Cooking With Julie: Pancake Breakfast

Step 1: Go wake up the little darlings with the promise of pancakes (on a school day!).

Step 2: Gather all ingredients (box of Bisquick, milk and eggs) and realize you are out of syrup. Quickly dump some brown sugar, white sugar and a few squirts of Karo syrup (just in case the sugars didn't take) into a sauce pot. Crank up the heat. Decide to skip the maple flavoring and just scoop a huge spoonful or two of Smuckers Strawberry Jam on top of the sugars. The kids love strawberry syrup, and anyway, you can't find that bottle of maple flavoring.

Step 3: Wrestle the griddle out from under some teetering piles of crockery in a lower cupboard. Plug in griddle and set the temp to 350. Think about adding water to the sugars on the stove, but decide to spend the next 45 seconds searching for your pancake turner. Look for it in the utensil drawer, because you are sure it's there and if you just look hard enough you will find it. Repeat 3 times. Give up. Yell up the stairs, encouraging children in the dressing process.

Step 4: Start butter melting on the griddle. Make up batter for pancakes. Find the pancake turner in wrong drawer. Pour batter onto griddle. Finally add water to sugars on the stove. Stirring spiritedly, slop sugar/jam mixture over sides of pot in an effort to "hurry up", causing syrup to pool on the drip pan under the burner and catch fire. Watch flames closely to see if they will go out on their own. Invert large pot over flames. Yell further encouragements to children.

Step 5: Discover the syrup is burned. Start over. Set the burned pot to soak in the sink. Flip pancakes. Gather children. Note that two children are wearing shirts from the day before and no one is wearing socks.

Step 6: Breakfast prayer. Have children sit and wait in hungry expectation for the new syrup to finally boil. Explain the smoke and the smell of burned sugar in an upbeat way.

Step 7: Plate up the pancakes and enjoy!