Recipe 6: Cornmeal Pancakes

I have a confession to make: I live with a bunch of pancake fiends. My husband and son would probably eat pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week if I let them. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but they love pancakes, alright?

I like pancakes. I am lazy, though, and cooking individual pancakes sometimes isn't fast enough for me. Given the choice, I'd probably make a batch of waffles instead. We have a great griddle/panini press combo with waffle plates, so I can make a bunch without babysitting them.

BUT. Last night I decided to make a batch of cornmeal pancakes for dinner (along with the pizza I already had thrown in the oven, because...why not?). I have two containers of yellow cornmeal in my pantry currently. I'm sure at one point I thought I didn't have any cornmeal at all. Amid organizing my pantry shelves (still a work in progress), I discovered both containers, so I'm on a mission to use up one.  Enter...this recipe: Cornmeal Pancakes

These are SOOOOO good! They are so pretty! They use up a lot of cornmeal! 

Yum, yum, and yum. It  tastes really similar to the Jiffy cornbread I grew up eating - slightly sweet, soft, good corn flavor. I have to admit...since living in Texas, I still haven't fallen in love with savory cornbread. I much prefer sweet cornbread. We used to eat it with syrup and butter and my brother and I would fight over who got the very middle piece from the pan (no dryer edges).

This recipe calls for blueberry syrup, but I didn't make it. These honestly don't even really need syrup. A little butter would be good for me, but if you're going full on breakfast, add some syrup and eat up! Our son loved these (he's never met a pancake or waffle he didn't like, and we don't even serve them with butter or syrup for him) and my husband said they were "really good." But, being the pancake purist that he is, he still prefers regular ol' pancakes. I would gladly have these more often than the plain variety...I love the texture. Enjoy!

2 months later

Did I warn you guys or what? It's been 2 months (almost to the day) since our second bundle of joy joined us in this world, and I've obviously fallen off the face of the blogging earth for a little while. I'm BACK! And am going to be posting a little more than just the recipes I've been making. I'll still do that (I made an insanely good veggie stew that will be in a separate post), but I'll also be talking about random things.

Like...New Years Resolutions? Ok, so I'm not one for making these or keeping them. Mine last year was read a book a month and I failed MISERABLY! I even still have the stack of the books I was going to read on my nightstand...collecting dust. Anyway, my goal this year is the same (read at least 12 books), but so far I'm doing pretty well. I am starting with an organization book called "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo. I saw someone I know from Purdue post that she read this book. It piqued my interest immensely since when my mom and stepdad were here visiting (after baby 2 came), I went through a major purge. We have a 4 bedroom house and the room that was in need of purging is now our guest room. The former guest room is now going to be our older child's room. Once we move him in there. Which is TBD. But the crib is set up in there so...progress! Maybe once our littler little decides to sleep somewhere besides on mom and dad. No joke. Blogging as we speak with a sleeping babe on my chest. Left wrist currently supporting the baby.

Anyway, I'm halfway done with the book, which I got on my Nook YESTERDAY. Impressive, really. I forget how handy my Nook is...just touch the screen to turn the page! Perfect for the endless bottles happening right now. The tidying up method sounds fantastic, if not daunting. You don't even get to think about organizing stuff until you get rid of things. It's been tough for me to not dump my whole closet out on the living room floor and jump in, but I'm trusting the method, finishing the book, and will then decide when a good time to start is. 

But...THIS 

THIS IS A GEM. I have such a hard time getting rid of stuff. I am one of the worst I know, especially when it comes to things I deem sentimental. Which is like everything. I think it's in my blood, because my grandma is worse than me and my dad was bad too. Not to blame them but...really. It's gotta be at least a little hereditary. I am so guilty of hanging on to things only for sentimental reasons. Enter...our (now) guest room that was littered with boxes that had been there since we bought our house and moved my stuff to Texas (literally it was 2014). Anyway, the purge while my parents were here was good but I know I have a ton more work to do. Will update once I finish the book and decide to take the plunge. I'm scared. I'm excited. I'm energized about it. 

A related note, there is this new app called "letgo" and it looks like this:

I've already posted a number of things on it (waaaaay easier than Craigslist to post). No bites yet. See something you want? My crap can be your crap! Just kidding...sort of. I recently was "selling" a juicer I had taking up space in my pantry but once I posted it on FB, my husband's coworker messaged me saying her daughter might be interested. It was awesome to just give that thing away. I know she'll use it! And if not...who cares! It's out of my house! What I'm trying to say is...if you see anything I posted on there and want it, let me know. I'll likely just give it to you. I'm not out to make money while I'm getting rid of my excess stuff...I really just want it gone but hate to be wasteful. I would much rather give stuff to people who think they will get use out of it than take huge boxes to Goodwill because I feel like Goodwill is basically the glorified version of throwing away stuff in a dumpster. Yes, I'm sure people have bought things I've "donated" to Goodwill over the years, but I think we (collectively speaking) treat Goodwill like a giant dumpster. Plus, they probably throw out a ton of stuff too, which I feel guilty about. Ah...Catholic guilt. I had it before I was ever Catholic (true story).

Happy New Year, everyone! 

Recipe 5 - Seedy Date Bars

A note on the below post...it's been in draft form for over 2 months so...I hit publish. Recipe was good and from Alton Brown's newest cookbook. And yes...I did in fact make something that was recipe 4, but I have no idea what it was now. Hence the title of this post. Enjoy my rambling of pre-baby #2's arrival!

In reading the first 2 ingredients of this recipe (dried pitted dates and dried apricots), I immediately thought "Ooh, this my shhh, this my shhh." And don't even pretend you don't know the song I'm referencing. It was at it's peak of popularity in fall 2005 when I was just beginning my senior in high school. That's right. Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl" - that hit that made all girls feel gangster for singing it and also taught the world to spells bananas. I would be willing to bet you still have the tune in your head whenever you're writing/typing out bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Me too, friends. This hit was so big, we even had it on our senior girls tshirts (that were horrific hot pink and green) - they said "We ain't no hollaback girls" or something to that effect. It's in my closet somewhere....longing to be made into a tshirt quilt. Years from now, I'm sure our kids will have no idea what this reference is to, at which time I can play them the song that would be classified as an "oldie" by then.

Anyway, back to this recipe. I was super pumped to try it, minus the fact that it had some weird ingredients that I never, ever buy/use in recipes (flax seed?? chia seed????? crystallized ginger?). I imagined having to go to Trader Joes and buy giant bottles of these things that will just go bad since the recipe only calls for tiny amounts of them (but I definitely couldn't leave them out). Also, people actually eat chia seeds? The only thing I know about chia seeds is they are probably the same thing as "Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia." Meaning the iconic Christmas gift where you soak the seeds then spread them on some terra cotta character head and it sprouts like "hair." No, I've never had one, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works and I'm pretty sure the seeds are the same. What was I going to do with a whole jar of chia seeds? Then I remembered the aisle at H-E-B (our grocery chain down here for my Indiana friends) that I never, ever go in that has a billion bins and weird stuff in them that you buy by scooping out however much you need, weighing it, and printing the sticker. Surely they would have these flax seeds and chia right? Bingo! They even had crystallized ginger (which, I'll be honest with you, I wasn't sure WHERE I would possibly get my hands on the stuff). My poor child was with me on this fateful grocery trip and he got very impatient with how long it took me in this aisle looking up and down at the labels of all the bins and then trying to figure out how many ounces I was getting based on the scale in pounds. Yes, I asked if the scale could be turned to ounces. No, it couldn't. He was beside himself with boredom by the time I was done, but I managed to secure all the weird seeds/nuts I needed for this recipe! Nevermind that I totally spaced on even looking for unsweetened coconut flakes (so those I omitted instead of going back in the aisle to try and find them).