[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] It's Pancake Day!

Now, I'm not terribly sure what is involved in Pancake Day, but I like it.

In fact, I think I love Pancake Day.

It may very well be the most beautiful holiday ever conceived in the puny minds of men. To me, the invention of pancakes is right up there with quantum mechanics, the microwave oven, and those helpful little plastic ends they put on shoe laces to keep them from getting all frizzy and difficult.

Without pancakes, my world would be a very sad place.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize it was Pancake Day until well after I had finished my lunch of a meatloaf sandwich and started making a massive batch of Dan's Happy Chili for dinner --it's got all sorts of yummy stuff in it from chipotle and chorizo to dark brown sugar and Dutch processed cocoa as well as about seven or ten different kinds of peppers. Each spoonful is like a happy gnome on crack bouncing quickly around the inside of your mouth with a blazing torch to provide a little heat just about everywhere at different times. He's not a violent gnome by any stretch. After all, I hate foods that are so damn spicy you can't tell what the hell it is you're eating. I've eaten some pretty odd meat of very questionable pedigree on more than one occasion that was so bloody painful, I could have been gnawing on my tongue for all I knew.

To me, that just takes all the fun out of eating.

Anyway, since it's pancake day, and I worry that if I miss it, Pancake Day will be no more, I'm going to have to figure out a way of making cornbread pancakes that don't resemble the garden variety tortilla. Perhaps something along the lines of a Native American fry-bread (which I could eat until my head falls off). Of course, I will have to cook it in a pan so as to remain loyal to the pancake Ouvue.

That also makes me somewhat sad since, every time I step into my kitchen with the notion of making pancakes, a curious look crosses my face and my deep-fryer starts drooling. I swear, sometimes in those silent, early-morning hours before the house is overrun with cats, I can hear the delicate, loving whisper of "bring me the batter" coming from my fryer.

So, obviously, I only have two options:

First, I can ignore the promise of goodness of deep-fried pancake batter coming from the whimpers of my deep-fryer, and I can make pancakes the old-fashioned way --in a pan.

Or, the other, slightly more unusual, option would be to whip up the pancake batter, dip a pan into it, and throw the whole thing into the deep fryer to inevitably end up with a cake shaped like a pan.

Needless to say, I'm going to have to work on this...

Nonetheless, I hope you all manage to celebrate Pancake Day. If you've got an IHOP or some other less international pancake outlet near you, I recommend you go and enjoy yourselves. Don't forget the butter and maple syrup (remind me to write about the time I got a massive jug of "mapel syrup" sometime. It's how I came to the conclusion that the best maple syrup money can buy is made by people who can not spell).

So, Viva La Pancake!

-DP


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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 2/04/2008 01:42:00 PM