Tag: kid approved

Balsamic Chicken

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Wow.  Who knew having two people working full time would cut into the opportunity to cook some new and fun things?  Me.  I did.  I’m still trying to do some digging and find time for new recipes though.  Hence today’s winner.  Pan-Fried Balsamic Chicken!

I was making some roast potatoes and onion in the oven, and needed to find a way to make the protein (that I forgot to thaw before work).  Pan fry it is!  A little bit of quick digging and I discovered this recipe…

Pan Seared Chicken With Balsamic Reduction

Guys.  Straight up.  This one is tasty, incredibly easy, and will make you look like a fancy white poofy hatted Chef.  As you can see by clicking the recipe link above, you toss some garlic and onion powder (along with some salt and pepper) on a couple chicken breasts, put them in a hot oiled pan to fry, flip once, and fry the other side.  Easy!  A little bit of liquid goes in the pan, boil it then simmer it for a bit, and voila!  This is a very rustic and hearty tasting way to eat chicken and it paired fantastic with the roast potatoes.  A bit of gristle, a bit of char just makes the flavours pop that much more.  A dish you can burn and make it seem like you meant to!  This one will be going into the rotation.  The only ‘not necessarily in your kitchen’ ingredients are some chicken broth (you can buy a can of Campbell’s or your ‘no-name’ equivalent) and some Balsamic Vinegar…which, after tasting this chicken, I will be sure to have in stock at all times.

Oh!  As for the roast potatoes?  Chop them up into little cubes, toss on a pan, drizzle on some olive oil, crank on some salt and pepper, and bake anywhere between 400 and 425 for about an hour.  I chopped up a small onion as well.  It gets a little charred and blackened and pops the potatoes a bit.  Again, it’s quick to prep, pretty mindless to make, and tastes great!

-g

Hamburger Hand Pies (my GCBS Bake-Along)

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I think we can all agree that the Great British Bake Off is the single best television concept ever devised.  If not?  Well, you can I can still be friends, we just won’t have something in common.

I got into the Great Canadian Baking Show last year as 1) it’s a spin-off of the greatest TV show ever 2) one of the bakers (Vandana) was from the city I was living in at the time and 3) even before I started trying my hand in the kitchen, I liked watching shows about food.  (Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is likewise fantastic).

On last week’s episode, Megan broke out a family hand-pie recipe that looked absolutely right up my alley.  As the recipe called for a lard crust, and I don’t have of that kicking around (lard?  really?) I decided to take on the challenge with a twist, following the suggestion of the judge Rochelle who thought a brioche dough would be a great compliment to these.  Not familiar with brioche?  Join the club.  Here’s a hint, it doesn’t use lard.  Lots of butter and eggs.  It’s quite sticky to work with, was kind of a pain, but DANG I enjoyed making and eating these.

So Megan’s recipe is linked above.  I’ll hit you with my alterations as we go here, starting with the dough.

First thing I did was ignore her dough recipe as I was going to try a brioche.  Some googling took me to this recipe:

Easy Brioche

This recipe seemed to have a much shorter rise/proof time than a lot of other ones I found.  That seemed like a good thing as I was starting this after lunch and wanted them ready for dinner.

Now the measurements are in grams (which is not how I roll) but with my kitchen scale I sorted it out.  Basically you’re looking at 4 cups flour, 1 cup milk, a stick of butter and so on.  As I don’t have a mixer, there was a lot of stirring by hand, and then I just kneaded it until the butter was all worked through before setting aside to rise.  Following the first rise, I punched it down, dumped onto a floured surface and rolled it out.  Now, if you’re looking at Megan’s recipe, it’s calling for 6 cups flour.  It’s also calling for 1.5 lbs of beef.  I had 1 lb of beef handy and my dough had 4 cups flour…that seemed to be a good sign that we’d really be working with 2/3 of a recipe.  Hers called for 24 pies when it was all said and done.  I’m not the best judge of how big hers wound up being, but when I was rolling out the dough I basically just went with 12 pizza pop style pies and did a stuff and fold ‘perogy style’.  One, because I’m lazy.  Two, because have I mentioned the dough was really sticky?  It was quite a bit of hassle and I felt that cutting a bottom and a top and fitting them together would be a bit beyond my present level of skill and patience.  I guess if I was really going for a 2/3 yield to her original recipe, I’d be looking at 18 finished pies, but, I went bigger.  The dough stretched out and contained more filling than I had expected, so I maybe could have got to 16 pies?  Live and learn.

I rolled out 12 circles of dough, let them rest for a few minutes and then added the filling, crimped them and added an egg white wash.  I then let them rest a while as I sprinkled the tops with toasted sesame seeds, bacon crumble, and some leftover shredded cheese and then tossed them into the oven as per the brioche dough recipe.  It called for 10 minutes, swap racks/turn, then another 10 minutes.  Overall, I left them in for about 35 minutes I think.  Again, my oven cooks ‘slow’, and with the filling inside, it took longer for the dough to bake through.  Leave them in until the dough has a nice golden brown top, which if your oven is consistent would probably be 15 minutes on one rack, before changing racks and rotating for the next 15 on the other.

That’s the dough and the bake.  For the filling, I followed things pretty closely there.  We use turkey bacon, so I diced it up and then fried it while I was working on everything else.  The pickles were a bit of a pain to cut up.  Honestly, we usually have a jar of the dill bits relish kicking around, for some reason we were out, so that has since been rectified and I’ll just use that next time.  The filling is quite flavourful and tasty.  I think I’ll use a bit more cheese next time, possible a little less salt.  Between the cheese, meat, pickle and bacon, there’s definitely a lot in there.

The dip!  Basically you’re making Big Mac sauce.  Homemade, but, that’s the flavour you’re looking for.  I didn’t have French dressing, so a quick google told me that ketchup, sugar, white vinegar and a splash of lemon juice along with the rest of the ingredients already going into this sauce would do the trick.  It worked.  It’s tasty.

Overall, the kids loved them.  A bit less on the pickle was the only request.  Okay.  I’ll take that!

On the side I did some french fries (what’s a burger without fries?) and some cola.  Yeah, call it a ‘cheat day’ if you want.  Sometimes you just need some fun food.

-g

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Buns

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Here is my conundrum.  Since I began this blog I have a policy of linking to all of the recipes I use as reference.  I may tweak something, but if a solid 95% of the recipe is unchanged, I link there and then just let you know what I’ve riffed on.

For this one I used two completely different sources, changed a bit, and mashed them together.  For the sake of continuing my trend of full disclosure, here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the dough.  Here is the recipe I followed (for the most part) for the filling and glaze.  Now, for the sake of a having a comprehensive one-stop-shop for this recipe, here’s my take on it all…

Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls

The Dough:

  • 3/4 cup warm milk (heated to 110 deg F)
  • 2 1/4 tsp yeast
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 egg yolk (at room temp)
  • 1 egg (at room temp)
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 2 cups all purpose flour (bread flour if you’ve got it)
  • 3/4 tsp salt

Take your eggs out and leave them on the counter.

Warm up the milk and put it in a bowl.  Sprinkle the yeast in there and let it sit for a few minutes.  If it doesn’t look a little frothy after a while, you already screwed up.  Toss it and start over.  The right temp for the milk is important.

Add the sugar, egg, egg yolk and butter.  Stir it up a bit until it’s well mixed.  Sift in your flour, add the salt, and then stir until the dough begins to form.

Sprinkle some flour on your counter, then get to work kneading the dough.  Get your hands in there and work it.  I punch it a bit, fold it in on itself, just give it a good working over until it’s well mixed and just a bit sticky.

Get a big bowl, spray it with some cooking spray, then put the dough in there, put some plastic wrap on top and put it in a warm place to rise for about 90 minutes.  (I turn my oven on at 180 degrees F, then turn it off as soon as it’s reached heat and just let the dough proof in there).

The dough should double in size.  Once that’s done, flour your countertop, dump out the dough and roll it out into a big rectangle that looks like your HDTV flatscreen (longer than it is tall).  You want the dough about 1/3 of an inch thick?  Now you’re ready for the filling.

The Filling:

  • 4 tbsp melted butter (don’t mix in the pumpkin!)

 

  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
  • 1 tbsp milk
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar (packed down)
  • 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

Okay.  First of all, take the melted butter and paint your rolled out dough.  Leave about a half-inch a short edge ‘butter free’.

Next, mix up all the ingredients with your pumpkin spread.  Give it a good stir, then, again, like you’re saucing a pizza, paint your rolled out dough.  Leave that ‘butter free’ buffer zone free of your pumpkin spread as well.

Now…the fun part.  Grab your dough on the opposite end of your ‘butter free’ buffer zone, and start rolling.  You want a pretty tight roll on this.  When you get to the ‘butter free’ zone, that dough should stick to the backside of the rolled up dough and seal things up (that’s why you left it butter free!).

Next, you’ll want to cut your fancy new dough log into slices about… 1 inch thick.  I find a bread knife works best for this.  Saws through nice and clean and doesn’t crush the slices too much.

Take your slices, and lay them flat in a greased cake pan (I use cooking spray).  8×8 or 9×9.  You should be able to get 9 of these in there like a tic-tac-toe arrangement.  If you still have some dough left?  Grease another pan up and drop in as many as you have left over.  I got a solid 12 slices, so 9 in my one pan and 3 in my ‘reject pile’ pan.  (The rolls from the ‘ends’ of the log that weren’t all pretty).  Cover up your cake pans with plastic wrap and let the dough puff up and proof a bit longer.  30 minutes.

Pre-heat your oven to 350 while the buns are on their last rise.  Once your 30 minutes has run out, take off the plastic and whack ’em into the oven uncovered for about 25 minutes.  Once the edges start going golden brown, take them out.  Being a bit ‘underbaked’ is good.  Makes ’em chewier.

The Frosting:

  • 4 oz cream cheese (basically a half-block of philly), softened
  • 1.5 cups powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Soften the cheese in the microwave, then using your hand blender (or whisk and some elbow grease) start mixing it up until it’s creamy.  Add the sugar a bit at a time.  Once that’s all mixed in, add the vanilla, then add the pumpkin pie spice to taste.  I went heavy with that.

Your buns should cool a bit before you frost them, but once they’re ready, just slather this stuff on and give them some love.

That’s it!  Enjoy!

My mother-in-law complimented me on these you guys.  That’s an internal happy dance right there.

-g

p.s. – if you can’t find pumpkin pie spice at your grocery store (I couldn’t, and I looked at 3 different stores…) here’s what you can whip up as an approximation.

Pumpkin Pie Spice:

  • 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 2 tsp ground ginger
  • 2 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1.5 tsp ground allspice
  • 1.5 tsp ground cloves

It will make more than you need for this, but you can use what remains for your next batch (and there WILL be a next batch) or to sprinkle over your coffee like a Basic B…

Enjoy!

-g

Sweet and Sour Meatballs

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Okay, so for today’s challenge I had a couple of criteria.

1) I had about half a can of pineapple left over from making pizza that I needed to use up
2) We have a couple picky eaters that had been opting out of some of the meals as of late.  I try not to take it personally.  (I wounds me to the core).

Enter…meatballs!  Everybody likes meatballs, don’t they?  A bit of googling found me this beauty of a recipe.

Baked Sweet and Sour Meatballs

Overall, the recipe itself was pretty easy to make.  Essentially all a meatball is, is a tiny round hamburger.  Now, the link there called for ground turkey, chicken or pork.  I went with beef as it is what I happened to have on hand (being a good prairie boy and all…).  Pork is cheaper at the store, I’ve never really enjoyed ground pork.  Don’t get me wrong, I find the best hamburger and meatball recipes around typically have some sort of ratio of beef to pork, I just didn’t have any handy.  I also just went with 1lb of protein (as opposed to the 1.5 called for) as that’s how I portion out meat for the freezer.  That worked out though – I’ll explain how in a bit….

If you want to get fancy, you can break out a kitchen scale and weigh your meatballs for the sake of consistency.  I didn’t bother.  What you can do is grab an ice cream scoop or a large spoon and use that to scoop out what will become your meatball.  There is something to be said about some standardization with these.  It helps with cooking time, it also helps avoid any “but his is bigger!” comparisons when you’re dishing everything out at the table.

For the sauce?  Follow the recipe.  It worked out great.  In fact, my wife and I almost came down to a coin flip for the leftovers on this one before I graciously let her have them (awww, such a nice guy, right?).  It’s a sweet sauce with a touch of kick.  Very flavourful.  And the best part?  As I made 1lb of meatballs, there was plenty of sauce left over to spoon over the rice.

Have I mentioned my trick to good brown rice?  2 cups water for every 1 cup of rice.  Put rice in water.  Put on high heat covered.  When the water starts to boil, lift the lid, stir things up.  Put the lid back on, turn the heat down to around…3.  Walk away for 45 minutes.  Come back, take off heat,  Lift lid, fluff with fork.  Bam.

The real trick of course is to use a pot that is about one size larger than you think you’ll need.  Stops the rice from boiling over.  That stuff is a PAIN to clean off your stove.

-g

Leftovers!

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Like most people who wind up doing the cooking, there are days when you just need a break, or alternately, there are days when you look in the fridge and realize…”man, this is getting jam-packed full with leftovers”.

Enter…Sunday’s around our place.  While Sunday lunch has been set aside for Sunday Pancakes, this past week we had some of those leftover (that rarely happens) so it was time to figure out how to burn through some flapjacks and clear up some shelf space.

My wife says this isn’t a ‘blog-worthy’ recipe.  I disagree.  This entire blog is about recipes that an everyday ordinary guy who’s been out of the kitchen for years can manage to make.  Some are big winners and require some skills…and some are, plain and simply, Leftover Pancake Pizza.

Leftover Pancake Pizza

  • leftover pancakes
  • pizza sauce
  • shredded cheese
  • toppings to taste

Put your pancakes on a cookie sheet (no toppings, just the pancakes)

Set your oven to ‘broil’.  Put the cookie sheet in for a few minutes until the upward facing side of your pancake is getting a bit crunchy/crusty to the touch.

Take cookie sheet out of oven.  Flip pancakes over.

Add sauce, toppings and cheese.

Put back in oven until the cheese gets nice and melty.

Enjoy.

It’s quick, fun, and the kids loved ’em.  You could always toss leftover pancakes in the toaster and put some jam on ’em, but….c’mon.  It’s pizza!  And….pancakes!

Food can be fun and creative.  So can your leftovers.  Enjoy!

-g

Chicken Cacciatore

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A bit of an aside before we begin.  I am a HUGE fan of a really bold and fresh tomato flavour.  When the tomato POPS, I am a happy camper.  This recipe pulls that off in spades.

So…after making pizza’s the other night I had an abundance of half chopped veggies kicking around in the fridge.  After a bit of searching, I found a dish that seemed to cover off the bases when it comes to flavour and also burn through some of those veg in the chill box.

Chicken Cacciatore

  • 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts (basically 2 full chicken breasts – cubed)
  • 1 tbs vegetable oil (canola / olive…really doesn’t matter)
  • 1 sliced medium onion (you want this to be a bit of a ‘chunky’ cut)
  • 1/2 sliced green pepper (again with the chunky cut)
  • 1/2 sliced red pepper (…ditto with the choppin’)
  • 2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (if you like them.  I don’t, so….hard pass)
  • 1 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 big can of crushed tomatoes (796ml/28fl oz)
  • 2 tbs chopped fresh parsley (I used a few solid shakes of dry…)
  • 1/4 tsp pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp italian seasoning (I went with oregano which I had on hand)
  • 1 tsp dried basil
  • parmesan cheese (to sprinkle on at the table
  • 1 package of egg noodles (I went with fusili – I had some on hand)

This one is pretty easy to pull off.  Put the oil in a deep pan and cook the cubed chicken over medium heat.  Once you’re done with that, remove the chicken, toss in all of the dry veggies and basically stir fry them until the onion has become translucent.  Once that happens, toss the chicken back in.  Add the crushed tomato and spices, cover and simmer for 15 minutes or so.  Done.

In a separate pot, boil the water, cook your noodles.  Drain.

Scoop some noodles onto plate, put a big hearty scoop of the chicken/veg mix on top, and then shake on some parmesan to finish (I usually grind a bit of pepper on top for the fun of it).

This one is a winner.  It tastes fresh, it has pasta, there’s all sorts of veggies in there.

Budget wise?  You’re looking at…

2 chicken breasts… ~$5
can of tomato… $1 if you catch a deal, $2 if you don’t
onion/peppers…$2.50
noodles…$2.50
mushrooms…$2.00
spices…negligable

All in all, you’re looking at about $14.  We had company over so this one fed 4 adults, 3 kids and we still had some leftovers.  I ripped up a couple heads of romaine on the side like I usually do when serving a pasta.  So that was a couple bucks more.  All in all?  It’s going on the list!  Bellissima!

 

Butter Chicken and Naan

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I tried making butter chicken sauce once.  It took most of the day in the slow-cooker and turned out….alright.  With that said, we will typically pick up a jar of pre-fab butter chicken sauce at Costco. The bottles are a bit bigger than the usual VH sized ones at your grocery store and we really enjoy the sauce.  I’ll stretch it a bit more by adding a 1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream when it’s simmering.

So the bulk of the meal looks like this…

Chicken – 2 chicken breasts cubed, seasoned with paprika, pepper, curry.  Fry in a touch of olive oil in a pan.  Once done, drain any juice if you want, add the butter chicken sauce and simmer.  Add a 1/2 cup of yogurt (mango flavoured is amazing in this).

Rice.  4 cups water, 2 cups rice.  Cover, bring to boil.  Once boiling, turn down to about 30% heat for a slow boil, stir, cover, then leave it alone for about 40 minutes.

NOW…here is where I play and have fun with this meal.  The Naan.   Fresh made bread is hard to beat.  Here’s the recipe I’ve used that works amazingly well.

Naan

I usually just use vanilla yogurt instead of greek yogurt.  Sour cream works good too.  Basically you just need a high fat content dairy in there.  I avoid the melted ghee and cilantro for garnish and instead add some powdered garlic, tumeric and fennugreek.  (I saw that combination at a bakery once, and it tastes pretty good in this spice universe).  I never really measure the spice I put it, more of an eyeball thing, but if I had to guess I’d say about 1 tablespoon of each.  If you think you’ve put too much in, you’re probably right where you need to be flavour wise.  Heads up that tumeric can and will stain just about anything (my plastic mixing bowl is now a permanent shade of yellow in places), but it’ll usually come off your countertop if you get at it right away.  I’ve resorted to a Lysol disinfectant wipe on occasion if it’s being particularly ornery.

I’ve discovered through trial and error that you need to really roll the dough pretty thin for it to bubble and puff up.  I burn these a bit on purpose on the griddle and skip the ‘hold over open flame’ as described in the recipe.  I’m sure that would work great, I just don’t have a gas range handy to pull that off.

We have a couple picky eaters in our house, but this one is a 5 star win across the board and that surprised us.  There’s a bit of spice, but again, if you thin it out a bit with yogurt or sour cream that will take some of that heat off.

I usually serve with a side of peas.  Want to go vegetarian?  Swap out the chicken for paneer (if you can find it).  It’s a hard style of cheese that gets used in Indian cooking a fair bit.  Not all grocery stores carry it.  My best success in Saskatchewan has been at the Independent chain of stores, which probably means you’ll find it at Superstore as well.

There!  I think tomorrow we’ll delve into one of the all-time favourites around our place.  Nana’s Meatloaf!

-g

BBQ (no bacon) Grilled Cheese

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Okay, this one is just a fun and silly one.  My kids got hooked into Cool Math Games at their previous school.  It’s a fun and (almost?) educational website they can go on to learn math skills or in some cases, how fast they can click the mouse button (future console button mashers represent!).

One of the games on the site that is a big ‘win’ around our place is Papa’s Cheeseria.  It is one of a whole series of “Papa’s” games that has the kids running a virtual restaurant.  They learn how to accept an order, cook the meal to spec, and then deliver it to the customer who passes judgement on how well they followed their directives.  In Papa’s Cheeseria, you’re running a bespoke grilled cheese shop, and interestingly enough, some of the combinations they have listed in the game sound quite delicious!  On that front, it’s made lunchtime around here pretty interesting some days when one of the kids decides that a standard grilled cheese sandwich, just isn’t going to cut the mustard. Enter, the BBQ (no bacon) Grilled Cheese.  I say no bacon as we didn’t have any bacon just laying around the house once this had been requested, so I substituted as best I could in the 5 minutes I had in front of me.  You might be able to read the order ticket, but if you can’t, here’s the basic rundown.

  • Bread
  • Bacon (I substituted with a slice of processed turkey breast sandwich meat)
  • BBQ Sauce
  • Lettuce (romaine works just fine)
  • Ketchup
  • Bacon (repeat previous subsitution)
  • Bread

Oh!  and don’t forget…

  • P.S. – put in some cheese

They almost forgot the most important part of a grilled cheese sandwich!

Now, I used to slather up some bread with butter and toss on the frying pan, but as of late, I’ve avoided that.  I’ll give a warm grill just a quick shot of cooking spray before tossing the bread down.  It works, will help add some nice toasty brown/black colour, and not be quite as artery-clogging.  I’ll toss the sandwich on the grill, get a good toast on both sides, then I do a little bit of magic.  Steam.  You want ooey, gooey grilled cheese that’s insanely melty and leaves behind what my kids call “cheese bridges” when they bite in and there’s a foot long trail of cheese between their mouth and the sandwich when they pull it away?  You need steam.  Have a squirt bottle handy.  Spray the grill, just off to the side of the sandwich you’re toasting, and then immediately drop a big pot lid over top of the sandwich and the now steaming wet spot on the grill.  If you do it quick enough, you’ll capture the steam under the pot lid, it will help turn the cheese into liquefied awesome, and your Cheeseria ranking will go through the roof.

Now, as for this specific recipe…with lettuce involved, what I wound up doing was just making a grilled cheese with two pieces of sandwich meat in the middle…after the bread had been toasted and the cheese melted, I pried apart the sandwich between the meat slices, added the condiments and lettuce and then flipped everything back over.  Is this a fantastic recipe?  Ug.  Far from it.  But it was what my 8 year old ordered and I got a hug and 2 thumbs up, so, hey – that’s a winner in my books.

-g

Sunday Pancakes

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Hope you enjoyed your Sunday.  I’m pretty new at this blogging world and am still trying to find my feet and a content schedule as to how often and how much I’ll be putting out into the digital universe, I do know that I’ll most likely be taking Sunday’s off from publishing anything.  Personal preference, we try to keep things as ‘screen free’ as we can for at least one day a week, and Sunday seems like the best fit overall.

It’s also the day that we typically wind up working through any leftovers from the previous week, so not a lot of new tastes being manufactured in the DT2C Kitchen!

I will pass along a recipe that I’ve been knocking out weekly for the past 10 years at least.  Sunday Pancakes.  It’s a family tradition…everybody needs some of these.  A special meal you eat exclusively on a certain day, whether it be a holiday, or a weekend.  We have a few such traditions around here.  1) Christmas morning waffles.  That one started up about 30 years ago when my brother and I teamed up to buy Mom a waffle maker for Christmas and we all just couldn’t wait to try it out.  and 2) Sunday Pancakes.  To be honest, this was really the start of my foray into the kitchen.  I took ownership of making Sunday lunch for one meal a week to help my Wife out and give her a break on a day that always seemed to be rushed and harried getting everybody gussied up and out the door for Church that morning.  It’s fairly quick, almost impossible to screw up (believe me, I’ve pulled it off a few times) and if there’s leftovers they’re a quick snack later in the week.

Here’s the recipe I’ve been using.  I had to go hunt down the card in the recipe box as I make this one so often it’s been ingrained in my memory.  Although I do need to refresh myself on occasion if I’ve taken a week off due to travel, etc.

Sunday Pancakes

– 3 eggs
– 2 1/4 cups milk
– 3 cups flour (I use 1.5 cups white and 1.5 cups whole wheat)
– 3 tablespoons sugar
– 3 tablespoons oil of choice (canola usually, we’ve used melted coconut oil too)
– 1.5 tablespoons baking powder
– 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Crack the eggs into a large bowl, whisk the until fluffy.  It doesn’t really get ‘fluffy’ per say, but the yellow yolk lightens a shade or two and you start seeing some air bubbles in there.

Add remaining ingredients.  I start with flour, end with milk.

Mix it all up.  Don’t under-do it or you wind up with ‘flour bombs’ as my one child puts it.  Don’t over-do it or you’re making glue.

Warm up a griddle.  When you can sprinkle some water on it and the water sizzles and dances, you’re good to go.  Spoon batter on.  Wait until the bubbles in the batter stop popping and you can see a bit of a ‘curl’ on the edge of the pancake forming, then flip.

This makes about 24 pancakes.

(edit – we’ve been using this one for so long, I forgot where it came from – my Wife tells me this can be found in Betty Crocker’s Entertaining Basics – only real change we’ve made is to go 50/50 with the flour and I believe the original recipe asked for 4 eggs, so we’re at 75% of the remaining ingredients)

You can serve these however you want really.  We thaw some blueberries and strawberries and put some syrup on the table.  My one child eats them plain, my other coats them with chocolate peanut butter.  On the side we fry up some Butterball turkey bacon (waaaaay less grease and hassle than regular bacon) and usually serve some orange juice to drink if we’ve remembered to pick some up.  It’s easy, it’s simple, the kids can learn stove safety and help measure in the ingredients and flip the pancakes.  I like it.  If the batter winds up too runny, add some flour.  If it’s too thick, add some milk.  If you add too much sugar, you’re basically making a cake.  I have honestly forgotten at least one ingredient in this recipe at least once over the years and it somehow still seems to turn out – it’s pretty ‘DOH!’ resistant.

-g