Pride (in the name of pancakes)

I make the best pancakes in the world.

I can only say that, though, because my cousin, Ellie, is not currently in the room and able to hit me. She contends (wrongly) that is SHE who makes the best pancakes in the world. Clearly, she is a crazy person, but what can I do, she is family after all.

It all started when I innocently made my aunt (Ellie's own mother) some pancakes for breakfast. It was love at first bite. A woman who for so long make bisquik pancakes had finally come over from the dark side into the blissful light of from-scratch pancake paradise. To be fair, it is my mother's recipe that I use, so I can't take all the credit (although I'll certainly try!).
Then my aunt went for a visit to her daughter, who also very innocently fixed pancakes for breakfast. Ellie's pancakes were very good, but it was confided to me that mine are, in fact, better.

And so the gaunlet set and the stage was thrown for the Great Pancake Throwdown. I recently went up to visit Ellie and brought with me the recipe for the pancakes of awesomness. We mixed, spooned, and flipped and produced some pancakes superior to anything the world has known (except Ellie's were a little burnt...cause she let me use her good frying pan, which really was very nice of her). After much thought, and several very odd facial expressions on the part of judge #1 (aka Ellie's husband) and some camera hogging by judge #2 (aka Ellie's 2 year old son), the Great Pancake Throwdown part 1 was pronoucned....a tie.

A tie simply would not do, family pride was at stake! So was orchestrated the Great Pancake Throwdown part 2, to be held at christmas and judged by more people. As good as part one was, part two was a complete lame-o disaster. For one thing, Ellie couldn't find her recipe. And then I nearly killed a pan which had tried to kill me. And what we ended up with were the worst pancakes in the history of mankind. Upon sampling each other's work, we proclaimed that this is why a lot of people really don't care for pancakes.

Part 1 ended up as a brilliant video (produced by Ellie and myself...which was almost more fun than the actual throwdown), part 2 ended up as many photographs of Ellie's son flinging the leftover pancakes, frisbee-like, to the squirrels. Who promtly dropped dead.

Part 3 will hopefully go better. But until then...I maintain my position that I make the best pancakes in the world. And I also sincerely applogize to all the judges of part 2 that we may have poisoned.