The banana pancake mystery

Brunch is pretty much my favorite meal. Carbs, sugar, salt (e.g., waffle, syrup, bacon). Like eating dessert with a little bit of dinner thrown in.

I'm not a great cook, but I'm pretty good at brunch basics. The first meal I hosted here was a brunch: two families, with kids. Chocolate chip pancakes and whipped cream, and plain pancakes and syrup for the more conservative. It was a hit. Everyone loved these pancakes.

My next meal was just with a few friends. Banana pancakes, blueberries, strawberries, two kinds of chocolate chips, whipped cream, and syrup. (I always serve bacon, too, to please the remaining taste buds.) Another hit. They said they were the best pancakes they'd had and encouraged me to invite them over next time I was using up an overripe banana.

One day I had a very ripe banana, and no one was coming over, so I made pancakes for myself. I like to make a full batch of pancakes and then save the leftovers to pop in the toaster oven later. I used the same recipe I've used my whole life, the "Griddlecakes" recipe from the Fanny Farmer cookbook. My cookbook opens to this page. (If I flip the pages, it also opens to the page for blueberry pie.) It was the same recipe I used for my hugely successful chocolate chip and banana pancake brunches.

The pancakes were awful. They tasted salty, bitter. I threw the entire batch out.

I double checked the recipe and decided I must have left out the salt, so the baking powder didn't rise or process or whatever baking powder does, so I figured I must have been tasting baking powder.

Next overripe banana: same recipe. I focused on adding the salt. And ... the pancakes were terrible. I was hungry, and they were perhaps somehow less bitter than the last time, so I doused them in syrup and ate them anyway.

This was a total mystery. How had the Fanny Farmer recipe stopped working? What was I missing? Do bananas mess with pancake batter, somehow, chemically? I had taken the short cut of not mixing the dry ingredients before adding them to the wet ingredients, figuring they all get mixed together in the end. Is that what broke it? I've made these pancakes a gazillion times, and I'm pretty sure I don't always (rarely, in fact) mix the dry ingredients first.

Next overripe banana: I carefully assembled the dry ingredients. And ... mystery solved.

The recipe calls for baking powder. Baking powder, as we all know, comes in a canister. Baking soda, on the other hand, comes in a box. Well, when I had gone to Trader Joe's to buy baking powder, I had grabbed the canister, had used the canister, had used the canister in all the pancakes I've made since I moved in ... and it turns out that Trader Joe's puts its baking soda in canisters. I'd been using backing soda all along. Pfffttthhh.

I made banana pancakes again this morning, this time with a new canister of baking powder. They were terrific, and, not surprisingly, were very different, with a lighter texture than all those other pancakes. The new mystery is: did the chocolate chips and whipped creams and berries and chocolate and syrup really mask the terrible flavor of those early pancakes? Did all of those people really not notice the bitter, salty, baking soda-flavored pancakes?

Delightfully suspicious

I'm reading a draft of a novel that a friend of mine wrote.  It's my second time through some of these sections, but here I am on a new one.  A group of friends are together for brunch -- a very "Sex and the City" scene.  I've met these friends before in previous sections.  And I'm having fun with the images coming through in my head -- it's like reading the book after seeing the movie.  Because I've had many of those "Sex and the City" brunches with my now-author friend.  I'm sure a lot of women will relate to this.

Funny, they seem to be in roughly the same location that we used to have brunch.  Which makes sense: write about locations you know.

Then the story mentions another location: one of the fictional women happens to live on the same street that one of us actually lived on.  And her name ... is almost the same in the book as it is in reality.  And there's another one with almost-my name, but I just thought that was a coincidence.  But then there's another one with almost-another-friend's-name, and, um, her personality even coincides with the real life person.  Holy cow.  So that almost-my-name might be named after me?  I don't think she is me, though.  My friend is too smart a writer.  

I now have to reread the draft.

Good morning

Made my peanut butter toast, carefully spreading the peanut butter to cover the entire piece, a bit thickly this morning. As I reached to grab the Skippy jar to put it away, I snagged the plate, and (insert whirlybird noise here) the plate and toast went spinning through the air towards the floor. In slow motion, I swear. Maybe the peanut butter has a lot of air resistance. Broken (but not shattered) plate, and of course the perfect peanut butter toast landed peanut butter down.

Actually, it made it easier to clean up, since the smaller shards of plate stuck to the peanut butter as I started wiping it up. Next time I break something (which could be any second), perhaps I'll throw some peanut butter into the mix. I meant that as humorous, but it is actually really good at getting those little pieces that old brooms might miss.

Popped another piece of toast into the toaster ... and burned it. Third time was the charm.

Monday is the new Sunday

Veterans Day observed: it's a holiday, at least for me, today.

Discussion at the Rockridge Cafe this morning. They handed me the specials menu, with daily specials on one side and weekend specials (including pumpkin waffle) on the other.

Waitress delivers coffee.
Me, holding the menu up and gesturing at the weekend specials side: "Is it the weekend?"
Waitress: "No, it's Monday."
Me: "I understand. But does it count as the weekend?"
Waitress: "No, the weekend ends on Sunday."

It took several rounds of who's-on-first to get her to understand that I wasn't just asking because I didn't know it was Monday or that Monday is not part of the weekend. Expectations of consciousness seem very low in our part of the world at times. And indeed we were able to order a pumpkin waffle from the weekend menu on a Monday.