freezer. Hubby planned to "make breakfast" for the group of guys he meets with at the church on Thursday mornings. Only he never got around to it. And twice I stole a cup of dry ingredients from the baggie for pancakes at home. So now the bag contained enough for two batches and still included instructions for four.

My daughter, who is a better cook than I, grabbed that baggie and added the "quad" ingredients and came up with a very thin batter...too thin even for crepes. So she opened the door and called out to me, asking, "Is this really pancake mix? I followed your instructions and it's Really Thin!"

I had to laugh...when I stole from the bag I had an intuitive feeling that this would cause a future problem. And now the problem was here! So I told her what I had done and to simply add some extra flour and baking soda to the mix. Which she did.

When we came into the house she had a scrumptuous breakfast ready for us. The kitchen smelled yummy! A large pile of perfect pancakes and a side dish of sausage sat ready for our plates. Syrup was on the table. We were ready to eat.

Forget my earlier bragging about myself and myself's pancakes. My daughter makes the best pancakes in Iowa.

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