Pancakes with frozen bananas, butter, and lemon

This pancake mix is pretty good! It definitely tastes grainy… healthy.. but I like it.

I didn’t have milk for the batter, so I used a tbsp. of half and half and almond milk. I have a friend who has made lots and lots of pancakes 😉 and he told me to mix up the batter, then let it sit awhile. It makes them fluffier. How cool. It really works. My batter got so thick I had to add a bunch more almond milk before I cooked them.

I wanted to heat up some frozen blueberries and eat these with that but I was all out. I didn’t have any fresh fruit either. All I had were frozen bananas so…. I sliced half of one pretty thinly, which is easy to do when they are frozen as you’re half scraping half cutting kind of.

They defrosted a little on the plate, but were still kind of frozen and cold. I love temperature variation in food. I have thought about this for a long time, and how I wish more restaurants would play around with it. This is definitely related to the ‘raw with cooked’ category I have, but it is not altogether the same. I may have to modify the category.

also, lots of butter, and lemon squeezed on top. The lemon was an unusual move I know. It was really good. Fresh lemon on a baked good. Okay, not baked, but you know what i mean.

These two things: frozen banana as a “condiment” of sorts, and lemon on a pastry type thing are worth repeating. You could also put the lemon on the banana instead of the pancake which makes it seem a lot more familiar (like tossing a fruit salad in lemon or using lemon in a compote kind of sauce).

Ta ta!


    

  

         

One extra pancake at the end with lots of lemon 👹

Also, an opportunity to say something about whole grains. I recently had to reduce sugar in my diet for a medical reason and I learned some about wheat and grains generally. Sugar is really bad for you. It is a major culprit in a whole bunch of common diseases. For a few reasons, the main one being that it causes inflammation. Inflamation of all your organs, other things.. This is likewise one of the  primary reasons eating lots of meat and particularly lots of red meat is bad; it also causes inflammation.

When it comes to grains and sugar, you are looking for “whole grain wheat” or “whole grain” other grains. “whole wheat”, without the grain part, means you likely might as well be eating pastry flour. The finer and whiter the flour, the higher on the glycemic scale it is. Your body processes refined flour and white rice identically to sugar. It is maybe even worse for you.

Aside from the sugar there are more nutrients and protein and fiber etc. This brand, Arrowhead Mills, has lots of whole grain flours and the like

Korean sweet potato cake

is crazy!

Truly unlike anything I had ever eaten. I got it at Cafe Mak in Koreatown, LA, one of many serious and styled cafes in Koreatown open late. I remembered reading something about the sweet potato cake, and ordered it. The waitress said they were out of it but then was able to find a slice. 

I read later that it is made from japanese sweet potatoes, which are purple on the outside and white on the inside. There are actual chunks of potato in the main part of the cake, which feel like a curious dense firm pudding when you are chewing it. And since they are white, you can’t tell if there is a potato chunk in your bite until you put it in your mouth. It is kind of like eating sweet mashed potatoes. It is uncontestably sweet, like a dessert, which is what it is, but it is not overly sweet. My friend who is Taiwanese once told me that Americans are much less sensitive to levels of sweetness than the Taiwanese, and that Asian desserts are sweetened carefully and usually less than American ones. This was like that. Just sweet enough. To be honest, I found it kind of gross, but I also really liked it. I will definitely try it again, as you should!

     

 

San Francisco 

My aunt was visting from Portland and took a photo of this sign. I like that she liked it. It does all look like old hippy food, except the kale…😼 “Beer on tap!”

My sweet mom on her sweet birthday. She is so cute and sweet. My dad got their wedding cake for her birthday cake. From a bakery in north beach. It was very light cake, with a very light frosting. Pretty good. I was three or so when they got married, so maybe I ate this 25 years ago.

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