My Pancake Looks Like the “Death Star”

pancake that looks like a Death Star

7:10 am. Saturday. I’ve just completed making four perfect pancakes for my kids. Golden brown, fluffy enough to jump on in your stocking feet. The kids are happily munching away, chugging a gallon of milk, and humming their “happy” songs.

“Now for the “Piece de Resistance!” *  I declare, as I prepare to flip MY pancake.

The pancake goes up in the air, does a Triple Lindy, and a section of the cake decides to detach from the mother ship, and set a trajectory course off to the east, while the main fuselage continues on the flight plan that I had filed. Down, comes the cake, one piece floating into the pan, in a gloriously soft landing worthy of a “9.8” from the Lithuanian judge, while the second section of the now-disintegrating cake splatters on the stove and comes to rest in “Ugly Land”.

It’s rare to look in a cook book and see a “Exploded View of Pancake”.

I sent a Downed Aircraft Rescue Team to retrieve the errant section and continued muttering something in French while I looked over my shoulder to see if my children had noticed that Dad isn’t a gourmet chef. Luckily, they were still chomping and guzzling, and accidently putting their elbows into Log Cabin syrup.

I shoveled my wounded cake onto the finest plate I could find (this ought to make it look better) and sat down, asking for the about-to-fall-on-the-floor pancake syrup.

Don’t ask me what the light colored stuff is in the photo above. I could be homemade butter; it could be sea foam. I’m not sure.

The cake tasted ok despite the looks.

Now I know how George Lucas made his models in the earliest Star Wars episodes. He cooked his own pancakes for breakfast.

Oops, I gotta go. My wife says Spielberg is on the line.

*Noun
1.
piece de resistance – the outstanding item (the prize piece or main exhibit) in a collection: collector’s item, showpiece-curio, curiosity, oddment, peculiarity, rarity, oddity – something unusual — perhaps worthy of collecting: rariora – (plural) rare collector’s items

2.
piece de resistance – the most important dish of a meal: dish – a particular item of prepared food; “she prepared a special dish for dinner”                                  (source: thefreedictionary.com)

I’m Having a Bad Ear Plug Day

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The other day I was cutting tiles for our new bathroom (which isn’t easy, because I have half the brain cells of Tim Allen, and I’m a cartoonist, blogger, and pancake burner by trade) when I had the most unusual thing happen:

I reached into my hoodie pocket and pulled out a handful of orange ear plugs. I rolled the first one up into a tiny pellet and shoved it into my ear. The second one didn’t go as smoothly. When I tried to stuff it into my ear, it didn’t want to roll up smaller. “It must be old,” I thought.

I pulled the plug out of my ear and looked at it. It wasn’t an ear plug at all. It was an orange rubber pencil eraser.

Later in the day, I reached into that same hoodie pocket for some ear plugs only to find it empty. “What happened to my ear plugs?” I thought. “They must’ve fallen out!”

I walked over to the big box of ear plugs, and grabbed a few. As I headed back to the worksite, I rolled up the first plug and stuck it into my ear, only to find that I already had plugs in my ears.

This was a new twist on the old “Hey, has anybody seen my glasses?” routine. You know the one I’m talking about. The one where somebody says, “They’re on your head.”

This was worse. I think it’s time to stop building on my house and take a vacation.

Oh yeah. My son Elijah put the orange pencil eraser into the box of ear plugs for a joke.

The Bird Crawled Out of His Feathers

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“Dad,” said the little guy with hot chocolate all over his face, “do you know where the Robin Hood Meadow is?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a big pile of feathers laying there. I think a bird crawled out of his feathers,” he announced.

“Yes, a bird crawled out of his feather!” chimed in the four year old.DSCN2103[1] 

He had even more hot chocolate on his face, including a new “hot chocolate eyebrow”.

“You mean like when a snake crawls out of his skin?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I saw that pile of feathers,” I announced. “I think a bear or a fox ate him.”

“Yes, but there’s no blood around there!” Chocolate Boy #1 insisted.

“You’ve got a good point there,” I admitted. “Is he growing new feathers?”

“Yep.”

“Well,” I decided, “if any birds are walking around without big feathers, they’d better fly south so they don’t freeze.”

Gary Larson of The Far Side wrote about the strange things that several pots of coffee do to you in the morning. Dutch hot chocolate must not be far behind.