Pancakes and Friends

We missed our traditional Saturday pancake breakfast this morning—Allan left at 6:30 for a sailing adventure with Bill Ziegler (friend since our children were very young homeschoolers). I’ll make pancakes instead to celebrate July fourth, when Tory will be here briefly, en route from her studies in Florence and her sojourn in Dingle, Ireland to her home in Boulder and new job in Denver. We’re eager to see her!

I learned the pancake recipe while working on a cookbook in the early eighties with several fine La Leche League women. (Some friends remain dear across the miles and years. Simon and Garfunkel’s “Old Friends” loops through my mind at this reflection.) I maintain contact with two fellow editors of Whole Foods for the Whole Family, Bryanna Clark Grogan, who writes a fascinating vegan blog and has published several cookbooks, and Karen Williams Burdette, now an associate professor at Tennessee Technological University. Though we live half or a whole continent apart, we’ve stayed friends since our work together on the cookbook, sharing challenges—deaths and parenting worries—and the joys of births, marriages, and degrees, and accolades.

In 1980 or '81, our head editor, the late Roberta Bishop Johnson, stayed at my home for a couple of weeks while we laid out the cookbook’s cover and 340 pages (after families and our far-flung editorial assistants had tested and selected 943 recipes from the more than 7000 sent us by LLL contributors around the world). Roberta taught me a great deal about patience and the importance of good tools, about editing and layout. But one lesson has stayed with me most vividly: in the long run it’s easier and more efficient to do a task right the first time, than to do it over. (My father tried to teach me that for years—why do we learn more willingly from friends than from our parents?)

In most instances, I’ve found that Roberta’s lesson, which she taught me by example, holds true. Writing may be the exception, though. A draft always has room for revision; it's one of the main things I try to teach my composition and creative writing students.  In fact, my teaching credo has been through perhaps twelve iterations already—elaboration, deletion, reorganization—and it’s still a work in progress. One of my grad school professors at Southern, Dr. Robert McEachern, says it best: “Writing is never finished. It’s just due.”

Bob, Karen, Bryanna, Bill, and so many dear ones unnamed here, you enrich my life, and my family's. I wish you the blessing of good friends--and pancakes every Saturday.

The Church Family Zoo's Favorite Pancakes

1 c  [½ pound] cottage cheese or soft tofu

4 eggs

 ½ c milk, approximately

1 t vanilla

¼ c oil

½ c flour (unbleached and/or whole wheat mixed with rolled oats, wheat germ, ground almonds and flax seeds, opt.)

½ t baking soda

¼ t salt

Whirl moist ingredients in blender till smooth. Blend in dry ingredients and adjust liquid, if necessary, so the batter is the consistency of heavy cream. Cook (we like silver dollar size) on greased preheated griddle till golden on both sides. An option is to sprinkle a few blueberries or chopped cashews on the batter just after you pour it onto the pan.

(Adapted from Whole Foods for the Whole Family, the second La Leche League cookbook edited by Roberta Bishop Johnson (and associated edited by Bryanna Clark Grogan, me, and others; calligraphed by Karen Williams Burdette), first printing 1981.

Instead of pancakes, in the cool of the early morning I made these cookies, another family favorite, to welcome Allan home from sailing tonight:

Oatmeal-Molasses Ginger Cookies

¾ c butter or your preferred shortening

½ c brown sugar

½ c sugar

¼ c molasses

1 egg

½ c rolled oats

1 ½ c flour (I mix mine with some wheat germ, ground almonds and flax seeds)

¼ t salt

1 t each: baking soda, cloves, cinnamon, ginger

Cream butter and sugars. Add egg and molasses. Mix dry ingredients together and blend into creamed mixture. Either drop by teaspoonfuls or chill, then roll into balls and place on a slightly-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes or until the cookies reach the chewiness/crispness you prefer. 

(Adapted from Mother’s in the Kitchen, the first La Leche League cookbook edited by Roberta Bishop Johnson and published in 1971.)