Party, Pauly, Pancakes!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA YYYYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU GGGGGUUUUUYYYYYSSSSS! The Goonies friggin rock, no questions asked. However, this movie was not gracing my sights this weekend as I am making plans to hold a little marathon for myself. So far the Set-List contatins: House (season 5), Up!, Flight of the Conchords (Season 2), The Hurt Locker and The Taking of Pelham 123. Man... thank goodness i've already been to the gym this weekend.

LOOK-IT! The last time i had Egg-Nog was in Freshman Year of high school when a friend invited me to their annual Holiday get together and i had never tried it before. Have to say... i liked it. How much? Well, lets just say there was a quart of it that i choose to carry about the house like it was a mug of Grog and i was dining in the Halls of King Arthur! Sword and the Stone friggin Rocks, no questions asked. Anyhoo, even though IHOP already got to them before i had a time to make a batch... there was only one thing to do with the wonder of Silk Nog

IHOP can suck it!!!!

Just so you know, the little one with the bites taken out of it? Yeah, i like to see one of you get through making a batch of Nog-Cakes without nibbling on somehing. Plus you have to test the griddle so - "This just in... the pigeon brothers have been killed. Authorities have found the weapon to be a single stone."

How were they? Well, lets just say that if the Terminator tasted like these... it would have been a LOT easlier to eat.

So, yesterday was friday the 13th, it was also my mom's birthday. I would like to take a moment of silence to appreciate this coincidence.

So, to celebrate, the family drove down to Coral Gables and had the most delicious dining experience in the friggin universe! Hole in the wall restaurant with a grandma cooking in the back room? Negative. We went...
Yes, its a chain and you can find like three in every mall in America. But you know what... they know how to make some cheesecake! Possibly of the Banana-Nut variety and garnished with banana slices and real whipped cream which was eventually licked off the index finger of yours truly. More about this in a sec, first i must hum a song in the tune of 'joy'.

After dinner the fun continued and we saw
the one
the only

WEASEL!
We laughed, we cried, then we laughed some more! All in all it was one of the better birthdays i can remember celebrating with my mother. The worst? Definitely when I lost my glasses and we had to go to the mall and buy a new pair. Not to mention the mall was a ghost town since it was after daycare and the stores were closing. Happy Birthday Mommy!

Okay, so earlier in the post and the other day i made a couple additions to my diet that weren't vegan. Why put yourself through this/How could you do that!, you ask? Well, long-time readers have seen my need for balance and I feel that when i went vegan cold turkey it was in a place that was, for lack of a better word, not. Therefore, in light of Truth Week i decided to do some reflecting and decided that i did not switch to veganism for the right reasons. I chose to do it so i could set boundaries for myself, limit what i could and couldn't have. Take a certain amount of control over my life by what i do/do not eat. Sounds crazy, but this is the mindset of the dieter and it is where my mind has been for awhile now; which, ironically enough, is the farthest thing from healthy I know of. Therefore... i have decided to take a page out of Sarah and Holly's books and make peace with food. Choose NOT to define myself by whats on my plate but rather what is on/in my heart. My drive to help others and to simply live. Granted, I love eating natural and whole foods and will continue to do so because I truly do want to. But i will no longer set boundaries because they dont work. As of now people at work have been calling me the 'part time vegan' or the 'artist formerly known as vegan'... I would rather be referred to as Clay (panClayke for long).

Lastly, as just mentioned, I have a drive to help other and am working to help the Daily Bread Food Bank , and have discovered an awesome opportunity to raise money for them. Not only is there a donation button at the tippy-top-o-da-blog, but i am have recently become a featured publisher on Foodbuzz (you can see the badge above the donation button) and, in turn, get a little money from foodbuz for every click on the pages of my site. Basically, its the same thing that my Chocolate Covered Princess
, which i thought was a pretty good idea. What does this mean for you? Well, it means more: Rideos, pan-creations and general musings altogether. All in all, there is going to be more for you all and, in turn, more for those in need. So... Click Away true friends, click and smile.

Well ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. Tune in next week for more Pan-creations, and a Promised Rideo (I already know what the subject is). Until next time, this is PanClayke, reminding you that IHOP can suck it... Bud-dy.

Zen, and the Art of Pancake

There is a reason my people love to cook so much, its very theraputic. There is something about making something out of nothing that can give a person a feeling of control in a world full of chaos. I think that is personifed extremely well by the cooking of the perfect pancake.

In my searches about the different cookbooks, recipe sites, youtube videos, 'secret' family recipes etc, etc... i have found no two identical recipes. One calls for more flour the other calls for a pinch of lemon zest the other says you cant do ANYTHING unless you have double acting baking powder. Who is right and who is wrong. THATS THE POINT! There is no such thing. Some people are used to thin crepe-y cakes and others NEED them to be a inch thick otherwise the nose goes up into the air and it doesnt matter if the cakes you made will give the eater the ability to fly... they will not eat them. These things are all in the eye of the beholder, the only through-line is that they have to taste good.

Speaking of tasting good, have you noticed how your grandmothers cooking always tastes amazing? No matter what meal it is very good, why? Because its made with so much happiness and love... because your grandma is so happy to see you. You give her balance by just being there. That beign said, when things are out of wack and there is a storm brewing behind closed doors a recipe will get screwed up really quickly. I can tell this because the last couple of days i have pretty much been throwing all the odds and ends into a bowl and seeing what happens... its been nice and satisfying each time. However, before and after the 'Terminator' challenge the homemade batches have been, or lack of a better word, sucky McSuckerson: mayor of suck town. Ive tried pre-making batters, using different liquids, i even ventured to WF yesterday and bought some new flours because i thought that might be it. Nothing is working and the last batch in particular has been thin, flacid and a bit too salty for my pallete. I actually went as far as to throw the cakes away this morning... which is UN-HEARD of. PanClayke does not throw anything away when it comes to food, He eats like a monkey (diet-wise and approach-wise). What could the problem be... i thinking its a lack of balance.

I dont know exactly what that means, but i do know that there is a 'secret ingredient' (opposing what Kung Fu Panda says). So, no more flour experiments and i not even gonna go near the electric skillets again because i barely had enough to pay off my 14.00 griddle pan. Its time to make love to the food again. Next up... is going to be a pancake made with love topped with the notion moving on from the past two instances. (It's the best thing to do right now, especially since its Hug a Carb Month.

And who doesn't want to hug it out with a stack o' these bad boys? Until next time, this is PanClayke reminding you that a life without balance is a lie.