Salted Rim

It never seems to fail - we always crave what we cannot have. A couple of weeks ago I celebrated my birthday and really had a craving for some good pancakes. Knowing that I would probably be unable to find a mix, I emailed my good friend Heather Hoover, who is a fantastic cook, to get her from scratch pancake recipe. One of my cooking secrets is to figure out what Heather does and simply copy it. In this case, I figured I could find all the ingredients and just make it here. Her recipe included flour, sugar, baking soda and powder, salt, an egg and some buttermilk.

It had been a couple of weeks since that craving, and I still hadn’t made my pancakes. Yesterday, while trying to describe how to make a taco, we decided to postpone that recipe, but Jaclyn, one of our cooks, asked if I could teach her how to make something different for breakfast. It was then that I realized I had a chance to try the pancakes. I went to the store and purchased the ingredients that we were missing, and this morning we learned how to make banana pancakes. I wasn’t able to find syrup but will maybe make some next time. It was amazing! We had all the ingredients minus the buttermilk; I had to use powdered milk, and it worked great. We mixed the batter and poured the first pancake’s batter on the skillet, placed the bananas, and flipped. They smelled wonderful. I added some butter on top and took a taste. They were amazing, a welcome treat from half a world away. I shared with the night guards and other staff around and they all seemed to enjoy. I think this will be a great addition to the menu here at Moucecore.

Some tips for other developing world travelers: Make sure you have plenty of oil in your pan so it doesn’t stick. Non-stick pans aren’t necessarily that common. Also, if you are cooking over charcoal, like I was this morning, a small fire will do, it will get really hot and you don’t want your pancakes to burn. Now just mix together your ingredients and start cooking – you will be amazed at how great they will taste!