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.

 

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.