An Unexpected Hello*

*Edited to include recipe at the end of the story....

For years, I've wanted to make Christmas cookies with my children, but somehow it never got off the ground.  This year, I set my heart, it would happen.  Saturday night, Rita, Regina, Paul, Anna and I donned aprons. I'd set out foil trays, bowls, cups, spoons, and six recipies.  We made Hello Dollies and Rice Crispie Treats.   We danced and sang to whatever Christmas songs came on the radio but Regina got bored and went to play in the other room in between tasks.  We made the pumpkin muffins and sugar cookies.  Paul joined her.  When Anna asked if she could stop, I allowed them to put on a Christmas Rudolf special on TV.  Rita made it through making the bananna muffins and went to watch. It wasn't the full outcome I'd wanted, but it was. Next year, maybe the happy memory would encourage them to stay longer.  I felt happy and at peace to be alone in my kitchen for the final recipe.

The last cookie wasn't one they could eat anyway.

The signature cookie of the season is my dad's Bourbon balls.  He and Mom would be in the kitchen and he'd roll them powedered sugar to put in a tin for whoever was on the list.  I always wanted to like them, but as a kid I never could.

My mom gave me a cook book from my home parish, where the recipe for Dad's bourbon balls is published.  I'd always just scanned the recipe, but yesterday, I found a side story on the page from my mom, reminding me Dad made these from the time he settled in Beaumont for the clerks of the court such that every year, they'd get requests.

It was like Dad saying, "Hello Beautiful." to have that story, (one I've known but dimly), fully stamped on the page.  I made the Bourbon balls and ate one, plunging into memory.

They tasted better than I've ever remembered.

Recipe for Bourbon Balls (as published in Saint Anne's Church Cookbook), submitted by my mom.

1 12 onz box vanilla wafers
1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons Cocoa
1 cup walnuts
3 Tablespoons Karo Syrup (white or light).
1/2 cup bourbon
extra powdered sugar.

Directions:  Crush Vanilla Wafers into powder.  (I use a ziplock and a rolling pin but a food processor does this very well).  Add powdered sugar and cocoa, mix well.  Chop walnuts into tiny pieces and add to these ingredients.  Add the Karo and the bourbon, mix well. (I used my mixer).  Form the cookies by hand and roll them in powdered sugar.  Place in an airtight tin.  If the batter seems dry, add more bourbon.

Half Baked

This past May, the oven died. No biggie, we had a microwave, a stove and a grill and it's summer. We have a griddle, a slow cooker, two toasters and a waffle iron.  Who needs an oven?  There was so much to do, we just filed it under a "I'll get to it" task and pressed on with life.  We boiled pasta. We made hot dogs. We made eggs.  This is easy.  Why do we even have an oven?  It's taking up valuable cabinet space.  

The first month, we grilled hamburgers and smoked ribs. I made pancakes and we ate ice cream.  Two months passed without too much hassle.  Not that it had been smooth sailing.  We'd forget and purchase those insta biscuits or a cake mix and stare at it in the cabinet.  We did learn to grill a whole ham and bake a pie (it was runny) on the grill.  We also made biscuits in the grill, and cooked fried cheese in a cake pan.

However, we went on vacation and got to use an oven for a week, granting us a respite from the drought of all things from the oven.  I remembered how much easier it was when we didn't have to make sure we had charcoal before we started cooking, how I could put something in a dish, season it, cover it and let it go....so when I returned from vacation, we measured and ordered one but it wouldn't be coming for at least a month.   Suddenly, the sloth of the early part of the summer stung big time.

We recommitted to grilling, to smoking, to boiling, but it was getting old.  The day before it was to come, we bought things to bake in joyful anticipation. Yes, we'd grown weary of HAVING to limit our options to what we could grill, boil, toast or saute.  We got a call.  Damaged in transit, they'd have to reorder.  We'd have two more weeks.  We were now desperate for something, for anything, but everything felt old, like soggy old cereal. Longing for something baked, we purchased bakery muffins and thought them better than they were by their sheer novelty.   The day came. The men came with the double oven.

It was the wrong size.  We'd have to reorder.

It wouldn't arrive for another month.   We are one week from the oven.   We've done the life hacks of making cinnamon rolls in the waffle iron.  We've eaten bbq'd everything.   We're tired.  Even the pasta fiends in the house no longer get excited when they see the pots boiling at dinner.   I'm eyeing my daughter's EZ bake with no small amount of envy.   We went to the Nat's game, and I hunted until I found something being sold that came from an oven.  

If next week comes and for some reason, there is a phone call, I'm going to start knocking on the neighbors doors and offering to dog, kid, car, house and cat sit if only to broil dinner and roast some vegetables.   I picked up a fall cooking magazine....the tag line, Grill All Fall Long.

And I'm thinking, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...."

I'm Sorry Mom, You Have Been Chopped

Mom! What's for dinner?

I have cooked meals in this household since it became a household, and no one has ever been poisoned or even slightly agitated by my cooking.

Until today.

You see, my kids watch Food Network, it's one of our favorites.  Unfortunately, it has lead one of them to think it is their mission in life to never experience a non gourmet meal.

Which meant when the answer was "Hot dogs," I was given an impromptu lecture on how unhealthy such fare is for children.   Adding raw carrots and black beans did not change the critic's mind. So I also fixed a Caesar salad.  I figured, I had him.

Except I fixed it from scratch.  Meaning, the lettuce came as a head, not in a bag with all the ingredients presorted and prewashed and pre-torn.  

"You don't make Caesar salad with that sort of lettuce..." he explained.
"Yes you do. Caesar salad uses romaine.  People used to just buy heads of lettuce, wash them, tear them up and use them."
"Prove it!"

So the guy who doesn't know how to make a Caesar salad is telling the Mom who introduce him to Caesar salad to provide evidence that Caesar salad uses Romaine.  I produce a cook book.

"That's old.  No one uses a cook book anymore. It's not proof."  Producing a second, third and fourth cook book did not change his mind.

I pull up recipes on the internet.  They collaborate my understanding of Caesar salads.  I even explain that they used to make Caesar salads with raw eggs and in some restaurants, with anchovies  in an attempt to round out my knowledge of all things related to Caesar salad.

Meanwhile he'd been googling on his i-phone.  The recipe did not mention a particular lettuce, which to the expert teen's mind meant Vindication.  Thus I listened to a smug adolescent explain that I didn't understand how to really cook. "There's only one way that's the right way." he explained.

I handed him a bowl full of romaine tossed with croutons, a Caesar dressing, salt, pepper and parmesean.  He ate it all, and ate what was to be my and his sister's serving.  

I looked at him and the empty salad bowl. I was feeling smug and triumphant.  Except I'm dealing with a teenager.

He told me, "It's still wrong."

Don't Waffle on Pizza

It doesn't matter if they ate it yesterday and tomorrow is a birthday party so they know they'll get it again. If the calendar reflects Rebecca Black's favorite day of the week, it's supposed to be pizza for dinner.

I learned this while summoning the will to make waffles. 

I thought I'd picked a surefire winner because usually waffles earn me a chorus of gratitude and joyful sticky faces.  Not on the day of the week that honors Freya, Norse goddess of love, fertility and war.

"But it's Friday..." one trailed off sadly, whispering to another who walked into the kitchen to ask "What's for dinner?"  "It's not pizza." You would have thought he was breaking the news of a dearly departed gently to someone who had just discovered her true love. 

It was like I flunked motherhood.

So I took out the strawberries in the fridge.  Slicing them and arranging them like pepperoni with melted butter and syrup for the cheese and sauce, I thought I'd triumphed.  "Lookie! Mom made a breakfast pizza. Isn't it cool?" It worked for two seconds.  Then reality set in.

"But sausage pizza is soooooooo yummy."
"And I love cheese."
"And no dishes." an older one piped up.

I looked at the batter and the plate of waffles six stacked high.  "You're getting waffles."

Another kid came in and I'm not sure it was not entirely planned..."Hey Mom? I have a gift certificate...could we call and order..." I stopped the question dead at that point.  "The next person who complains about waffles gets to do the dishes."

Silence.

I muttered to myself in irritation.  "I burnt one. Darn it.  I hate burnt waffles."

"MOM! You complained about the waffles. You HAVE TO DO THE DISHES!"  Suddenly dinner was eaten with great glee...at my expense. 

As I did the dishes that evening, I allowed myself one more mutter....I should have ordered pizza.

Maybe I Watch the Food Network a Little Too Much

Yesterday, I served dinner.  It was standard pasta rigatoni with butter, a touch of cheese and green beans on the side.  Admittedly, I used paper plates since no one including me was feeling too up on doing the dishes. 

My five year old said, "Thank you chef." and after blessing, took a delicate bite of pasta.  She raised her hand and said, "Chef, could you come  here a moment?"  She then explained that maybe her dish had a little too much salt.  "Did you taste the food before you served?" she asked giving an Iron Chef judge type searing look into my eyes.  I was waiting for her to say, "Please pack your knives and go." when she then was overridden by her younger (YOUNGER) sister, three weeks from four.  "I think it's very good pasta.  The sauce is nice."  she explained. 

"You could have added shrimp. It would have been even better with a touch of shrimp." my eleven year old son suggested.

"And it would look better and be more appetizing if it was served on real plates." my other son put in by way of concurrence. 

"But I don't know how many of you like shrimp, and I do know all of you like buttered pasta." I began.

"Well, you know Mom, you really could expand your flavor palate for us." my oldest daughter volunteered.  Mind you, I cook 33 meals a day minimum, (not counting snacks) and serving for the masses has watered down my menu, I don't want to put forth effort to receive "This tastes like yuck." as a response.

Facing the reality that these food critics were very kindly telling me to step it up a notch, I agreed to designated one night a week for experimentation night.  As I mull through the possibilities, browsing my cook books in a day dreamy kind of way, the realist in me pipes up.  "Ten bucks says next week when you serve them sausage and polenta....they ask for cold cereal or buttered pasta."  But I'm still game, and if the realist turns out to be right after a month of experimentation, I may have to cut back on watching Food Network.

The NEXT Iron Chef

I love the Food Network but I have to say I don't feel much sympathy for these professionals stressing out over only having 30 minutes to serve three people food when they don't have to do the dishes and the kitchens are fully stocked and gleaming with beautiful cooking tools.

These cooking shows need a dose of real reality. Iron Chef Moms.

We know. We've been there. It's Wednesday. You've served pasta two nights in a row, there aren't enough eggs to make breakfast for dinner for everyone and the whole chickens you forgot to take out of the freezer are poultry ice balls of doom. Defrosting would take so long, it would be time for bed and you have this little nag in the back of your head to fix something that a Mom ought to fix, you know, with vegetables and all so you can't quite rationalize a run to McDonald's or ordering Pizza. No. You've got to suck it up and make something.

Welcome to Extreme Dinner Challenge, Kid style.

Okay folks, she's going in the pantry and grabbing a can of black beans. Good call. If she's got rice and tortillas, she's golden for the adolescent, the picky eater and the happy child that eats everything. She'll still have the teen, tween, two toddlers, kindergarten boy and the baby to deal with, but a 1/3 solved in two easy moves is a good start.

Three pots are on but the burners won't light so she goes to the junk drawer, searching for the matches. She finds a box with a good strike side but no sticks, some paper ones that she knows are old and the lone stick of a camping box. Striking the lone wooden one, it breaks. Match one, two and three from the paper won't light.
She's getting nervous. The broken match is returned to, and lo, it catches. That was close but she's got fire and she's cooking. Twenty minutes to six though, she lost a lot of time.

Improvising, she's filling a pot with water. Good call, pasta won't annoy the toddlers or the five year old boy or the tween, that leaves the baby and the teenager, she's closing in on her goal. Meanwhile, there's an interruption. "MOM? How do I do this?" a child who has refused and insisted she doesn't have homework suddenly remembers and now wants one on one time to get through a phonics paper. She rattles off the instructions and hands an extra sharpened pencil to try and anticipate the next crisis.

Out comes a bag of insta salad and oooh, a bowl of carrots. She's moving now. She's in the zone. She hands the teen the baby and the baby food. "Feed him." He looks annoyed. "You'll get a better dinner. If I have to feed him, you get pasta." She then tells the ten year old that is tormenting the five year old to practice his trumpet.

The water is boiling. Angel hair pasta is scooped out of the pot so it can be reused for brocolli. The beans are boiling. They are turned down. The rice in the microwave is beeping. Butter is added.

A tween shows up. "Clear the table." she is told. She humphs until the bargain is made, she can light a candle at the table and we make chocolate milk. She has to make it though. The tween gets busy mixing in the syrup. Eveyrone is happy in anticipation.

Plating in five minutes. It is 5:52. Mom's got eight minutes to dinnertime. Will she make it. Wait, she's gone back in the pantry for a surprise move. She's opening a can of pineapple.

The dishwasher is raided for the appropriate number of spoons. Bowl one, Rice, beans, two tortillas on the side and a dish of salad. Plate two, tortillas of rice and beans mixed, carrots and a dish of pineapple. Plate three, buttered pasta in a bowl, brocolli and pineapple on the side. Plate four and five are duplicates of plate three. Plate six is pasta, brocolli, salad, carrots and a dish of pineapple. Plate seven is a series of coffee cups, one of rice, one of beans, one of carrots, one of pineapple, one of brocolli and one with salad dressing and a dish of salad. Plate 8 is the bottle of whole milk for the baby to finish off his dinner.

Yes, it's a complete dinner for 8 of the 9 but what about the teen? With one minute to go and no meat defrosted, what's the Iron Mom Chef going to do? She grabs two tortillas, puts provolone, salami and pepperoni on them, microwaves for 30 seconds. Wraps them into Stromboli's and adds a bit of salad on the side and a bowl of pineapple and a few carrots for color.

She's done it! It's six o'clock and it's dinner time. Now...in the next round, she'll figure out what she and their father get to eat and in the final competition, what will she do tomorrow when the crutch of pasta has run out?

Deep Fried Butter

State Fair of Texas' contenders include deep-fried butter, peaches | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

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I kid you not.

This is a worthy creation. Talk about Extreme Eating.

As for marketing, I'm thinking: it's functional, it's probably grossly delicious and it's fun. For those who want to harden their arteries just that much faster.

Slogan: Twice the heart attack inducing power in just two mouthfuls!

And as for how it would be served:

For those who want it straight and think suicide should at least be tasty. Those hemlock soups are just so bitter.

For those who need a chaser, there's a tres leches milk shake with extra whip cream. Drink up. Munch. Clear!

Ahhhh. Me home state.

How will this help me in the Real World?

Getting children to sit for an hour when they’ve just spent eight in school remains a thankless task and no amount of cookies and milk, hugs and freshly sharpened crayons can make it otherwise.

Clearly, all of my kids are feeling the pressure of having ascended to the next grade and being thus required to do more work. One of them in a fit of disgust asked the question asked by so many scholars before him, “Why? If it didn’t stick in all the time it was drilled at me in class, why will one more hour make a difference?”

Presuming it was a purely rhetorical question, I ignored it until he clamored in frustration a second time. I tried explaining that this helped seal in his brain the concepts taught during school.

He countered with "If the teacher were really good, I'd remember it without this stuff." I asked if something was wrong. "No." I asked if he needed a break. "No. It will just mean I have to do it later." That fatalistic vision of putting off tasks had never stopped me, but it clearly dogged his spirit. "What difference will this make?" He wailed again.

I put out the makings for dinner on the counter. Then I handed him a plate. “Dinner time.” I announced.

“What’s this?”
“Your pasta, meatballs and salad.” I explained.

“It hasn’t been cooked.”
“I know.”

“The spaghetti is still in the box.”
“You’re right again.”

“And the meatballs are still frozen.”
“Well, I’ve cooked all day so one more hour, how would that make a difference?” I asked.

Defeated, he handed me back the plate and went back to his worksheet. “I hate it when you get creative with your parenting.” he groused.

Shopping Spree

I don't like shopping. The only actual purchasing I enjoy honestly, involves either books or food. I could spend every last penny on either. I love browsing the gourmet grocery store and the book store with equal lavish abandon.

Because my kids have music lessons in the evening, my husband is home with the littles. I can gallantly volunteer to bring the olders to the music store and spirit myself into another world for the thirty minutes. Sometimes I go to the upscale grocery and stare at the beautiful foods my kids won't eat. Other times I go to the Borders and pour over the new books and imagine my name there.

Then there is the ritual. At the grocery store, I examine the vegetables I've never cooked, chocolates I've yet to taste and fantasize about making a French Onion soup that taste just right or Stromboli on some Friday night just for fun, or artichokes with melted butter that I don't wind up just eating by myself for four days. It's fun to dream.

If I'm at the bookstore, a similar ritual plays out. I pick up at least three political books to read the back cover, a history or two in a fit of dutifulness, and then head to the area I really love.

It happened over time, my love of food and my love of books merged. I noticed it with the book Like Water for Chocolate, and again as I found the cook books I liked best, had stories sprinkled in them like extra ingredients. "The Frugal Gourmet," "The Texas Cookbook" and Don DeLouise's "Eat This, You'll Feel Better" all shared a common thread of tasty mental tidbits in addition to awesome chicken and pasta, deadly delicious smoked burgers and a sponge cake that my kids still ask for whenever I offer them the option.

So now I go to the cook book section and drool.

Over the years, I have amassed a collection of cookbooks that is roughly 50 strong, ten of which are so used that they either have lost a back or pages, or have been repurchased used, as they are out of print. As such, I tell myself, I don't need another cookbook.

For a while, I'd managed to justify getting new cookbooks by restricting my purchases to when we were out of town. If say, we were at a civil war battle field touring and the gift shop touted "Cookbook of the Civil War, Union and Confederate dishes," I'd buy it and say, "We can learn a lot from this about the lives and history of our country." But most of these type of cookbooks, if accurate, are largely filled with recipes more inedible than hard tack. Conversely, if they contained "Cajun Spiced Sushi" or other inventive meal offerings that wouldn't have been found within 100 years or 1000 miles of the historic site offering the book, I can't be bothered. As such, I had abandoned this excuse to buy new cooking tomes and allowed my collection to top out at 51 as of last year.

So when I ducked into the book store and was hit with the sales pitch for Julia Child's Joy of French Cooking as I'd picked up the book "Julie and Julia," it took all my mental will not to plink down the extra forty bucks and get the matched set. But the addictive/suggestive part of my mind had been triggered.

By the time the kids got back in the car, my brain was already firing on the gourmet experience I'd spring on my husband. There were mushrooms and potatoes and fresh cherry tomatoes and chives. The neurons were so busy making connections and plotting the whole meal they didn't register that the cell phone rang so my daughter picked it up.

Their father had treated the kids to some fast food and had some waiting for us at home.

"That's great." I murmured. The kids cheered in the car. My pseudo foodie rush crashed hard.

But I vowed silently, next week I'd be serving artichokes and everyone would be eating them. That, or I'm going back to get those two bonus Julia Child cookbooks.

Breaking Fast of Champions

Learning to read the tea leaves of my various children’s inclinations and interests has often left me struggling between the desire to raise each child individually and the functional ease of running an army in which choices and options are extremely limited.

As a mom, it’s just simpler to say “Okay dogfaces, make your beds and get dressed or there’s no breakfast.” And “Drop and give me 20 minutes of cleaning before you get a minute of computer time.” than it is to accommodate the fact that on any given Saturday, three got up at six to watch cartoons, two more awakened at six-thirty, didn’t like the shows that were on and went back to sleep after fixing themselves waffles, and three play the Wii system downstairs until noon when their fingers give out and they notice...they're starving.

If I wait until everyone is up to cook, I’ll be here until eleven thirty and have blown the morning. If I feed people on demand, I’ll be a short order chef all day. The trick in a large family, is learning when to switch into the mode of raising nine only children, and when it’s time to raise only nine, and when it is time to raise Cain.

On the subject of sons and daughters also rising, I have come to the following hard and fast rule. “If you are old enough to read, you are old enough to feed yourself on Saturday morning.”

My daughters rejoiced at this new found freedom and promptly got out the griddle and made pancakes. My oldest son fired up the microwave to make himself some bacon. Having started the project, they now needed supervision to usher the breakfast through to safety. I got to cook pancakes. I got to cook bacon and show how to clean out the oven. I even had the luxury of making eggs for the two toddlers that saw the eggs used for pancakes and began caterwauling for a scrambled breakfast. It was 11:30 am and I had a pile of dishes and only six of nine children fed. I had snitched a piece of burnt bacon and a pancake sopped in syrup. It would have been grossly unfair to deny my middle son his modest request for oatmeal with raisins and cut up apple but I can’t say I didn’t feel tempted.

After cleaning up, I created the supplemental rule. The corollary to this parental guideline is, “If you make a mess, you will be cleaning it up.” Suddenly, the kid that said “Food taste better on real plates.” preferred paper. Suddenly, my daughter liked microwaved scrambled eggs. Suddenly, stuff coming out of a toaster tasted “really good.” However, meals were still being drifted into like high tide, and the menu ran the gamut from sausage and grits to hot chocolate and apples.

To minimize traffic congestion and mess, I set hours for the kitchen when the cafeteria is closed. It may seem a bit petty but I firmly hold that there is no way the kids can be more fatigued than me, and as such, if I can’t sleep until ten, why should they? The first time I instituted kitchen closing hours, there were howls of protests from the older children.

“I’m sorry, but the Board of Health requires that we suspend food preparation for the next ninety minutes pending clean up from the first meal of the day.”

“But I didn’t eat.” My son protested.

Now lest anyone think I am heartless, I will stipulate that I had seen this same teen scarf down three pieces of cold pizza as soon as he opened the refrigerator.
“You just had…” I pointed to the plastic bag containing the last humble piece of pepperoni from Friday night.
“That was just a snack.”

Looking at the individualized choices that ranged from peanut butter on toast to hot chocolate and an apple to microwave pancakes to baked cinnamon rolls, I have come up with one more rule for managing the kitchen on weekends.

Bring Mom breakfast in bed and don’t tell me what you’re eating. Just clean up afterwards.

Every Breakfast Tells A Story...

My favorite breakfast in the whole world is blueberry pancakes with syrup and Jasper county sausage on the side. The problem with this combo was that it used to require tremendous coordination of my parents, not to mention the postal service.

Before the internet and 24-7 mail order catalogs, maple syrup didn’t exist in the south. My grandmother from Dunkirk, New York would to ship it to us once a year for Mom’s birthday. Mom would parcel it out like a miser, for fear its golden taste was being wasted on young moppets who might have been just as happy with Mrs. Butterworth.

Dad grew up on sugar cane and caro syrup and enjoyed experimenting. He’d buy boysenberry and blueberry and blackberry flavors. We liked the colors but not the taste. We knew what the Good Stuff was.

Then one day, Dad was cleaning out the cupboards of extra stuff. He was consolidating the peppers into one space, doing inventory for a grocery shop. When he found three different types of mustard, he began interrogating no one in particular, asking “Why do we have three jars of pepperocini? Did you know we have four different kinds of olives in this pantry and over fifteen separate types of jam in the second fridge alone?”

Mom could have said many things at this moment, but she wisely responded, "That’s why you are clearing out the stuff dear." And left the room.

Dad got efficient and ruthless in his cleaning frenzy, to the point of being reckless. He consolidated the syrups, all of them: the boysenberry, strawberry, the cheap log cabin and the sugarless into the biggest tin of all, the Pure Grade A Dark Amber Maple.

My childhood was a fairly happy one, but I remember, this was a grave sin.

Suffice it to say, Mom got a new tin of Grade A Maple Syrup and it is now considered sacred, such that she eyes every new different bottle of syrup that darkens our door with suspicion.

Now getting the Jasper County sausage was a separate issue all together, shrouded in secrecy.

My dad gives his clients, his friends and his family and those who know about it, two wonderful gifts at Christmas time; a five pound bag of rice from the Beaumont Rice Mill (our ancestors started and some of our family still own it), and a five pound slab of spicy pork sausage known only as Jasper County sausage. Dad hunts ducks in LaBelle and thus has contacts with all sorts of people from the South East Texas area, including apparently this mysterious sausage man.

Once a year he clears out the Suburban and drives to Jasper County, (we don’t know where) and comes back with his truck filled to the gills with fresh processed meat which we then dutifully wrap in butcher block and red cellophane and tie with green ribbon. Then the freezer is stuffed and we begin the sausage runs around town, delivering spice, rice and good cheer as we go.

The only thing I think I know about the Jasper County Sausage man is that one year he got a new helper. That year the links were shall we say, extra spicy. Almost inedible by some standards, but I found if you drenched them in maple syrup, all that was left was the pleasant after burn of eating something hotter than usual for breakfast and feeling you had conquered any chance of being labeled a wuss, (and all before noon).

Now we have tried over the years to learn the name and address of this man. Somehow, Dad always manages to duck us, I think it tickles him that we have to take it on faith that this sausage will reappear each year. Once, my younger brother even tried to tail him to Jasper but Dad lost him on the back roads. In recent years, however, he has taken Mom. I suspect he has sworn her to secrecy.

Still, while maple syrup and jasper sausage are filling enough on their own to supply all the calories necessary for running a few marathons, they need the plain comfort of fresh pancakes. Pancakes are the Larry to Curley and Moe in breakfast.

For years, my parents had used the very sensible (you are too short, you are too young) rationale to keep me from the griddle. However, when my mom went into the hospital two months early with my sister,I thought it had become necessary for me to master making breakfast for my brothers and myself.

Could I have made cereal? Yes but that’s too easy. Could I have made scrabbled eggs? Yes, but I had been making those for years and those were boring. Could I have made oatmeal or grits? Yes again, but I didn’t think of those because, well, I wanted pancakes.

Now most pancakes are fool proof but then most of my functional cooking life, I have personified fool. A Mensa member I am not. After I wrecked the kitchen, my Aunt stepped in to do clean up and save my bacon, or at least, my pancakes.

Still, after years of practice, I can now flip them with a practiced ease and make my own favorite breakfast thank you very much, I just have to get Dad to cough up the info on the sausage man.

Maybe I can bribe Mom with some Maple Syrup.