A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Pancakes from the Wheat Kernel Up: Freshly Ground Whole Wheat Pancakes for a Cozy Family Morning Together

By Guest Blogger Robert Kesterson

It may not look like it, but this is a stack of delicious buttermilk pancakes, in kit form. This recipe makes about ten pancakes -- enough to feed a family of four. If they're really hungry you might want to make a little more.

 

The one thing my family does differently since this photo was taken is that we buy raw milk so we can churn our own fresh butter and have natural buttermilk.

Ingredients:

2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar (raw sugar or honey work great)
2 cups fresh ground whole wheat flour
2 eggs
4 tablespoons oil (olive, walnut, and hazelnut all work great)

For all the ingredients, the rule is, the fresher the better. I grind the flour myself from wheat kernels (shown in the photo). The oil in whole wheat goes rancid once it is ground, so if you're buying whole wheat flour off a grocery store shelf, you're missing out. The eggs are fresh from free range chickens, and the sugar is raw, unprocessed sugar. Honey also works well. For the oil, you can use olive, walnut, hazelnut, or any other oil you like. The nut oils will give the pancakes a subtle nutty flavor that is just great. Melted butter will also work.

 

 

Preheat a large frying pan over medium-low heat, and preheat a cookie sheet in your oven on its lowest setting. Beat the two eggs in a bowl. Separately, mix the salt, sugar and baking powder into the buttermilk, then stir it into the eggs. Add the flour a little at a time and keep stirring until all lumps are gone. Then add the oil and stir until smooth. The batter should be very smooth and creamy.

 

 

 

Using a half-cup measure, pour a pancake in the middle of the preheated pan. The half-cup measure will make a pancake about six inches in diameter. Cook until the top starts to look a little stiff, and bubbles start to form in the batter. Then slip a spatula under it and flip it over. If it won't flip without tearing, you didn't cook it long enough. On the other hand, if it is stiff as a board, you waited too long. After flipping, cook until the pancake has stopped rising, has firmed up, and no longer looks wet around the edges. Remove it from the pan and transfer it to the cookie sheet in the oven to keep it warm while you cook the others.

 

Once all the pancakes are cooked, put them on plates, optionally add some fresh butter and real maple syrup, and serve immediately.

 

 

If you're making breakfast for kids, you can be creative when pouring the batter into the pan -- there's no law that says pancakes have to be round.

 

Springfield Restaurants: The Wing Shack (and the Jeff Dunham concert)

The Wing Shack, 307 South National Springfield MO 831-9464, happens to be one of my new favorite "joints" to hang out in.   Located near my nieces' schools, Jordan and I have been there several times getting a snack while waiting for Sydney's school to get out.

I call it a "joint" to get across the funky, casual atmosphere. Located on National, between Walnut and College Streets, the restaurant is in a former home that has housed a couple of other popular restaurants over many years.  The interior has been repainted in bright colors of orange, red, and teal, with a corrugated tin wainscotting that's funky and fun and the porch seating remains for outside dining this summer.

While called The Wing Shack, the menu also includes sandwiches, salads, wraps, even a steak, and desserts like fried Twinkies and fried Oreos.  If you've never had either, try them.  The first time I made them at home for the blog, I fully expected to make fun of them but I have to admit I decided that I actually like Twinkies fried much better than I do right out of the package.  They're tasty. Seriously?  Yes, seriously.

The night we took these photos, Gene and I, along with our good friends Lynn and James, stopped for dinner before going to see Jeff Dunham's show at MSU. James approved of the wings and fries, running with the boneless in half hot, half Carribbean bbq, although the choices are from something like 10 different ones you can mix and match with your order of bone or boneless wings.

They also host a couple of out of the ordinary appetizers that Jordan and I have snacked on that are hand-battered (as in home-made batter made on the spot) fried pickles and/or green beans.  Sort of like getitng into appetizer heaven on a vegetable.

I chose the Hawaiian wrap and will definitely be ordering it again:  strips of grilled chicken, cubes of ham, pineapple chunks, leaf lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and dressing.  I loved the combination of flavors.  I was also pleased, extraordinarily so, with my potato salad side. 

In my family, potato salad, cole slaw, and deviled eggs have similar ingredients:  mayo, mustard, vinegar, and sugar.  Our potato salad is a yellow deviled egg style potato salad where most commercial/restaurant potato salads are white with no mustard or sugar. The Wing Shack's is close to my family's version and that made my mouth happy.  For sure, I'll be ordering that again, too! 

No pics of the other two entrees, but Gene ordered an old-fashioned Sloppy Joe sandwich and slaw, something he's loved since childhood, and Lynn had the Sloppy Joe Nachos, one of their nacho variations that also included BBQ Nachos, something we first had in Tunica, Mississippi.  Like Italian nachos, it's just a twist that brings in the downhome sloppy joe or bbq flavor to the crisp cheesy bites of nachos.

The desserts are garnished nicely with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and regular maraschino cherries, but for the more daring good-timers, ask the bartender about adding a few of the "special"  Everclear soaked maraschinos from behind the bar.

Fried Oreos are technically not on the menu but they are always available for the asking. What surprised me was the change in texture the cooking added.  They become soft chocolate mouth melties that make Oreo lovers swoon and me, not even a chocoholic!, fork fight for the last bite.

Overall, I consider The Wing Shack to be a funky little joint down by MSU that gets my approval even after spending many happy hours, and hours happily, in the same location when it was the previous restaurant whiled I was going to school at OTC. That's a huge compliment. The owners, Steve and Scott, Front of House Manager/Cheerful Bartender John, and staff are all friendly and helpful, the food is home-made from scratch, the produce from local purveyors when they can get it, and the attitude is one of of "Come on in and make yourself at home. We want you to be relaxed and have a good time here."  Which I have and will again, and am looking forward to a great summer of great friends and good food out on the The Wing Shack porch.

   

  The Jeff Dunham show was fabulous!  All of our favorite characters and one of the best moemnts was at the end when he brought out Bubba and the crowd started saying Bubba's lines with him.  Bubba's "response" was to tell Jeff that we knew his act better than he does. The photo on the right shoes Jeff shooting rolled up souvenir t-shirts out into the audience with one of three bazookas.
  
  
 

NightShift March Birthday Party: Happy Birthday to Jessica and Ashley and Happy You, Charlton

Princess cake of raspberry filled vanilla cake with buttercream from Price Cutter Bakery (yum!)

Thanks to everyone for all the great food and fun!!!

St. Pat's Day: Guiness Irish Stew with Roasted Garlic/Rosemary Dumplings

    
 
  

Departing from my normal St. Pat's feast of corned beef and colcannon, I decided to splurge this year in a different vein, simmering Irish Stew all day in the crockpot, its dark earthy Guiness beer tones enhancing another splurge at Harter House-- lamb!  As even more of a culinary feast, I whipped up roasted garlic with rosemary, right-off-the-plant in the sunroom, dumplings to grace the top o' the pot.  Happy St. Pat's Day Y'all!

Salmon Dip: A Quick Way to Get Your Omega-3's

The fact that this is a quick and easy recipe makes it a plus but the fact that it was made with salmon that my cousin brought back from his Alaska fishing trip and hand smoked himself....made it even tastier.  Thanks Kim!!!  We so enjoyed this and the commercial packages of smoked salmon don't seem to taste as good...not that we're prejudiced, of course...

Moussaka

 
  
Moussaka, like all casserole dishes, are difficult to photograph but tasty to dig into.  It's also a dish, like lasagna, that seems to grow as you make it so I normally split the batch into two 8"x8" pans and put one in the freezer to make my life dinner easier on another day.  I also often substitute zucchini or yellow squash for the eggplant.