So we committed to baking vs. prepackaged a while back.
First and foremost it was for money. I won’t lie. All the good stewardship intentions in the world didn’t motivate me like the bottom line of running out of the month’s food budget a week or more before we ran out of month.
A secondary reason, and almost as important, was nutrition. I’m tired of feeding the kids things that are so overprocessed they bear no resemblance to the actual food they came from. And in many cases are no longer really “food” so much as “consumable.”
And a third reason was taste! My God, homemade food is incredible. There is no comparison between the bread we make and the bread we used to buy. The bread we used to buy tastes like cardboard now.
This morning, the first thing I thought when I woke up was, “What am I going to feed the kids?” We didn’t have any bread because I was unable to bake yesterday due to being out of the house unexpectedly. I considered oatmeal with cinammon and brown sugar, then dismissed it because a.) it’s a mess and b.) several kids don’t like it and would whimper about being hungry. Same with scrambled eggs, though only one kid doesn’t like them. That might have been okay but I wasn’t too sure we’d have enough eggs (we routinely eat two dozen at a sitting.)
Instead I made pancakes. Simple, fantastic, phenomenally good pancakes. They’re quick to make, even if you don’t have a griddle.
Plaid Cookbook Pancakes
1 1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 beaten egg
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons oil or melted butter
It’ll be lumpy. Stir til just moistened. If you stir it too much they get kinda chewy, like a thick crepe.
You want a nice hot skillet or griddle, no grease. If water sprinkled sizzles instantly, it’s hot enough. Spoon it out, turn when you see bubbles.
That doesn’t make many. I made twice that and it made enough to feed six children; Sean and I went hungry. Next time I’ll make triple (or even quadruple, if I own a nice flat griddle by then.)
So thanks to our paradigm shift of make your own we’re now making pancakes whenever we like, instead of only on birthdays. Before this I would have lazed out and given them all Pop Tarts or cold cereal.
This is better.
hey Fee, this is my favorite homemade panccake mix:
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/buckwheatpancakemix.htm
you can use all ww or a combination. I love this recipe becuase you make it all up ahead of time and you just add water later. And the pancakes are soft and wonderful!
I was going to suggest using a homemade pancake mix, too. Just add milk and eggs when you are ready to cook. You can do the same to make a biscuit mix, too. I haven’t done this in a while but you are inspiring me to get back to making my own.
Also, a variety: Put the pancake batter in mini-muffin pans and bake for “dippers” to serve with a small bowl of syrup. The benefit of this is that you can make the whole batch at once instead of a few pancakes at a time.
yumm! this is pretty much what we use, except i use buttermilk and baking soda. we have a griddle- the lodge flat cast iron griddle- but i do not like it. it seems large, but it is actually quite small, when it comes to surface area.still it is an improvement and does hold heat like you wouldn’t believe.
all the other griddles out there are non-stick. hey look they make electric griddles! http://www.amazon.com/Presto-07039-Professional-22-Inch-Electric/dp/B0000Z6JMS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1259627286&sr=8-1
that would give us lots of room on the stove for eggs, bacon, etc.
but nonstick of course. you can’t win!
No harm in making too many pancakes– IME they freeze and defrost well for quick (er) breakfasts later.
I do this too when there’s not much left to eat. I can ususally find what I need for pancackes and the kids love it and we have such fun making them.