The Healing Power of Whole Grain Pancakes

If you are what you eat, then I am turning into a nutella-covered pancake. Me, who only a handful of months ago was making regular pilgrimages to the land of the healthy smoothies, and running laps around the junkies and the pigeons of Tompkins Square Park, and was eating nothing but tofu, brown rice and seaweed. What happened? Now it's just pancakes, and if I get down into a yoga asana position, I'm asleep within minutes, sprawled out on the floor like a drunken baby. So I stare glassy-eyed into the screen of my laptop, wishing I could cry as I scroll through Nerve profiles, and chomp on gigantic Snickers bars, popcorn, pretzels, and drinking whole two liter bottles of Diet Pepsi.

I once reviewed a book that talked about how everyone needs to eat according to their blood type. I always meant to find out what blood type I was, hoping I was the type who should avoid exercise and vegetables. I've still yet to find out so I've decided to adopt the blood type that gets to eat pretzels and Snickers bars all day. Protein seems so outré now, what with the hurricanes and Bush, global warming, lay-offs, heartbreak, the disappearance of public spaces, the proliferation of cell phones and the heartbreak, the heartbreak! It's like, why bother eating protein, where will it get you? Soon we'll all be dead, or worse, living in isolation and hanging out with each other in a purely virtual space where it doesn't matter how obese and wan we look. Go for the short term high, and let lethargy be your inheritance.

"Oh Jesus," you say, "Erich, cheer the freak up. After all, you're not swimming around in your attic, or waiting in traffic, or passing a kidney stone.

Well, okay, you have a point. One way out of this dilemma is to bridge the gap between sweets and legitimate breakfast, and this bridge is what we call whole grain pancakes. There can be a huge difference in the health value of a pancake based on nothing more than what kind of milk and what kind of pancake mix one uses. One pancake makes you larger, one pancake makes you tall.

Most health food stores and some of the more pretentious grocery stores stock an assortment of whole grain healthy pancake mixes by the good folks at Arrowhead Mills. My favorite is the buckwheat pancake mix. Here's a recipe for what I call….

THE SWISS MISTRESS SUNDAY BRUNCH PANCAKE SPECIAL

Ingredients:

1 egg

Nutella ™

Arrowhead Mills Buckwheat pancake mix ™

Honey

Oil

Cinnamon

Maple Syrup (get the expensive stuff that comes in what looks like a whiskey flask)

Soy milk (or regular milk for you non-non-diary types)

PLUS

Coffee fixins!

In a regular cereal bowl break one large egg, a dollop of peanut oil, a squeeze of honey, and a cup of soymilk. Stir vigorously with a spoon as you boil some water and sing jazz standards loud enough for your lover to hear in the next room.

Add spoonfuls of pancake mix and stir in slowly until the mixture has the consistency of a thick smoothie. Feel free to dab your nose strategically with pancake mix powder, so that you resemble Al Pacino near the end of SCARFACE (1983). Add a sprinkle of cinnamon and more honey.

Start making the pancakes. Butter a nonstick pan and pour out the mix into the pan to form a nice round circle. When bubbles appear all around the sides, flip it with a spatula. When the coffee is ready, pour and serve. Are you still singing? Don't lose your joi de vivre!

When the first pancake is jettisoned, move it to a plate and start the next, singing all the while. Pour the hot water over the coffee grounds waiting in the French press; you do have a French press, do you not?

Spread nutella on the first pancake, then put the second on top of the first to form a nutella pancake sandwich. Dig how the nutella melts under the warmth of the pancakes, becoming something similar to chocolate syrup. Garnish with fresh fruit and or nuts if available and bring plate into your drowsy lover with syrup and coffee (and a fork).

Command your lover to start without you while you create another nutella and pancake concoction (for yourself). Don't let your lover wait until his or hers gets cold; everything will be cold soon enough-- the food, your love, your hands, your head… the grave.

Afterwards, the combination of syrup and nutella and pancake will knock you both back asleep for a lovely and long Sunday morning nap.

Another option in this category is the Arrowhead Kamut pancake mix. For some reason the Arrowhead people don't seem to want you to put an egg into this one, as the back recipe is very austere. Well, without an egg or anything, the pancakes don't hold together so well. But sometimes that can be poetically apropos, as in the following:

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON PANCAKES

1. Arrowhead Mills Kamut Pancake mix

2. Water

3. Salt

a. Combine pancake mix and water with a pinch of salt in a bowl, pour small dollops of batter into the center of un-oiled non-stick frying pan.

c. Watch sadly as the poor little pancake fails to cohere. Watch it crumble into what resembles your mom's corn fritters when you try and flip them.

d. Think back to those corn fritters, how they smelled and tasted. Why did she stop making them? Why does corn not taste as good now as it used to?

e. Is it the inescapable flood of chemicals they put in everything that's causing us all to lose our sense of flavor? What did kamut taste like back in the carefree days of ancient Egypt?

f. When you feel the tears come bubbling up, try and get some into the pan, for symbolism.

g. When you have completely botched the whole operation, pile a plate high with the unattractive, fritter-esque yet strangely tasty kamut cakes. Douse lightly with syrup and return to bed (alone) with plate and a cup of weak, luke-warm Earl Gray tea.

h. Try and watch an old Warhol or Fassbinder movie until merciful unconsciousness strikes you down at last.

i. Repeat as needed.

Needless to say, the first recipe will naturally lead to the second in every twirling circle of life, so be like me and keep both options in your cupboard. Above all, get rid of that old racist Ms. Butterworth. She's all hydrogenated, oxidized, processed, granulated, sterilized, beaten, abused and robbed of her native vitamins. Genuine Maple syrup that's all from trees and not just sugar is what you want, even if it's like $5 for a little bottle. I could recommend some but your mileage may vary, there's a billion little Vermont farms that crank the stuff out, so just make sure it's a) from Vermont and b) there's a crudely drawn picture of a farmer on the label. Now excuse me while I go die… or make more pancakes.

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