Archive for February, 2009

…by falling frying pan pancakes.

So, Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as pancake day, because we all know that’s what it’s really about, not obtain absolution for one’s sins by way of Confession and doing penance or using up ingredients such as fat and eggs, the consumption of which was traditionally restricted during Lent.

I avoided the pancakes they were serving up in the canteen.  from the makers of red cabbage, grape and dessicated coconut salad, you never quite know what might have gone into them.  So, of course, we were going to have pancakes for dinner.  Had to get my pancakes in there somewhere. 

I got home and asked who wanted, only for the husband to announce that the boy had already had pancakes twice that day.  Did the boy care?  No.  Why care when you can shovel more in.  So we headed off to the supermarket cos you can’t make pancakes with only two eggs and no filling.

We did the run and the boy decided he wanted to be masterchef.  This involved generally getting in the way whilst I tried to weigh out items, drop whole egg shells in batter mixture, forget to melt the butter before dumping it in and show fear when I turned on the mixer.  That last one I understand; that electric whisk is like an instrument of torture.

Safety first; he was going out of the kitchen once the fire went on.  Not wanting to miss out on the action, he pulled up a chair to the edge of the room so he could silently creep back into the kitchen and get in the way watch.

There I am, making pancakes: batter, cook, flip cook, slide, repeat when all of a sudden the boy shouts ‘mum, look’ and I look, at him, cos isn’t that what you do when your kid shouts ‘look’?

But no, he’s pointing behind me, and I turn around to see the frying pan wobbling, yet precariously balanced on the edge of the stove, bound to fall off and crash into me. 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the boy saved me from near certain death by pancake.

And for those of you interested in exactly what we had in our pancakes, I followed Saint Delia’s pancake recipe, doubling the ingredients and adding rather a large amount of smoked paprika.  The filling was one onion, two peppers, two cloves of garlic, quite a few mushrooms, a pack of frying steak, a tin of chopped tomatoes, two tablespoons of tomato puree and quite a bit of steak seasoning.  The filling got rolled in the pancakes which were chucked in a dish and covered with lashings of mozzarella before being finished in the oven.  See, I could be a food blogger.

And in other news, I’m giving up chocolate for lent.  Not, mind you, for any religious reasons, but merely to kick my appallingly awful habit.  40 days is a good excuse for a start.  It also stopped me picking up another of those bags today, because you know I only want the choc inside them.  However, chocolate is one thing; you won’t find me kicking my coke zero addiction as well.

There’s these choco dessert things.  A while back we went to Nan’s for the day, and in the bag of food she always sends us home with was a choco dessert.  Not wanting to pig out on the whole thing in one sitting waver in my resolve to eat better I took it over to Mum’s when I went over the next day.  Surely someone would appreciate a choco dessert.

It was so bad that even B2 wouldn’t eat it.  And he eats anything.

We went over a few weeks later and there, sitting on top of the bread bin, was another choco dessert.  You guessed it: Mum tried to force me to take it donate it to us.  Meh!  I was having none of it. 

The next time we went up to Nan’s we came back with another of the damned things.  It may even have gone in the bin, because I don’t remember how we got rid of it otherwise.  Of course this is the point where the husband will comment to say he ate the whole thing in one sitting, proving why I don’t remember how we got rid of it.

So yeah, we went to Nan’s last week.  Guess what we brought back home.

This morning the boy was kicking up a fuss.  What did he want for breakfast?  Toast?  No.  Sandwich?  No.  Yogurt?  Neston?  Nesquik?  Fruit?  No.  No.  No.  No.  Hula hoops.  Well there was no way he was having hula hoops for breakfast.  And then he said cake.

And all I could think of was that choco dessert.

^{*He did end up eating an apple as well, so maybe I’m not all that bad a mother.}