Shrove Tuesday = Pancakes!

It's Shrove Tuesday!

And that, of course, means pancakes. If'n your Episcopalian it does.

So tonight I made pancakes for my dad.

Pancakes, in fact, are the dish that made me famous.

My senior year of college, I moved off campus with two friends of mine, Lou and Florence. Florence was quite the party girl, and was always up for inviting half the school over to party down. I would come home from my poetry reading or Black Flag show or whatever and find our suave digs filled with co-eds drunk on beer. I'd be the one to say "Yo! It's late! The music goes off! We have neighbors! And I'm going to bed and I don't want to hear you."

So of course, I ran the risk of getting a reputation as a huge Party Pooper. And we couldn't have that.

So when I got up in the morning, I would run to the grocery on the corner and come back and set to work.

Pancakes for a crowd.

It would take a whole box of Bisquick, but I'd use just about a whole carton of eggs. And my secret ingredient: I'd find an open bottle of beer (not a hard thing) and add that to the batter. It made the batter rise like crazy and gave a nice flavor of the hopps. But here's the clincher. In a pot, I'd melt some butter, then add diced apples. (Granny Smiths work well.) When the apples get soft, I add some brown sugar and cook till it gets all bubbly.

Get it? It was syrupy from the brown sugar, and there was plenty of butter in their, too, so I din't have to deal with people using all that butter and and syrup on my pancakes.

So that's what I made my father for supper tonight. And to make sure I got my protein, I sliced up some Aidell's Chicken Apple Sausage, tossed it with some walnut oil, and cooked them off in a 450° oven.

A plate heaping with sweet, savory, and, most importantly, pancakes.

And tomorrow begins the season of Lent. Forty days. The Baron asked me what I was giving up, and I hadn't given it much thought. I'm big Big BIG on Lenten devotions, so I'll think of something.