Gingerbread Pancakes for Shrove Tuesday

GINGERBREAD PANCAKES
(inspired by Kerbey Lane in Austin)

Cream together:
6 eggs
2/3 cup brown sugar

Add, then mix well:
1 cup buttermilk*
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup coffee (brewed)
2 tsp vanilla

In a seperate bowl, combine dry ingredients:
5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 Tbs. cloves
2 Tbs. cinnamom
2 Tbs. ginger
1.5 Tbs. nutmeg

Add dry ingredients to wet, mixing gently. When combined, mix in:
1 stick of butter, melted

This makes about 7-8 thick, plate sized pancakes. SUPER thick. Cut back a tsp of baking soda or so if you prefer less cake-y pancakes.

* buttermilk is easy to make: 1 c. milk + 1 Tbs. lemon juice or vinegar, I let it stand for a half hour or so, but you could probably push it to even 5 or 10 minutes in a pinch.

Need to Save Time?

[This is an embedded video so if you're reading via Facebook, you need to view the original post.]

Try pre-blessed food!

Take that Thomas Kinkade

h/t Great White Snark

It is very meat and very right and our bounden duty

The CHOW Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Pear Cider Gravy recipe produces a fine, fine Thanksgiving dish. In this video, watch it evolve from bagged bird to bacon-striped, pear-sweet, glistening roast.

You'd better call a priest or a cardiologist to absolve you after this meat monster.

Saturday Morning Bachelor Dad Biscuits

The wife is outta town so I'm parenting without a net. Here's something to make it go better. Technically, these are more of a dinner biscuit (yes - Southerners have different biscuits for different occasions), but they're so good with butter or jelly that I can't resist!

1 cup flour
1 cup cake flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/3 cups cold heavy cream


1. Heat the oven to 400°F
2. Sift the flours, sugar, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Set aside.
3. Using an electric mixer, beat the heavy cream in a medium-size bowl until it thickens, but not enough to hold soft peaks.
4. Make a well in the dry ingredients, then pour in the cream.
5. Stir briskly with a wooden spoon, just until the dough starts to stick together, making a dough like substance.
6. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface.
7. Knead the dough, with floured hands, 3 or 4 times, then pat 3/4 to 1 inch thick.
8. Bake the biscuits until light golden brown, about 15 to 17 minutes.
9. Transfer the biscuits to a cloth-lined basket and serve as soon as possible.

* Don't use a dark or nonstick sheet, or the biscuit bottoms will burn.
* Makes about 12 to 14 biscuits.
* Don't eat them right away. The biscuits will be hot right out of the oven and will continue to cook a little.
* Serve the biscuits right away. They get stale quickly.

Zombie Apocalypse Averted

I've gotta tell ya...this is the first time evolutionary biology has actually given me some sort of comfort.

h/t Surviving the World

Death By Chocolatelessness?

A new report released by the AFP says that chocolate can actually reduce the risk of morbidity in heart attack survivors. When I was growing up, one of my favorite deserts was Death By Chocolate (at Bennigans?)

Anyway, I guess they're going to have to find a new name for it. But consider this a pre-emptive strike.

Food and Sex

This is from today's AP:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The West Michigan Whitecaps say they have no plans to put a warning label on an enormous new hamburger they're selling this season — despite a vegan advocacy group's request to do just that.

Susan Levin, a staff dietitian for the Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, sent a letter to the Grand Rapids minor-league team on Tuesday. She's asking that the 4,800-calorie burger be labeled a "dietary disaster" that increases the risk of cancer and heart disease.

The 4-pound, $20 burger features five beef patties, five slices of cheese, nearly a cup of chili and liberal doses of salsa and corn chips — all on an 8-inch bun.

Whitecaps spokesman Mickey Graham says the burger is a gimmick that's being promoted as a very unhealthy menu item.

Here's the warning I suggest:

WARNING: May cause people who think that women have a right to kill a baby to say that you don't have a right to know how heart-stoppingly delicious this burger tastes.

What kills me is that we've turned food into the new sex. Can you imagine the outrage they would have if we asked for warnings on miniskirts? Oh the moral indignity they have when we "puritanical prudes" take offense at the sexualization of our daughters when we complain about the toys they make and the clothes they produce. (BTW, modesty is never really out of fashion.)

(Click on that pic to enlarge - or just take my word for it: they are marketing this as appropriate clothing for a 12-18M and 18-24M old girl. And that's not even the "thongs" I've seen in WalMart!)

Think about it. When was the last time you were accosted for a consumer choice (whether it be a car, an item of food, a television from your local big-box chain store, your pharmaceuticals)? Or maybe not accosted, but scolded by the news reports?

Now...when was the last time you heard people being scolded for having serial sex partners? I remember watching Oprah and Jerry Springer one day. On Oprah, Amy Dacyczyn a.k.a. the Frugal Zealot was talking about wearing second-hand bras and socks and shoes. The audience was totally grossed out - gasping at the disgustitude of this woman. Meanwhile, on Jerry Springer, you have a guy who is sleeping with his girlfriend, his girlfriend's sister, and her cousin. Plus he'd just been caught with the neighbor. And nobody found that "gross." (Oh yeah...he was also jobless, but the men in the audience were hooting him up as though he were somehow a male idol. American idle is more like it.)

We're forging a new set of purity laws in this country that will turn us into Pharisees - hypocrites who make a big deal about paying your mint and dill and cumin tithe, but ignoring the weightier matters of the law. Paul - who had been rescued from hypocritical pharisaism - saw the danger and warned Timothy that in the later times, people will devote "themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons" and "forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth."

(Those who are undermining the intimate ties between sex and family life - marriage and procreation of children - are making marriage a burden, and thus forbidding it.)

Priorities are shifting...but this is nothing that we - the Christian Church - have not faced before. Perhaps we are in the last days of the American Empire. So be it. Read St. Augustine's City of God where he talks about what it means to live as the church apart from the Roman Empire. We'll figure it out...and maybe even see a new era of Christendom from our missionary activities.

Want to lose that vonneGUT?

Eat a breakfast of champions! A study released at the recent meeting of the Endocrine Society suggests that eating a big breakfast (no...not this Big Breakfast®) can have a long-term positive impact on weight loss.

When I was in London last summer, we generally only ate one real meal: the classic English Full Breakfast. (In fact, my last breakfast there was at Lord Moon of the Mall: Wetherspoon, just down the street from one of the car bombs found just hours after we left!) We could eat that thing and then walk, walk, walk all day - only feeling slightly peckish after the end of a hard day of touring.

So, I told my wife that I was on a weight-loss kick and from now on, I expected an Ulster Fry every morning...

Yeah...that's what she said.