A Pancake

Yes, just one of them.

Dilemma:

The usual, I am starving. No, I'm just hungry. But I spent the afternoon doing homework and spending inordinate amounts of money on next semester's books, so now I need dinner.

Abstract:

I decide on noodles, and cook up a potful. While cooking, I decide that I need to have food for the upcoming week, and decide that I will make three dishes of noodles to save, then eat the rest for dinner. The noodles finish, I ladle them into dishes, and there are no leftovers. This situation leaves me with the distinct positive that I have food for the next few days and the distinct negative that I still have no dinner for tonight - and since now is the pressing time of hunger, it didn't really even out very well. I return to my room to look for more food, and spot a dish on the top of my closet. At first glance, it appears to be an ordinary Tupperware dish with a cup and a half or so of flour in it. However, I know better - it was a gift of pancake mix, thoughtfully given to me. My neglect was that I put it in a dish to avoid spilling and consequently managed to throw out the box, which had the recipe for mixing up the mix into some kind of edible form. My legendary incompetence with mixes cautioned me against just adding water and seeing what happened, so I took the only natural route: went to google and typed in 'what do you mix with pancake mix to make pancakes', then hit enter. Results varied, but standard ingredients seemed to include  eggs and milk.

Battle Plan:

I put in one small egg, a dash of vanilla (it sounded good?), and enough milk so it would stir and look like pancake batter. Then, I carried my plate, frying pan, and spatula down to the kitchen after putting some olive oil in the pan so that I could use it. The pan heated, and I carefully poured the batter in. After some thought, I put it all in at once. After all, I was only cooking for myself, so why make multiple little pancakes? The reason quickly became obvious as my pancake began to cook and rose to proportions similar to those of my Irish Soda Bread, previously described (there is a picture now, and yes that is a chair behind it) ;) I hovered over it, watching for bubbles and waiting for the inevitable one that wouldn't pop, which would signal that I would have to turn it over. By this time, the label 'pan cake' was totally appropriate; the batter had covered the entire bottom of the frying pan and rose about halfway up the sides ... I've seen smaller shortbreads! Apparently, there can be some justification for making more than one pancake, even if for only one person! At last, a bubble popped and failed to cave in on itself. It sat there, staring at me out of its empty eye, and I stared right back, wishing it away. It persisted stubbornly, and I thought of it about as highly as Pliny thought of the Christians, as he wrote to the Roman Emperor Trajan that even if there was nothing wrong with the Christian faith, certainly there was something the matter with people who were that persistent in their beliefs. (Sorry, let me get back on track ... I've been doing a lot of Roman history reading lately ...) However, I eventually came to the rather inevitable conclusion (helped by the smell of cooked pancake) that I would, actually, have to turn that monster over. I grabbed another spatula for support, and carefully eased underneath the monstrous gooey mass. Martha Stewart would have been proud of me (maybe?), for the bulk of the pancake actually flipped back into the pan, onto the uncooked side, and without turning in half - major accomplishments, I suppose. After a brief cerebration on the merits of becoming a chef and deciding that turning one pancake was hardly sufficient credentials and immediately dropping the idea, I realised that my hand was uncomfortably warm and looked down to see that some batter had slopped onto my hand. The fact that I was congratulating myself on turning a pancake over while my hand burned should have made me drop out of college and enroll in one of those places with the white walls and nice people, but instead I just turned on the tap and washed my hand off. I suppose extremes are not always desirable, as the Latin proverb says ne quid nimis, advising nothing too much and moderation in all things, so I shall neither be a chef nor burn myself to ashes. Back to food - it cooked (that's not so exciting) and I took it out of the pan - by then quite firm, so it was uneventful as well. Carried things back to my room. 


Result:


One very large pancake, over which I spread cream cheese and drizzled a little honey. The warmth of the pancake melted the toppings, and I ate it with great enjoyment while typing up an inordinately long blog post about strange things and deleting half of it because my mind would start wandering in the middle of a sentence and I would say strange things about people, places, and events that most folks have never heard of before and that didn't exactly have anything to do with the topic at hand. (The references I have caved on and left in I hope I have tied in well enough to at least be entertaining.) 


Reflections:


Make more than one pancake, prat. 


Drawbacks: 


I think I should have maybe added some more to the batter:egg ratio. I doubt I've ever had a more protein-filled pancake before, although it wasn't bad ... 


Positives: 


I love pancakes, and it was actually pretty good. It wasn't even gooey in the middle. 


Net Disaster = Zero