Every few weeks, Becca asks, "Do you have the stuff to make pancakes or muffins? I'm hungry."
The answer is usually, 'No.' But I go to the kitchen and wing it anyway, because I love my sister and I am always up for a challenge. Applesauce, quick-cooking oatmeal, flax meal, rice milk, almond milk, canned pumpkin, mushed up bananas, the kitchen sink (well, water from it anyway): all of these things have ended up in the ever-changing pancake/muffin recipe. Some weeks, I remember the correct ratio of flour to baking powder to salt to liquid. Some weeks, I Google a recipe to work from. Some weeks, like this one, I throw caution to the wind and let the gods dictate what goes in the bowl.
I won't bother to post today's recipe in detail, but I will say that I used flax meal in large quantity because the applesauce had fermented and I had used all the vegetable oil making popcorn for a movie last week. Whole wheat flour, white flour (a cup of each), cinnamon (2 tsp), honey (2 1/2 tbsp?), some water, some rice milk, some luck, some wishing and hoping. They turned out tasty, but the texture was not, um, perfect. I had a sliced granny smith apple leftover from my lunch yesterday that I refused to throw out, so I chopped it up and sauteed it in some butter (thank you, Julia Child). Becca loved them and ate too many as usual, then retired to the couch in a fiber coma (she's also high on Benadryl for an allergic reaction to a Snuggie).
It may seem like this story should include boyfriends, or hangovers, or mimosas, or brunch out at a restaurant instead of standing at our kitchen counter. But this weekend, as with many before and many to come, I am happy that it's just us. We are a family of two, a subset of a larger one, but a family all on our own. I love Saturday.
