Pancake Revival

Who doesn't have fond childhood memories of having pancakes? Anders, that's who. We have never made him pancakes. When we were first married, we tried several pancake recipes but were not impressed with any of the results. For us, waffles and french toast beat out pancakes any day. So pancakes were never on our breakfast menu.

But now that Anders is around, we have started to feel guilty. Have we been depriving him of a quintessential American adolescent experience? If it weren't for daycare, Anders wouldn't even know what a pancake was. So we came up with a plan. We were sure that some of our parent friends must make pancakes for their kids, and they can't all be as dull as ours, right? Time for another themed food party: Pancake Revival!

We invited some of our friends-with-young-children to brunch and asked them to bring a pancake recipe, either one of their favorites or a new one to try. We would cook up a batch of each different recipe and let everyone enjoy the variety, including the kids.

We had pancakes of all sorts: buckwheat, whole wheat; pumpkin, strawberry, blueberry, spiced; thick, thin. And lots of them. We had griddles going simultaneously for at least an hour. All of the kids, including Anders, got their fill of pancakes that day.

It certainly wasn't a contest, so I won't declare a "winner". But we did come away with a recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes that all three of us liked. It turned out to be a recipe from the cookbook of the Wildflower Cafe, a longtime favorite restaurant in the Gorge that closed several years ago.

Since this event was really all about the kids, here are some of the participants:

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders