No more pancakes, thank you

Last Saturday, Southside Baptist Church hosted its second annual pancake breakfast. My husband, Chris, had signed up to be one of the 12 pancake chefs before he knew whether or not I’d be able to help. As it turned out, I had that Saturday off so I reluctantly volunteered.

I don’t want to sound like I don’t like to flip some flapjacks on a Saturday morning, but I went to last year’s breakfast and was perfectly content with sampling all the offerings without having to do much beyond monitor my total syrup intake and supervise what my children were doing.

When Chris asked for my assistance and I inquired about what he thought we needed, like any control freak worth their salt, I pretty much took over the entire project. I bought us a mighty awesome griddle that we’ll use forever and brand new spatulas because the ones we owned looked like they were older than us. We also needed matching aprons which was his idea so I used easy iron-on letters to get our nicknames on the front.

I looked at our poor measuring cup and realized it too had seen better days. It was replaced along with some mixing bowls and our measuring spoons. Now that our kitchen paraphernalia had been updated, we needed ingredients.

Chris had decided to make pancakes with miniature chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. The only problem was that there are no miniature peanut butter chips. When you make small pancakes, those larger chips make a huge difference. I suggested we change the recipe and use the mini chocolate chips with a peanut butter batter.

Little did I know how much time would be consumed in that preceding week perfecting that simple recipe. The first mix was delicious. We should’ve known it was good because my daughter ate one and immediately wanted more. When I asked if she wanted syrup this time, she said, “I forgot to want it on the other one.” We should’ve stopped, but we thought the batter was too thick.

We tried thinning and mixing with different ingredients. We made at least 7 batches, but I may have blocked out one or two because I ended up dumping a few directly into the garbage. In the end, we went back to the original recipe we started out with.

When Saturday rolled around, I felt like I would be sick if I had to eat another pancake. The competition was fierce and the other tables were decorated way better than ours. My mother-in-law was two tables away with her special recipe and she had my sister-in-law, Ali, for support. They had chef hats. Why didn’t I get chef hats?

Chris and I were a great team, Hutch House Hotcakes, and people liked our pancakes, but the apple cinnamon stole the show. Personally, I liked Stephanie’s and Matt’s cinnamon roll pancakes slightly better, but it was a majority vote and not just my own opinion that mattered. The best part is that lots of people showed up and everyone had fun.

As for Chris and me, I think we are taking a break from pancakes and peanut butter for at least a month or so. I know that some people say you can’t have too much of a good thing, but when you shove it all into one week and force your family to eat it, it might not be a bad idea to take a break for a while.