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Day’s Verse:
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.
Psalm 46:11
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You know how every middle-aged couple has horror stories of recipes-gone-wrong from their early marriage? This morning marks one recipe that will live in infamy in our marriage…

*Wavy transition to flashback*

It all started when I felt like something interesting for breakfast. Saturday mornings we have plenty of time and I enjoy baking a more elaborate breakfast than the usual weekday fare. This particular morning I didn’t have any particular breakfast in mind, so I consulted my co-muncher. He suggested pancakes, a perennial favorite that I’ve made since I was tall enough see the top of the stove. The kitchen inventory proved sorrowfully lacking in the primary ingredient, Bisquick, but as a resourceful pancake-maker I harnessed the power of the internet to procure a from-scratch pancake recipe.

If only I had known then what I know now! But at the time, I simply sought a recipe employing ingredients already stocked in our kitchen. After several futile tries because we don’t routinely keep buttermilk in our kitchen, I found a recipe that I copied down as:

• 1 egg
• 1 C. flour
• 3/4 C. milk
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 3 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tbsp salt

If you know anything about cooking, your alarm bells have probably already gone off. Mine should have, but I only looked at the ingredients, not the portions. Happily I returned to the kitchen and mixed a double portion because two hungry males consume significant volumes of good food.

I made it and reduced the salt content approximately by half. The first pancake felt..odd…but as I flipped it, but it flipped alright because I’m an expert flipper. It also bubbled significantly more than my standard Bisquick pancakes. Still, I served it up and my first victim sat down, took one bite. A strange look came over his face: something between shock, dismay, horror, puzzlement and the desire to spit the mouthful back out. A creeping, sinking feeling slipped into my stomach as he proclaimed it “bitter” and “salty.” Particularly salty. A second and third taste-test by myself and the remaining victim confirmed this assessment. We threw the doubled recipe away and tried again, this time with no salt.

Although the second batch (also doubled; what a fool I am!) proved palatable, each victim suffered through only two panacakes. The mixing-bowl, still half-full, practically vibrated under the power of the baleful glares sent its way by the disgruntled victims. We unanimously voted to throw the remaining batter away as well, much to my sorrow.

*Wavy transition to present*

This story particularly rankles because I, of all people, take exceeding care not to waste ingredients. Yet this recipe threw away 4 eggs, 4 cups of milk and flour, and 12 tablespoons of baking powder. Later I rechecked the recipe and found I had misread the last two ingredients which, as my intuition told me at first, were actually listed as tsp, not tbsp. This breakfast will surely go down in the annals of the Ian Ferguson household, with the moral of the story being: Just get the ingredients you need. If you really want to try a new recipe, read it carefully and copy it down right.

– KF –