Pancake Night

I found this draft in my basket of blogs and I decided to send it out there.  I remembered how much fun we had and so I am going to have "pancake night" tomorrow.



Yesterday we were all so tired we laid down to take a nap even the babies!! This rarely happens. When we woke up, we needed to come up with a quick idea for supper.  I decided to have a pancake night. The only flour we had on hand is called La Rosa (The Rose). I don't know what is in it, (I suspect dried tree gum) but it is almost impossible to make it rise. The pancakes were coming out thick, with a gummy texture and the girls were frustrated. So I raced over to the kitchen and started mixing more baking powder, adding some soda, and a little vinegar to help the above ingredients get jump started. They were a little better, but not "cake like". So I decided at that point we needed to do something different. I didn't want the girls who had worked hard on this spur of the moment supper to be insulted by commentaries on their culinary efforts. After all the alterations to the recipe we had tons of batter.

I remembered a missionary friend of mine, Mrs. B. She would have pancake night for young people at her house. When we first arrived on the mission field she invited our family of five over to her small little rental house for supper.  She was a tall, big boned woman,  with a thin gray curly afro hairdo, who was about 72 at the time.  She looked like her Norwegian background, because she was so tall. She and her husband were about 6 foot tall and her grown 8 kids were all over 6 feet tall. When you would sit down at her house she would ask who wanted pancakes. When someone would respond, she would literally throw the pancakes at them from the spatula. She loved peanut butter on her pancakes which were made with her secret sour dough recipe.

 I was telling the girls the story and before I finished telling about how she served her pancakes I said "Who wants a pancake"?. One of the girls raised her hands and I flipped it to them from the spatula. Some of the girls were on the other side of our large dining hall. It hit the rafters a couple of times and some of the pancakes fell on the floor, but I only missed about 7 pancakes. I told the girls not to eat the ones that fell to the floor or the ones that grazed the dusty rafters, but I don't remember any left overs.  The kids were laughing and we all had the best time. It is one of those moments you know they won't forget. Thanks Mrs. B.  (Mrs. B and Mr. Jack are retired missionaries that reside in Morristown TN. They are in their 80's now.  They visit us here in Honduras every year after their trip to do construction on a project that has been their heart for years.  She still drives her vintage Harley Davidson and still loves me and our girls.  Blessings, the Pancake Throwing Honduran MOM