There is a food that represents comfort for me in the purest sense, something that makes a looming deadline magically retreat or puts a temporary Band-Aid on a grown-up boo-boo. It’s a memorable and satisfying dish that my mother whipped up without the Better Homes and Gardens red plaid cookbook propped open on the counter—her dog-eared and splattered kitchen bible that offered step-by-step instructions and pictures of a recipe’s (intended) end result.
We’re talking pancakes—fluffy, misshapen, hot-off-the-griddle cakes doused with melty rivulets of butter covered in a sticky blanket of maple syrup. One forkful of a short stack still transports me to a simpler time bereft of mortgages and computer viruses and triple-digit gas prices. The notion of eggs, butter and milk bound together with flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, scooped onto a hot pan, cooked to golden-brown perfection, is an over-the-counter stress reliever of the best kind.
Often my mom announced that we were having breakfast for dinner—pancakes and bacon. My brother, sister and I were giddy on those nights, perhaps because there would be less pans and dishes for us to scrub and clean at the meal’s end or simply because it was shaking up routine. There always seemed to be less bickering between my siblings and me when we were at a table faced with platters of pancakes and strips of crispy bacon. There was more easy-going laughter and spirited conversation, like it was a school’s-out holiday eve.
I inherited the food genes in my family—as a budding culinarian I played restaurant in the basement, setting up a table for Mom and Dad, writing elaborate menus, cajoling Todd and Molli, my siblings, into reluctant roles as servers. My corporate catering business in the 1990s was a success, and entertaining has always been effortless. My kitchen shelves are lined with the accouterments of a passionate cook.
But no matter how sophisticated my palate, a favorite dish when I need a food hug to shake off the world is the humble pancake. Cracking eggs into a well created by dry ingredients, pouring milk into a bowl until the yolks are bobbing, stirring the mixture until it’s lump-free and then cooking the cakes until they’re puffy and imperfectly perfect is sublimely satisfying.
Pass the syrup, please.
-Kimberly Winter Stern
Overland Park, Kan.-based freelance writer Kimberly Winter Stern writes travel, food, lifestyle and design. Also known as the gregarious and cuisine-informed Kim Dishes, listeners tune in weekly for her on-the-road segments on “LIVE! From Jasper’s Kitchen,” a popular Kansas City radio food show. Prolific in eating, writing and discovering, this foodie satisfies an innate desire to sample the world’s gastronomic rainbow by meeting food artisans and trendsetters, gaining insight into the culinary points-of-view of everyone from cheese makers, chocolatiers and chefs who set their city’s locavore pace to farmers who are passionate producers. Stern is a sought-after writer, with work appearing in Better Homes and Gardens, Unity, KANSAS! Magazine, 435 South magazine, KC Homes & Gardens, Generation Boom, Shawnee Magazine, KC Magazine, KC Home Design, KC Business and Midwest CEO. Stern is a national blogger for the Dean & DeLuca Gourmet Food Blog where she cooks, styles, shoots and writes about life and cooking … and loves to lick the bowl clean. This writer may have been given product and/or other compensation from Dean & DeLuca for this post.
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Comments ( 1 Comment )
Pan cakes is one of my favorite break fast, specially when it has syrup.but to be honest I never tried mixing bacon and pan cakes maybe I should try this.
baby eagle
abidalelillian26 added these pithy words on Mar 08 12 at 4:24 am 
