Last night when I went grocery shopping, I didn’t buy the cereal. I was supposed to pick up a couple boxes, along with the ladyfinger popcorn, onions, and sour cream, but then my published words came back to haunt me. I had made some disparaging comments about bought cereal, referring to it as “fluff-o-nothing,” and then I said “…boxed cereals are expensive, not to mention a waste of calories, so I’ve taken to buying oats in 50-pound sacks and mixing up my own version of breakfast.”

So there was pretty much no way I could put a box of Cheerios in my cart. If someone saw me, imagine! In a matter of seconds, maybe minutes, the whole world would know I was an imposter, a fake, a hypocrite. My writing career would be over before it even started.

Such were the irrational thoughts of Yours Truly. I knew I was acting a little hyper-sensitive, a little crazy—like anyone cares, you goose!—and I laughed at myself (though not out loud). I did not, however, touch a single box of fluff.

So we had pancakes for breakfast this morning.

Actually, I had already mixed up the batter that afternoon in anticipation of six hungry munchkins at my table (two extra kids were staying over), so that particular cereal turmoil was irrelevant to this particular meal.

I’d already made these pancakes a couple weeks before, and in spite of them being one hundred percent whole grain, half of that being the rather strong-tasting buckwheat, the kids ate them right up. They didn’t pig out, mind you, but they made favorable noises and liked them well enough for me to add them to our pancake repertoire—a repertoire which is getting rather lengthy, me thinks.

Pancakes are happy food. They make the world go round, or at least our day get started. Eat up!

Back to these buckwheat pancakes. I got the recipe from my new cookbook, Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce—

Stop it right there. I gotta tell you about this book. I had been lusting after it for months and months and months. All the other food bloggers were chortling its praises and I felt all woeful since I wasn’t in the know. But then my mother gave me some hot diggity dog birthday cash (thanks, Mom!).

Already, the book looks like it’s been through a minor war, what with the sticky notes poking out around the edges, the smudged and wrinkled pages, and the kid scribbles.

Kim breaks the recipes into sections according to flours, so after a quick read-through, I honed in on the recipes that called for the flours I already had, and just today I mixed up my own multigrain flour (whole wheat, barley, rye, millet, and oat flour).

I’m sampling recipes on a regular basis, trying to get a better grasp of baking with whole grains. I find I want more information than what Kim provides, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I’m learning lots—I can always go deeper later.

Oh, and one final—and perhaps the most important—thing: Kim is focused on creating recipes that taste good. She’s not into that cut-out-the-butter and reduce-the-sugar crap. She’s a pastry chef, for crying out loud! These recipes are all about flavor, about exploring the grains for their own unique tastes (and ooo, lookie! They’re good for you, too!), and that, my friends, is a bandwagon I will happily hop on.

Anyway, that’s how I came upon this buckwheat pannycake recipe. The end.

Buckwheat Apple Pancakes
Adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

The original recipe calls for white sugar instead of brown, pears instead of apples, and milk instead of buttermilk.

I make a double batch (the night before) and save the leftover batter in the fridge for another morning. The batter keeps for at least 24 hours, but quite possibly 48. (I’ll know tomorrow.)

1 cup buckwheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups buttermilk (or milk)
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 ½ cups grated apple

Stir together the dry ingredients. Add the wet and stir lightly, just until combine. (At this point, you can refrigerate the batter for up to 24 hours, though they are best made right away, or at least so says Kim.)

Fry the pancakes in plenty of butter. The batter will be very thick, so put small dollops in the pan and then spread them out with the back of the spoon.

Serve hot, with more butter and syrup.

This same time, years previous: sweet and spicy popcorn

It’s been a struggle to keep the house warm today. I went for a walk this afternoon and thought I’d die from cold before I got back. In fact, it was so bad, I had a Jack London moment in which I heard wolves howl and nearly dropped my box of matches in a snowbank. (Never mind that there was no snow, let alone wolves or matches. The cold will do things to you.) It was freezing miserable, but I got my walk in.

The kids and I spent most of the afternoon by the roaring, but-never-quite-hot-enough fire. I read books out loud, and we watched part of a National Geographic movie. My littlest was sick all day, and, excuse me from saying so, it was quite lovely. He—the kid who never stops moving—laid on the sofa in a most uncharacteristically calm and genteel fashion. So peaceful, so quiet, so still.

This evening, I stayed at home with Sick Boy while my husband took the other kids to town for our church’s monthly supper and family fun night.

As soon as they left, I got a shower and then fixed toast for the kid and spiked hot chocolate with marshmallows for me.

I read books to him, and then I read to myself while he read to himself, and then he curled up on one end of the sofa to go to sleep while I settled in to write this on the other end.

Except now he’s slumped over close to me, with his head laying on my arm, pinning it down to the keyboard.

I’ll post this in the morning, but I wanted to get this sweet moment down right now, before it disappears in a swirling cloud of life.

(Also, my arm hurts, and I want more hot chocolate.)

That was last night, Tuesday night. Now it’s Wednesday morning and I’m sitting by the fire again. (When we were getting ready for bed last night, shivering and shaking in the cold upstairs air, my husband said between clenched teeth, “It is freezing up here!”  And I said, “At least we don’t wake up with snow on us like Laura and Mary did.” It’s all about perspective, see.)

At 5:30 this morning, I braved the bitter cold when I dashed out to fetch the paper. I don’t ever get the paper—that’s the kids’ job—but my column debuted today so I was all sorts of eager.

I had a series of writing-for-newspaper anxiety dreams last night and didn’t know quite what I’d see when I opened the paper, but there it was, my words running down the front page of the Flavor section with my picture (taken by my son—not every five-year-old can boast that he’s a published photographer!) at the top, like an upside down exclamation point, yee-haw!

I titled the column Kitchen Chronicles—since it will be about stories and food—and the first recipe is, of course, granola.

(I’d link to the article if I could, but the online paper is only for subscribers.)

This same time, years previous: baguettes, hitting the jackpot

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find my favorite cranberry sauce recipe. There were recipes that called for lots of orange zest, recipes that demanded ginger in all its forms (candied, fresh, ground), and recipes that glugged in the booze. The recipes were good, sure, but not what I was looking for. So I gave up.

And then it was Christmas day and my husband was taking the cloves out of the ham and I remembered that I needed a cranberry sauce to go with our dinner.

I did the most basic thing possible. I tumbled a bag of frozen cranberries into a saucepan, added a cup of sugar and a cup of liquid (the juice of half an orange and the rest water), and a few scrapes of orange zest. I simmered the berries for 15 minutes or so, spooned the sauce into a serving bowl, and called everyone to the table to eat.

It was perfect, the very cranberry sauce I had been lusting for all this time—classy, simple, and so stinkin’ easy that it made me feel both brilliant and stupid.

Classic Cranberry Sauce
From the November 1999 issue of Gourmet

12-ounce package frozen cranberries, picked over
1 cup sugar
1 cup liquid, a mixture of orange juice and water
½ teaspoon orange zest

Stir everything together in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes, or until slightly thickened. Serve the sauce warm, room temperature, or chilled, keeping in mind the sauce will thicken as it cools.

This same time, years previous: lentil-sausage soup