Pancake Day

As you’re all well aware of, today was and still is Pancake Day.  It’s the traditional day of feasting on the last bits of goodies from the pantry before the 40 days of Lent fasting.  It began as a way to use up the good food: sugar, milk, butter, flour–the unholy foods that give pleasure, and Lent is all about being miserable.  But like any good holiday, Pancake Day’s religious roots take a back seat to what people really care about: gluttony!  Yesterday I rode to the grocery store and went well out of my way to buy all the fixings and toppings for some extra pleasurable ingredients for my P-cakes.  Take that Lent!

The rules of Pancake Day are simple: you eat pancakes all day long and NOTHING else.  If you had a bad day today, like if a lot of things went wrong and you just came home feeling like crap for some unknown reason, it was most likely due to you not participating in Pancake Day’s golden rule: eat anything BUT pancakes and bad luck will be bestowed upon you until you consume more pancakes.  I was unaware of this rule until early this afternoon when I ate a tiny sample of a coffee cake at a frozen yogurt shop (of note, I was not there to eat frozen yogurt, I had to meet someone there).  Anyways, not five minutes after consuming the tiny morsel of ovencake, I was hit by a car.  I shit you not.  I wasn’t hurt and my bike (luckily I was on my mountain bike, not my road bike) was fine.  I decided that since no harm was done, and since I’d been riding on the left hand side of the road on the sidewalk (although it still wasn’t my fault for getting hit) I’d let the guy off easy and we went our separate ways after he apologized and I told him to pay attention.  No legal authorities, despite my constant hope in getting hit by a car so I can get another bike.  I’d let him off easy because deep down I knew that it, in fact, HAD been my fault.  It was my fault because I’d forlorn the Pancake Gods.  My belief in them had momentarily wavered when I’d been lured in by the Sirens of crumbly brown sugar-topped coffee cake: the exact opposite of a pancake and therefore the most disrespectful food to eat on this day, the day of Pancake prayer.  I had tempted the Pancake Gods to show their existence, and show it they did!  Their wrath, wrapped in the form of a careless auto driver, sent me hurrying home to mix pancake batter as fast as I could.  I made sure to add extra faith.

Turns out faith tastes pretty damn good.

Breakfast pancakes #1 through #3 were half whole wheat, half white flour.  I make all my pancakes from scratch since I’m not an idiot who’ll be tricked into buying expensive pancake batter with the two dry ingredients pre-mixed (flour and baking powder).

P-Cake #1: almond butter, regular butter, agave syrup.

Simple yet probably my favorite toppings for a pancake.  Nut butter and syrup.  Unfortunately I didn’t use maple syrup.  I’m saving all my rations for race season.  Milk, as you can see in the background, is always a necessity when consuming heavily-toppinged pancakes.  Keeps the throat lubricated.

Agave and almond butter.

For pancake numero dos I made a special pot of plum and cranberry sauce jam.

Result: good.  Very good.  Base layer of almond butter as well.

I decided I needed some more vitamins in my third pancake so I went with strawberries and a banana.  Base layer of almond butter and topped with a hint of agave syrup.

Now very groggy and sluggish with my stomach full of 2,300 calories of sugar, I set off on some errands by bike to help digest and wake up before my training ride.

My lunch pancake meal consisted of three medium-sized banana pancakes.  I blended these three bananas up, added in an egg, almond milk, baking powder, and some whole wheat flour to create some ultra sweat and fluffy banana cakes.

Mmmm perfect.

For toppings I went with more almond butter and strawberry jam.

I strayed yet again from my pancake diet for dinner, unwisely eating a salad instead of more pancakes.  This, as you may have guessed, resulted in another unfortunate incident: having to issue an $87 reimbursement for an item I’d sold on ebay a few weeks ago.  The reason being was that the said item was lost in the mail, supposedly.  Though it can be argued that the post office already lost it well before Pancake Day and before my ill-chosen salad dinner, I believe the Pancake Gods knew weeks ago that I’d eat the salad today and so therefore created my punishment in advance.  I went back on pancakes after that.  I’ve learned my lesson.  If a higher being wants you to consume ultra savory and sweet pan-fried goodies, you do it.

Dessert pancakes: one regular pancake and one with cocoa powder and cinnamon.  The lower half slathered with butter, almond butter, and agave syrup.  The top half bearing a large scoop of my roommate’s French carmel salted chocolate chunk ice cream, unbeknownst to him of course.  I’m just doing the bidding of my gods, it’s not stealing!

Oh man those two were good.  They only made me hungrier.  That puts my quota at eight solid ass pancakes.  There’s actually one more rule to Pancake Day: you must eat at least one more pancake than you did the Pancake Day the year before.  So leave room for improvement.