On Pancakes and Sundays

Sooo, it was a L’eggo Monday morning. Chocolate chip actually. I’m really super lame in cooking skills, trust me I take the whole ‘I can’t cook’ thing to a whole new level. Seeing people who just whip up stuff off the top of their heads or are complete whizzes in the kitchen have my complete and utter respect. I can’t fathom that kind of talent. I think I’ve made pancakes from those just add water mixes maybe once or twice, but I absolutely LOVE pancakes. Waffles will do, but I’m a pancake gal.

This has to go back to my childhood because growing up we had pancake Sunday. It wasn’t a question, it was expected. Trust me, there would be hell to pay if my brother and I woke up and there weren’t a huge stack of jacks already in the works. Sunday, because my dad works at the post office and got a pretty much slave shift. He worked Mon-Sat, from 1am to probably about 2pm. Sunday was the only day he had off and we’d take full advantage. I’m not really sure when or how this whole thing started but from the ages of at least seven until I think junior high it was a weekly staple. (as a side-not, my mom, who just barely ranks above me in the level of suckiness in the kitchen, would do her part in contributing to weekend suger-fest and for awhile we had donut Saturday. Master Donuts, if you’re ever in Fair Oaks, CA you HAVE to hit this place up!)

Not just pancakes for Sunday would do either. No, my dad is a creative man and he’d play around with things. Food coloring, sprinkles, he tried to sneak in some bananas but was met with backlash…sorry, nothing healthy allowed. But what reined supreme was of course chocolate chips. He’d toss in some white chocolate too every now and again. And of course the powdered sugar. Drown those suckers in syrup and it was utter bliss.

It was also a full fledged gorge-fest. No joke, the Chocks, thank God we all exercise because it can get ugly out there. My brother and I would of course try to one-up each other and see who could eat the most. We also put off finishing for as long as we could not just because of gluttony but also because while Sunday pancakes rocked, we knew what followed. Chores. I was in charge of vacuuming, he the dusting…oh, and what, you ask was our reward? A whopping $2 a week! I also like to bring this up every time I visit home because I swear my two youngest siblings are raised by two completely different people. Chores? What? But allowance they know. I didn’t get a cell phone until I think a senior in college…everyone in that house has an iEverything…but I digress.

So after mass pancake consumption would be chore hell. We dragged it out to be an all day venture too, I don’t understand why we would stall so long that it would take us the entire day. You’d think we’d want to just get it all over. Maybe it was just our body trying to absorb all the sugar and fat without going into a diabetic coma that made us so slow.

Anyways, sadly pancake Sunday bit the dust somewhere along the way. It was I think around the time more and more commitments fell on the weekends, sports games, track meets, practices, sleepovers, the usual. It was a trooper and put up a good fight, there might be the token one tossed in there one week out the month or every few months. But it died.

And so I have a special place in my heart for chocolate chip pancakes…even if they aren’t colored green, purple, or whatever food dye my dad had in the cabinet. I crave them anytime I’m happy, sad, or just sometimes randomly, like today. Now, sorry Eggo, you don’t quite live up to ALL the hype, but you’ll have to do because like I said I suck. But please, let us all have a collective moment of silence for the all-mighty pancake.