My New Love Affair with Pancakes and My Newfound Identity

Paper plates.

I grew up in a traditional southern home where paper plates were frowned upon. You didn't use the good china for everyday meals, but you always ate on proper dishware and used proper cutlery. Nothing plastic or paper.

Then I had 5 kids adding up to 7 people and the dishes they used times 3 meals a day and 1 to 2 snacks each.

I fought it something fierce. It was J. dishes. How much time could it take? And then I bought them one time when my back was out and I knew I couldn't stand at the sink all day and that my kids were going to do a half a$$ job at it and they would never get done.

I am now the queen of paper plates and my life is better for it.

I'm in the jar spaghetti sauce category, too, much to my Sicilian mother-in-law's chagrin. It is the only kind my kids like! If I gave them home-made spaghetti sauce they wouldn't eat it.

That being said, imho pancakes (frozen or home-made) are for once-a-week. Otherwise it's too much sugar. So I still feel superior. :P

Jar spaghetti sauce. I found a brand I love and I have moved on with my life. :) We all take short cuts of one variety or another. It's a matter of whether we want to confess our "sins" or not I think.

I remember my grandmother telling M. the story about how when boxed cake mixes became available in the 40's. At first women were shunned who bought them, and then, like a miracle it became OKAY because most people could not tell the difference between home mixed and the box mix.
J. another evolution or our culture.
I like the crusteez brand of frozen pancakes.
Once you get the microwave time down to a science no one knows they werent homemade :)

Good for you. I think moms need shortcuts or else we would all go bonkers.

I have been doing frozen pancakes for years, however, I make my own because we like different flavors. I make a huge batch of Bisquick, add my own ingredients and flavors like organic ingredients, oatmeal, pumpkin, flax seed, protein, DHA drops. I let them cool, then put them on a cookie sheet in the freezer for an hour and then they get hard enough where I can toss them in a baggie. Cheaper and healthier than boxed ones.

Yard work. For M. that was the one thing I finally allowed myself to do. Hire someone.
I hare yardwork, loathe it really. I know there are people out there who love to pull weeds and plant things and feel some satisfaction from it....not M.! My husband works a ton, so on the days he finally had off we would be outside doing yardwork all day!! Argh!
I finally went over to my neighbors gardener and had him quote us a price to weed wack, mow, and pull weeds. It was so reasonable I almost kissed him.
Now, when I get home Lolly has done my yardwork and I do a little dance and wonder why the hell I didn't do this years ago.
L.
(i know there are probably a ton of typos, but it's hard to type on a little iphone!)

Ah, frozen pancakes! Yes, I used to make them more often... we like currant pancakes at our house (they're so sweet we don't need syrup, so can be buttered, rolled up and eaten on the go if need be) and I'd make a double batch on the weekends and freeze them.

My silly thing: I'm overdue for a haircut and recently re-embraced wearing pigtails again. Loving it. My hair is out of my face when I garden or work and I feel like my old, pre-mom self again when I look in the mirror. Think that I'm J. getting a trim the next time I get my haircut... summer will be great with my hair off my neck!

So I guess this would be a bad time to tell you that you can freeze pancakes you make at home and they taste even better? Any time we make pancakes we double, make them small enough to pop in the toaster and freeze them. All you have to remember is put the portion in the fridge the night before. :)

To actually answer the question, not that I can think of at the moment but the answer would be yes.

What? Saturday? I do breakfast for dinner.

Oh by homemade I mean Bisquick. :p

yes i fight myself from being a better self! its part of my personality ...er flaws?

i also make frozen pancakes. wheat flour and sweet potato pancakes are the best. i have made beet pancakes but they never ever turn out right.

also wheat bread french toast (with flax seed sprinkled on top ) i use honey instead of syrup or real maple syrup (read the ingreadents )

both pancakes and french toast made in the evenings when i feel like it then use wax paper between them and place in a large zip lock then pop in the toaster oven for quick "cooking"

Hi J.-

I (on weekends...) make double batches of pancakes or waffles and freeze them for during the week...The kiddos J. heat them up in toaster oven. Not as yummy as 'fresh'...but better I suspect, and certainly CHEAPER than pre frozen!

J. a thought!

Best luck!
michele/cat

How about making pancakes for dinner sometime and then freezing the extras you have to make for breakfast the rest of the week.

I'm both. Sundays we have big family breakfasts....pancakes or waffles. Made from scratch. We always double the recipe. The leftover get shoved in the freezer and then we nuke them all week. It's the best of both worlds.

And to answer your question...I remember fighting my son one morning for twenty minutes about him wanting spaghetti for breakfast. I realized this was dumb...as long as he ate, who cares. And that veggie spaghetti had more good stuff in it than toast. So now it's not usually for my kids to have dinner leftovers and sandwiches for breakfast.

I am a frozen pancake mom too -my boys eat them every single morning :-) What is sad is that they PREFER them to homemade.

I am the frozen pancake mom AND the homemade whole grain pancake mom. I was neither until I bought an electric griddle - the most amazing invention ever. So, I make pancakes on the weekend when I can get up later and there is no time pressure. I make a double batch, let them cool fully and freeze in a zip lock bag. As long as you let them cool to room temperature, they don't stick together so freezing is easy - I don't do the baking sheet thing - more work. Then - instant weekday pancakes. And, I don't take them out in advance. They can go in the toaster frozen on low or right into the microwave.

Seriously - pancakes take under 6 minutes to mix from scratch - they should not be intimidating. And on my (amazing) griddle, I can cook 10 at a time, so it is not a big deal. It takes M. J. as long to cut up fruit or make eggs for breakfast.

I'm sorry, I think Walmart has the best frozen pancakes. They are cheap and easy. I find myself making them for my 5 year old when he doesn't like what I made for dinner. One minute in the microwave and POOF....done! I think they taste great. Kuddos to you! We must choose our battles wisely!

J. M, You can have your :cake day" and eat it too. You can make and freeze your own pancakes. Cook up a giant freaking batch on a rainy friday night when there isn't anything on the tube. To feel even better about yourself, you can do "mountain pose" while waiting to flip the flapjacks. stack them with wax paper, put them in ziplocks and straight into the freezer. Home cooked goodness, cheaper than eggos, and without the repeated disappointment of putting it off in the mornings.

good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

as to giving up going the difficult route, after printing and assembling our wedding invitations, programs and thank you cards, ourselves, I resolved to outsource all sorts of fiddly paper projects in the future, been wonderful.

oh, good for you, mama! i see many have already beat M. to the suggestion that you make your own and freeze them in advance (we do this a lot) but also huge kudos to you for recognizing your berlin wall there and J. letting yourself off the hook.
and i LOVE the gleeful joy you're taking in your freedom! how i do love these 'AHA!' moments in life.
mine makes less of a good story than yours. i beat myself up for years for being a procrastinator (still do), but finally, thanks to wise words from my favorite aunt who is J. like M. in many ways, figured out at least one facet of it, and how to use it to my advantage. i teach enrichment classes at the community college to homeschoolers and retirees. absolutely love it. but developing a new syllabus is insanely time-consuming (i'm so anal about how i want my classes to be and research endlessly), and even re-doing a class takes time because each needs to be re-tweaked according to the paradigm in which i'm teaching. since i'm off in the mid-winter and summer months, the sensible thing to do would be to get my classes together then. but i J.. can't. do. it. the only way i can seem to operate is in full-fledged panic mode, writing frantically practically until i'm walking in the classroom door. so 2-3 months every spring and autumn are spent with my face in a rictus of tension, the house going to hell, refusing all invitations to do anything social and staying up into the wee hours of the night working. makes my organized, rational, methodical husband nuts.
but when i realized that that's how i roll, miraculously the anger at myself and the judgement and the beating myself up J. stopped. i still work on my classes feverishly until the last minute, i still can't plan anything for the school months because i know i'll be tied up in class prep, but oh, how much happier and more serene my life is now that i've J. accepted that not only is it a quirk in my psychological makeup, it's one of the reasons my classes are so popular. my total immersion in the subject right up to the last second is what makes M. sparkle, gives my classes vitality and punch and excitement. if i J. go in there with recycled notes, the same information gets disseminated, but people's eyes are glazed over and they don't sign up to come back.
flying by the seat of my pants is J. the way i am.
so enjoy that extra sleep and proudly fill that freezer with pancakes!
:) khairete
S.

IMO the only thing that matters is that they are whole wheat - with fiber and protein! Light on the syrup and serve with bananas or berries and an ice cold glass of milk!

I do make pancakes on Sunday morning. Not because I am a superior mommy. Because that's the only day where I can start making breakfast at 10 am! I actually have time to make real food from scratch on Sundays. It's a lazy morning way to show my husband that I love him. It gets us off to church with a warm family feeling. BTW, there's no shortage of mommy guilt to go around. I acutally feel guilty for using Bisquick mix and not making truly "homemade" whole wheat pancakes.

Fighting something that I gave in to? Yes. I was making going to the gym too much of a production. I had to stop at home everyday to feed the kids a good healthy snack and change into my gym clothes. Which led to a lot of hectic afternoons. Now, I finally made myself a gym bag with everything I need and put a box of snacks in the car. Now the kids can eat a cereal bar or crackers and cheese on the way to the gym and we dont have to go home for anything.

Good for you! I buy frozen waffles. I also make a lot of stuff from scratch and freeze it (pancakes, crackers, muffins, no-sugar cookies), but it's tough to keep up with so I have a stash of whole wheat, Van's frozen waffles.

My thing was cleaning. My husband wanted to hire someone and I fought it for years. We have 2 kids and I work from home, but only about 10-15 hours per week, why couldn't I find the time to clean? Well, I J. couldn't. We hired someone 1 1/2 years ago and it is fabulous.