Those lazy Sunday morning pancakes I mentioned? They were actually corn crepes. Or corn pancakes.

Er, crepecakes?
Pancrepes?

Gah, they were whatever you call a thin pancake or a thick crepe. That.

Plus, they were delicious.

I got the idea for these babies from Deb. Crepes that call for corn, you say? I am living in the Land of the Maiz, so, Please, I need more corn.

On my Friday morning saunter through the market, I bought one ear of fresh field corn. Once home, I blackened the kernels over the gas flame and then whirled them in the blender along with the melted butter, milk, egg, and—not flour like Deb suggested, but—maseca flour. Because, obviously.

I ate my lunch crepecake with butter and syrup and it was good.

There were three leftover. I saved them for an after school snack for the kids, but they weren’t hungry much, so I pulled them out as a finishing touch to our supper feast of leftovers. I reheated them in the skillet, stacked ’em up, poured syrup over the whole mess, cut the stack in wedges and doled them out. The fans went wild.

Which surprised me. Because leftover whole-grain, corny pancakes? Really?

But yes, really. Even my reticent husband raved.

My older son begged to have them for breakfast the following morning.

Sunday morning I’ll make them, I promised. But you need to go get me more corn.

That afternoon he hiked into town to the grocery store for four fresh ears. (Not really, the sad ears he got were mummified in a tomb of plastic and styrofoam.)

The next morning, we ate crepecakes. The girls (me not included) decided they weren’t fans after all, but the male half of the family ate them all up. I’m not sure what this means. That my boys are corny, maybe?

Corn Crepecakes
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Keep in mind that I was using something along the lines of field corn—dry and mealy. Sweet corn, I’m sure, yields a quite different crepe. Because field corn is less sweet and juicy, I added a little sugar to my batter.

Go ahead and fiddle with the amount of liquid or the type of grain: flour, cornmeal, maseca, etc. To drive the point home, you could stud the batter with some whole corn kernels. And remember, corn and blueberries are amiable companions. (For some adventure, I sprinkled a generous amount of black pepper over the last couple, freshly-poured-in-the-frying-pan cakes. They were good, but not earth shatteringly so.)

Deb recommends adorning these with cilantro, salty cheese, and mayonnaise. I haven’t tried it yet, but I bet it’d be delish.

2 ears of corn (about one cup of kernels)
2 tablespoons butter, melted
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 eggs
½ cup maseca flour
1 cup milk
oil for frying

Roast the ears of corn over an open flame. The kernels will pop madly while they blacken. This, both the popping and the blackening, is all good. When the ears are cool enough to handle, cut off the kernels.

Combine all ingredients in a blender and whizz until well-combined, smooth, and frothy.

Fry up the batter as you would crepes or pancakes. Serve warm with butter and syrup.

Adjusting back to our regular life hasn’t been that great.

I got sick (my first tummy illness since we’ve arrived here, so I really have no room to complain) and spent last Saturday laying in bed and announcing to the world in general that I was dying. Then I threw up and felt better.
 

My younger son’s bothersome swimmer’s ear turned into a raging pain with fever and tears. So I took him to the clinic. We waited for an hour (or two?) before the doctor could see us. Who didn’t even have the dohicky thingamabob for looking in ears! Seriously! The doc just looked him over and said to come back if fluid started running out of his ears. So I kept the kid pumped on pain killers for a couple days and he’s all better now.

The children weren’t thrilled to go back to school. Knowing that they only have eight more weeks helps, but not much. They are bored and tired, and the 5:30 wake-up call is such a drag. Also, I hate packing lunches. Hate, hate, hate. I can’t wait till we’re back on our own schedule. It’s sure to be a drag in its own right, but at least it will be our own schedule and our own drag.

And since I’m on a fussy streak: I’m about sick of encouraging Bezaleel to give me some gainful employment. I try, I really do. I try to be patient. I try to be encouraging. I try to be politely prodding. And nothing works.

I’m glad we only have eight more weeks left. But then I feel bad about feeling glad. I want to give these last few weeks our best shot. I mustn’t fritter it away wishing for something else…

Probably most of my angst comes from The Vacation Letdown. Settling back into the ordinary can be a relief (like after this trip, oh my) and other times it’s a downer. It’s a good thing I’m bummed out, right? It means we had a great time, and we did. But adapting to a slow-paced, nothing-to-accomplish daily existence can be a real drain for this go-go-go mama.

We had a fun day yesterday, though! (I feel like I’m writing in circles. If you’re getting dizzy, put you head between your legs, ‘kay? Then come right back!)

While still snuggled under the covers, I made the executive decision to skip church. We needed one day, I decided, where we weren’t obligated to go anywhere, school or work (and church is work). So we lazied about. I made pancakes and banana bread, and the girls and I played with new hairstyles.

Actually, we had delved into the world of hairstyles the day before. It’s kind of addictive. (This sort of thing only happens when I’m desperately bored.)

The thought of arranging hair in something other than a ponytail or braid is rather a novel idea. You ought to try it!

A Cup of Jo has some great tutorials, and the girls were willing victims.

 

While attending the Church of the Sunday Sofa—the next lazy morning activity—my son accidentally kicked over a glass, shattering it to smithereens. He quipped, “Well, this has never happened during a church service before!”

Other perks of The Church of the Sunday Sofa:

*Pausing the sermon while we figure out (fight over) our seating arrangement.
*Making and eating jelly sandwiches during the congregational reading.
*Yelling at each other to be quiet, stop flying paper airplanes, sit down, etc.
*Painting toenails while singing hymns.

And then we hightailed it to Cobán for the horse parade. I took my camera along this time.

Some of the horses were rather wild.

They got mighty close to the crowd, too. 

When someone fell off (or got tromped on), the crowd surged forward, straining to see.

My husband, upon seeing me snapping pictures, said, “You’re just as bad as the rest of them!”

“I’m taking pictures of the people! Not the accident!” (We couldn’t see the accident anyway.)

And then: Ladies and Gentlemen! I present to you, da-dum, da-dum, The Shampoo Commercial Horse!

I also took pictures of the following:

… a sleeping babe

… umbrellas for sale

… hats for sale.

… everything else for sale.

The only thing I didn’t get a picture of was the giant, skinny, very dirty looking gringos backpacking down the road. They disappeared into a grocery store before I could fix them in my sights.

Directly behind the last horse came the cleaning crew.

And the parade was over.

We walked across town to Plaza Magdalena where my younger daughter finally, finally, finally screwed up enough courage to get her ears pierced.

It was the third time we’ve taken her. She chickened out this time, too, but I told her that if she didn’t go through with it, we wouldn’t take her back till she was twelve. I’m not a pushy mother (in regards to ear piercings)—I was just sick of her waffling.
 

My husband distracted her with his cell phone. She cried her eyes out after the first piercing, and I was a little worried we’d have a one earringed child, but she stayed in the chair and saw it through to the end.

There were celebratory ice cream cones all around. Of course.

My older son is begging to get his ears pierced, but we haven’t seen many (any?) males with pierced ears, so we’re making him hold off until right before we go home. The whole process only costs about six bucks, so it only makes sense to punch holes in our bodies while we’re here.

Day 13
The day before, we left the community at 3 pm and drove straight through to Estelí where we found a hotel to sleep for the night. This morning, we’re all grumpy and tired.

We eat breakfast at La Casita, a gringo-owned restaurant a little ways out of town where, when I was in the midst of language studies and home stays (16 years ago when we first started our MCC term), I fled as often as possible.

We eat fresh cheeses, brown bread, tomatoes and cucumbers, homemade yogurt and granola, fresh juice, and coffee.

The kids sleep for much of the drive to Managua.

Once back in the city, we unload our stuff at the guest house and then drive around downtown before heading to the Huembes market.

We get tailed by market boys selling doo-dads made out of tall grass. We eat Eskimo ice cream. A shoe-fixer guy patches my daughter’s torn flip-flop. I stock up on rosquilla and coconut candy (it’s fabulous in granola).

Day 14
We spend the entire day trapped in a bus. (I think we get out three times.) We leave Managua at 4:00 am and arrive in Guatemala City at 8:00 pm.

The good news is that the bus is a double-decker! They provide food and movies (spy-torture-shoot ‘em up! yay!) (yay, not really) (when the next one starts out with explosions, I send my daughter up to ask for a kids’ movie and they put on a kid-friendly Jackie Chan), blankets and pillows, and useable bathrooms. When we get to San Salvador, we switch to a different bus and my two older children get assigned seats at the very front of the bus: great views and their own TV.

I have the joy of sitting with my youngest. He’s a whir of activity (for an example of what that exactly looks like, go here) for 15 hours straight. It’s not until the very last hour that he falls asleep.

When we arrive in the city, we take a taxi to CASAS and crash.

Day 15
Fellow MCCer Nancy (along with Raul, the van driver) takes us on a learning tour of Guatemala city.

What a hoot! 

We visit the national cemetery. 
The children are entranced by the house-sized graves and the busted open tombs.

Overlooking the dump.
At the far end of the cemetery, we examine the spot (some famous dude’s statue) for bullet holes where so many Guatemalan were executed, their bodies then tossed into the dump.

Day 16
We have a brief team meeting before catching the bus back to Cobán.

We’re home by supertime. There’s no water and the house is dirty, but it’s home!

And thus concludes the exhaustive recounting of our epic journey of 2013.