I’m not dead
Just knitting. And I find progress shots of knitting to be pretty boring—especially when what you’re knitting is a seemingly endless sequence of garter stitch squares—so I haven’t bothered to post any. I’m on the third square of the third strip of that baby blanket, though I didn’t finish the second strip because I spilled some very strong tea onto the lightest blue square (of course). I tried to soak it out, but the spots are still there, so I’ll have to rip back to the beginning of that square and reknit. Blah, blah, blah. See? Knitting’s horribly boring.
Meanwhile, Wednesday is the night I make dinner for my mom, so I did make some food, in addition to knitting. (Making food may not seem like much of a project to normal people out there, but although I’m a pretty good cook and like doing it, I rarely bother cooking for myself. It’s not nearly as much fun as cooking for someone else, and the leftovers too often end up festering in my fridge.) Mom had pretty much nothing in the house to make dinner out of, besides stuff we’d both eaten too recently to repeat, and we weren’t ravenously hungry, so I said, “Well, I could make David Eyre’s Pancake . . .”
We used to have David Eyre’s Pancake as a treat for weekend breakfasts when I was growing up. And then I made them pretty often during the first years I lived away from home. I hadn’t made one in about a decade, though, and Mom hadn’t eaten one in even longer. So that’s what we had.
I don’t have any pictures, but my pancake was flat. In normal pancakes, flatness is considered a key attribute; this confection is really more of a monstrous popover, however, and it’s supposed to have big poofy bumps sticking up out of it and a high, crunchy perimeter. There’s no leavening, so you create these architectural details using floury air pockets and a whole lot of heat.
Or some people do. I, sadly, got only one vague sort of raised area in the center, and the edges didn’t curl up at all. The bottom wasn’t even very crisp. Most likely my cast-iron pan was not hot enough; probably I mixed the batter too much; and perhaps the oven was not hot enough, either—I don’t know my mother’s oven very well. High humidity may also have played a role.
Still, it’s hard to go wrong with that much butter, lemon juice, and sugar. The pancake was pancake-flat but tasty, and we ate it quite happily with bacon on the side. Clearly, I’ll just have to try making another one soon. I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it again after I’ve gone through a stick or two of butter.
Last 5 posts by India
- If you count each square as a “thing,” . . . - March 1st, 2008
- Dinner for Mom - February 21st, 2008
- Delayed ungratification - February 20th, 2008
- Wasps - February 20th, 2008
- CD cover meme: "Invisible Means of Support" by Bully for Brontosaurus - February 11th, 2008