Never Underestimate the Power of a Pancake

I grew up eating Sunday Dinner. Church lasted for about eight hundred hours back then. I spent most of it swinging my feet, watching flies explore the wiglet the woman in front of me always wore, and dreaming of succulent roast, drowned in brown gravy which had broken free of its mashed-potato-pool and flooded my meat and veggies like an epicurean tsunami. I could taste its carmel-y roasted brown goodness every moment I wasn’t physically enjoying it on my hard little wooden pew. Visions of Sunday Dinner kept me religious all through childhood.

When I got married and began having my own children, I carefully cooked meat-based Sunday meals. I spiced, seared, slathered, peeled, and mashed with the best of them, anticipating the day when my offspring would be old enough to love and cling to that traditional food like the life-blood it had always been to me. In fact, recreating the experience in my own family had begun to verge on its own religion, and I devoted myself to it with missionary-like zeal.

Then one day, when my oldest had sprouted a will of her own, and the next child had caught wind of it, followed by the third who was just becoming aware of her taste-buds, I heard this: “Ugh. Roast again? Why do we always have to have roast? Why can’t we have pancakes?”

Stunned would not begin to describe how I felt.

Roast? They had said roast the same way one might say “I believe someone has laced my ice-cream with strychnine and a touch of snail feces.” How could they speak of the Holy Grail of Meats in such tones? And put it in the same sentence as pancakes? Not to mention, how could they not have been moved to adore my beloved meal upon seeing me slave over it as I had? Oh, I was crushed. And then, when all of my careful reasoning came to nothing, I died inside. Fine, I told them. We’ll have pancakes. And YOU’LL SEE.

And I was right. They did see. My grudging pancakes were a hit. And then my husband took over. He added grains and cereals and just enough baking powder and eggs to produce a perfect, tender inside with a neat crispy outside–topped with fresh peach sauce or pure maple syrup and a dollop of peanut butter (Trust me. Food of the gods.)

Then the pancakes morphed into waffles, of equal airy lightness and angelic crumb. We moved on to crepes, with cream and berries and fresh raspberry jam. And at length I unfolded from my bitterness and contributed Welsh Cakes – a delightful nutmeg-y, cider-donut-esque griddle scone that the Welsh probably died for. (A recipe given to me by a lovely Canadian friend, by the way, who was not Welsh as far as I could see, but could cook like she was)

In the end, Breakfast for Sunday Dinner has become the thing that has bonded our family most. Meals are great for that. Sunday meals, stellar. Pancakes, out of this world. My children’s eyes soften when speaking of Dad’s pancakes or my Welsh cakes in a way that meat never made mine do. And they are the foods my college daughter has requested for breakfast on her first weekend home.

We are now a family united by the power of the pancake. And it’s all good.