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From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
I love pancakes. Just not for breakfast. So when I’m in the mood, it’s time for breakfast for dinner. Pictured above are JeffreyW’s fluffy pancakes, and I have a recipe for super fluffy pancakes, here.
Want to dress them up a bit? How about Blueberry Sour Cream Pancakes? Recipe here.
For something completely different and easy to make, German Pancakes with Walnut syrup, click here.
And what goes perfectly with pancakes? How about some bacon…JeffreyW candies his:
JeffreyW’s Candied Bacon recipe is here and his Cayenne Candied Bacon (pictured above) recipe is here. And the basics of baking bacon vs. frying can be found here.
In case you missed it, this week’s full dinner menu was Spicy Potato Soup, Garlic Biscuits and Mocha Pudding Cake and can be found here.
What’s on your menu for the weekend? Are you a fan of breakfast for dinner? Hit the comments with your favorite breakfast recipes.
And the featured recipe tonight:
I love whole wheat pancakes, they are fluffy, hearty, nutty and sweet, just like some people I know. Making whole wheat pancakes can be tricky, though – I don’t want them to be heavy and dry, I still want light and fluffy. The recipe below serves that up.
Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes
Beat together until light and frothy:
1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tbsp vegetable oilSift together:
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup unbleached flour
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp buttermilk powder
1 tablespoon baking powderWhisk dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just moistened, batter will be lumpy. Ladle into a hot, well oiled skillet or griddle. [Reduce heat to medium after it has heated up because these brown quickly.]
While with white flour pancakes you’d wait to see bubbles on the top of pancakes before flipping them, you don’t want to do that with these. As soon as the bottom is golden, flip. And as soon as the bottom is again golden, remove.
This keeps them from being too dry. It’s a bit of a balancing act – you want to make sure they aren’t runny, but you also don’t want to over cook. As soon as the center bounces back they are ready to remove.
Top with butter and real maple syrup. Yum.
Until next week – TaMara
schrodinger's cat
I have farm fresh eggs from my neighbor’s chickens. Any idea what I can do with them? I already made scrambled eggs which were delicious.
Comrade Mary
@schrodinger’s cat: Clafouti! You can use any berries instead of cherries, or thinly sliced peaches, pears or apples.
JPL
Will this post have anything to do with the failure of health care insurance?
@schrodinger’s cat: Fresh eggs last a long time. If you want to make deviled eggs, though, research how to peel them.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Chocolate souffle.
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: Do you do omelets or frittatas? We have chickens, and so our own eggs, and I do both quite regularly with vegetables and herbs from the garden (or from the store, when necessary). I also do a lot of traditional cooking, including homemade breakfast burritos with lots of stuff added, etc. Farm-fresh eggs also make the best French toast, IMO.
ETA: FYWP – nobody told you (WP) to eat my text. Focus, dammit. The subject is eggs.
Mustang Bobby
Oh, I love breakfast for dinner. Pancakes with butter and real maple syrup, thick-cut bacon, tomato juice, scrambled eggs. Heavenly.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Oohh chocolate, want!
@Comrade Mary: Will keep in mind, I has tons of apples.
schrodinger's cat
@Aji: I make omelets on the weekend. So tomorrow is omlet day!
Aji
Gorgeous pancakes. I do homemade ones semi-regularly, but I switch out ingredients depending on mood and cravings. One of my favorites for fall and winter is to add blue corn flour and piñons.
srv
nom nom.
My trainer has issues with my pancake and bacon issues.
I was going to gorge at the truck park on some greek thingies that look like hush puppies, but they were still pounding the dough.
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: Is that because you have time to enjoy it then? :-)
I go through phases where I can barely stand to look at an egg for breakfast, and then others where I absolutely love them. Now that cold weather’s here, I’m liking them again. Sadly, the chickens are in full molt right now, so we’re starting to run a bit low.
Oh! One other thing I do with them: Do you like chile? I love them with green chile (omelettes, burritos, whatever), or added to leftover enchiladas, especially made with hot red chile, for quick and dirty huevos rancheros.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: I think candied cayenne bacon may contribute to the collapse of the health insurance market.
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat: A) They will last forever and a day in the fridge, just DO NOT WASH THEM. Eggs have a coating that helps preserve them in their shells for quite some time. Also, if you don’t refrigerate them, don’t turn around and do so much later. It won’t preserve them any longer. Either all the time in the fridge or on the counter.
B) The best way of eating a farm fresh egg is over easy with good toast and lots of butter. That will give you an idea how much you’ve missed and you’ll be bugging your friends for more. Or even yet get your own flock!
Ruckus
Every so often I have breakfast real, real late. As in for late dinner.
Thick sliced bacon
Red potato
Herbs and baby spinach
Cook the quartered and sliced potato in the bacon grease, drain the grease, add the herbs/spinach and cook down for a minute or so, add 3 scrambled eggs to the potato/herb mix.
The whole mess is mmmmm good.
Now I know what I’m having for dinner.
Svensker
That picture of those pancakes is just killing me.
I make whole wheat pancakes a lot and as long as I use yoghurt instead of milk, with baking soda, they are light and tender. The other thing I do is keep the batter fairly thick but spread it around when I glop it on the griddle, rather than thinning it out with liquid.
Yum. Candied bacon. Double yum.
bemused senior
Two family favorite breakfast casseroles, one sweet and one savory. The sweet one, French toast casserole, tastes like the dish served at the brunch reception after my daughter’s wedding, and everyone loved it. The savory one is chile relleno casserole, and is another favorite. Both use a lot of eggs.
schrodinger's cat
@Yatsuno: Kept them in the fridge, hubcat is a germophobe.
Eggs are from these chickens!
Omnes Omnibus
There is also the classic late night snack from the Bond novels of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with champagne.
RSA
So candied bacon is made with maple sugar? My wife’s family is from Vermont, and every year we get a Christmas package of maple sugar candy, maple syrup, and occasionally maple sugar. Now I know what to do with the last…
schrodinger's cat
@Aji: I make an omelet with red onion, cilantro and green chili, usually Thai bird’s eye chili and buttered toast. Weekends because that’s when I have time.
Omnes Omnibus
@RSA: Add maple sugar to oatmeal.
ruemara
@schrodinger’s cat: Baked eggs. or Shakshuka. Or a large amount of indescribably good homemade mayo.
I decided my harvest treat for the office should be dorayaki with my bourbon sweet delicata squash ice cream filling. And chocolate. Always chocolate.
schrodinger's cat
My mother makes a five grain mix adds some cumin and red onions or shallots and makes savory pancakes with them. She usually serves them with yogurt. They are really good.
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: Mmmm, red onion. Speaking of which, I need to pick one up; only yellow onion here at the moment.
Hey, I took a look at your link. LOL – I trust that when you “threw the chicken on the grill,” it was not one of the neighbor’s chickens?
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat: The nice part is eggs are hermetically sealed packages. If the hens laying them are healthy, they are actually pretty safe to eat underdone or even raw.
I’ve got it! Pavlova!!!
cmorenc
I’ll have my bacon topped with bacon, and for my side dish I’l like some bacon.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc:
That is really good, but have you ever had it served on a bed of bacon?
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Garnished with bacon. With a bacon demi-glace and a bacon vinagrette.
schrodinger's cat
@Aji: Some of them are as big as my kittehs. I am thinking that the thought must have crossed my neighbor’s mind, so she gave me the eggs to appease me.
Aji
@schrodinger’s cat: [Snort] probably. We have four, and they’re easily large-cat-sized. Fortunately, their free range is circumscribed a bit by fencing and a gate, so the dogs can’t treat them like prey.
jenn
@Aji: Ooh, THANK YOU for that thought. I have a nice big (ish) bag, and have been pondering what I’m going to do with them.
rikyrah
I love breakfast for dinner..
Pancakes, bacon and a cold glass of milk is one of the best meals ever!
Yatsuno
@schrodinger’s cat: @Aji: Cats will bother a chicken ONCE. Then they get pecked to within an inch of their lives. Chickies run away from humans usually, but anything about their size they will stand up to. Hell I’ve seen a bantam rooster stand up to a Weimareiner and win the battle. They’re tough little birds actually.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer wraps a waffle around a stick of butter.
Breakfast for dinner is an idea long in practice at my home.
OT: The NRA will give me a free rosewood knife if I join…WTF? They’re not going to give me an AR-15? What the hell is wrong with them?!?
Aji
@jenn: Of piñons? Oooh, I’m envious. I just used up the last of ours making cornbread for dinner tonight. have to get some more.
And you’re welcome. :-)
Aji
@Yatsuno: We haz no cats, on account’a’ I haz an allergy to their dander. But the dogs actually are mostly pretty mellow around them. Still, I like to know that they’ll be safe in the coop overnight (we lost some of their sibs last year to a weasel), and so I’d rather not have Raven chasing them all over 25 acres, as he does the horses, just for the sheer joy of trolling them.
Ash Can
@Omnes Omnibus:
That combination has New Year’s Eve/Morning/Day written all over it. :) I can see serving it with/on toasted bagels, with garnishes of capers and finely chopped scallions or red onions…
Older
schrodinger’s cat: Actually, 90 days is about how long they will keep, in the refrigerator or in any cool dark place. After 90 days, a lot of them will still be good, but break them into a separate small dish just in case.
But don’t, DO NOT, wash them. It’s a natural membrane that keeps them fresh, they can breathe through it. One year when we had four laying hens (way more than enough) we conducted carefully documented experiments.
As to what to do with them: Custard! Cheesecake (a special instance of custard), quiche (another special instance of custard), eggnog, fruit whip(another form of custard). Oh yes, and french toast (custard again). So, basically custard, but personally, I love custard.
Svensker
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes to eggs over easy — unbelievably good with really good eggs. Partner with a small grass-fed beef steak, some really good bread toasted with lots of good butter, and some sliced tomatoes heavily salted and peppered. Accompany with pots of hot, black coffee. What you want is a puddle of egg yolk, steak juice and tomato juices at the bottom of your plate and then you sop that up with buttered toast. Ain’t nothing better.
Omnes Omnibus
@Older: How do you feel about custard? Me, I like it.
@Ash Can: Read correctly and with a filter for the casual racism and sexism of the British upper classes at the time, the books can offer a decent guide to luxurious living.
Roger Moore
I’m a big fan of sourdough pancakes. I find that ordinary pancakes have an obvious flour taste that is either masked or eliminated by the sourdough fermentation. It’s also a great way of using up left over sourdough starter, which is a very common problem for sourdough bakers. They tend to be a bit thinner than regular pancakes, but very tasty.
I’ve also found possibly the world’s best bacon, which was recommended by Jonathan Gold, the LA Time’s food critic. It’s about twice as salty and at least 5 times as smokey as your typical bacon, even good gourmet bacon, and it’s dry cured so it doesn’t spatter or lose as much weight when you cook it. It’s so flavorful it’s almost too much to eat by itself, but it’s fantastic as an ingredient in other foods.
BTW, I’m a big believer in frying bacon, since about half the point of it is to be able to fry other foods in the bacon grease.
Ash Can
@Older:
And/or flan!
Yatsuno
@Ash Can:
I can make the NYD drool just mentioning this. I swear he’s got some Jewish back in his bloodline somewhere though he’s blond with blue eyes.
Roger Moore
@schrodinger’s cat:
Any kind of custard, including creme brulee, bread pudding, frozen custard, or, given the time of year, cooked eggnog.
Ash Can
@Roger Moore:
That sounds very much like the tasso ham we get at Paulina Market. Saute a chopped onion and throw chopped tasso ham in with it, and it makes one of the best damned omelets ever.
cmorenc
@Omnes Omnibus:
What would finish out the meal nicely is salad topped with crumbled bacon bits. Lots of really crisp crumbled bacon bits, the real thing.
schrodinger's cat
Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions! BTW who washes eggs? I never even wash store brought eggs.
Ash Can
@Yatsuno:
There are blond and/or blue-eyed Jewish folks all over the place. As the saying goes, it’s not a race, it’s a religion!
Older
We live in a neighborhood full of college students, and I was awakened one morning years back way earlier than I had intended, by my son’s shouting. He saw, from his window that overlooked the chicken pen, that someone had put a dog into the enclosure.
We ran outside, semi-dressed, to find that there was, sure enough, a dog in with the chickens, and the dog and the chickens were shouting too.
Our little flock at that time included two Game Hens (the fighting cock breed). Even the ladies have formidable spurs. So there was a fight going on. We opened the door, and the dog shot out of there as if he had wings, and disappeared down the alley. He had managed to bite one of the non-Game hens, and she died, but I think the dog had some damage too.
I’d say, if a person wants their flock to be a little safer from dogs and such, she should include some Game Hens. Your average chicken, if some predator steals a hen off the perch next to her, will rouse just long enough to think “Lucky it wasn’t me”, but a Game Hen is always thinking “What’s that noise? Are we all safe?” even when she’s asleep.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
Provided you’re willing to put up with an endless list of fancy brand names. Having read the novels, I find the incessant product placement in the movies to be less of a sellout and more of an attempt to be true to the source material.
Older
Schrodinger’s cat at #47 — If your neighbor gave you the eggs they may already have been washed. The reason people wash eggs is chicken shit. The ones in stores have definitely already been washed. And although I didn’t think of it, probably your neighbor’s have been too. If you keep chickens, the best way is to wash the eggs just before you use them.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore:
That never bothered me much.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
It’s a traditional country bacon, meaning that the salt and smoke are there as actual preservatives rather than just a flavoring. They ship their stuff UPS ground without refrigeration and without any problems, and they claim their uncooked hams can be kept without refrigeration until they’re sliced. Of course these are also the kind of ham where the cooking instructions tell you to scrape and scrub the mold off the outside before cooking, but that’s awfully traditional, too.
Ash Can
@Roger Moore:
IIRC, the same instructions apply to very dry and highly salted salamis. The sausage itself is sufficiently non-conducive to unpleasant organisms that they don’t permeate the casing — or, at least, not very far — and a good cleaning takes care of everything.
Yatsuno
@efgoldman: I r stuck at work still, though I have a tab open keeping an eye on it. I’m doing the lazy gubmit worker things because it’s Friday night and my giveadamn left about three days ago.
He’s a big white boy. He doesn’t tan. He barely survived OCS without SPF 50 every day.
Roger Moore
@Yatsuno:
Who says Jews can’t be blonde or blue eyed. I’m Jewish (on my mother’s side, which is what counts) and have blue eyes and lightish hair. I think the Ashkenazi have intermarried enough to introduce some Northern European traits into the gene pool.
NotMax
@Yatsuno
Some of my best friends have blond hair and blue eyes…
Sandia Blanca
@efgoldman: We also have a low-salt kitchen, but enjoy bacon and pancakes every Saturday. Costco has a great low-sodium bacon–we each have two slices, then salt-free pancakes with unsalted butter and real maple syrup.
Pancakes are from the American Heart Association’s “Cooking Without Your Salt Shaker,” a great book. Ingredients are flour, baking powder (Rumford has no salt), cinnamon, sugar, egg, oil, milk, and vanilla. We also add chopped pecans and/or protein powder for extra oomph. Add some fresh blueberries and you have quite a feast.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I once dated a blond, blue eyed Jewish girl. And a brown haired, green eyed Jewish girl. And a brown haired, brown eyed Jewish girl. Come to think of it, I’ve dated a lot of Jewish girls.
Roger Moore
@Ash Can:
I actually don’t have too much of a problem with mold; I know there are plenty of beneficial kinds that help to give fermented foods desirable flavors. I love the white mold on brie-type cheeses and the green mold in blue cheeses, and I know there are interesting molds involved in the flavor of aged sausages. It just says something about a ham that it’s been aged for long enough to need to have mold scraped and scrubbed off the outside. IIRC, they also recommend soaking their hams for a while to remove some salt.
Comrade Mary
Oh, this reminds me of my favourite candied bacon story.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I always figured that, if I married one of them, there would be no fights over where we went for Christmas ( or the High Holidays).
Petorado
TaMara, if you add a little cinnamon and a dash of allspice to the pancakes they become even a little more fragrant and tasty. Pumpkin pie spices always do well in cold weather The egg separating and whipping of whites has been a family secret for a while, but I guess the cat’s out of the bag now.
Reserving bacon grease and keeping it in a jar in the fridge for later use is another secret for sautéing veggies and getting a bacon flavor without having actually cook some up on the spot.
Omnes Omnibus
@Petorado: But if you cook the bacon on the spot you have the grease for adding bacon flavor plus actual bacon that you can eat.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Instead, I married an Eastern European who didn’t particularly care for her family’s traditions, so, since mine were important to me, Christmas was with my family. Then I got divorced and Christmas is still with my family. WINNING!
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: My mom is Catholic, my dad is Jewish, neither is particularly religious, so the big family holiday is Thanksgiving. This is why my mom is not particularly upset that I’ll still be in the hospital at that time but she’s thrilled I’ll be home for Turkey Day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: Christmas is our big one. Not for religious reasons. Because it has always been.
andy
@schrodinger’s cat: do a fry-up with bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes, and whatever herbs and spices you like. when everything is saucy, break some eggs into it, cover the pan, and let it go a minute or so until the whites are set, then slide the whole works out onto a plate http://www.flickr.com/photos/40964542@N08/10639243985/
Dave
As a lover of plain, silver dollar, adorned-only-with-butter-and-syrup pancakery, I’ll admit that one of my more painful Saturday morning experiences as a child was waking up to the smell of pancakes only to walk into the kitchen and see a bowl of blueberries or pile of banana peels on the counter beside the stove.
Quaker in a Basement
Breakfast for dinner?
Eggs and pork chops with french fries and beer at the Fourth of July Cuban restaurant in Key West. There’s heaven.