Labor Day Pancake Breakfast: Lemonade Day

. I'm taking the opportunity of this unplanned time off to connect with the many artists and creators in this wonderful city that I love. Come with me on my 100-day odyssey of art and creativity in Long Beach. I call it .

One of our family's little pleasures is having breakfast out.  Once an indulgence of weekly or more, we haven't been out for breakfast as a family since June 25th.  I will admit we've had an occasional lunch or dinner, and picked up at local fast food places.

We have our favorite places.  Chuck's Coffee Shop near the Olympic Plaza pool.  Einstein Bros. on Bellflower. The boys like The Crooked Duck, but we'd not been there for breakfast.

Sunday, the boys wanted to celebrate the end of summer by going to The Crooked Duck for breakfast.

September 3rd was Day 64.  I tried to make pancakes like the ones we had at The Crooked Duck.

This post is in no way sponsored by The Crooked Duck.  If you end up going there, please let them know that you read it on Patch!  The owner, Joseph Rooney, was found onsite every day that I've been there!  His wife Shelly is integrally involved in the Volunteens program, which engages with teenagers in Long Beach interested in volunteering.  Volunteens is BSA Long Beach Explorer post 824.

We had these amazing pancakes yesterday at The Crooked Duck.  They looked like ordinary pancakes, but they did have a nice presentation with caramelized bananas and chopped nuts on top.  We decided that the nuts were walnuts.  They, too, had been toasted and tossed in the caramel.  The pancakes were so fluffy, they just melted in my mouth as I sampled Bujinkomix's meal.  Mmmmm....

On the way home yesterday, I decided that we'd try it for breakfast today.  

I'll be the first to admit that cooking is not one of my strengths.  My entertaining food in college was 3 bean salad (cans of garbanzo, kidney and green beans drained and tossed with Italian dressing).  I made my first ham at age 40+.  It wasn't such a good idea.  I now buy Honeybaked ham if I am going to have folks over.  I made Meat B once (meatloaf shaped in the letter B).  It was... interesting.  Sometimes, though, I do find a recipe that I want to try.  I've been baking Hops bread (Trini recipe), making pasta from scratch with Friend Mary.

The recipe I tried can be found here.

I mixed up the ingredients, using a hand-held whisk.  Cast iron frying pan on the fire, small pan with brown sugar on another burner.  A third little pan with nuts.

Here's where Karma started talking.  Here's what she said:  "You're doing too much, Trish."  I guess I wasn't listening too well, because she started saying it louder.  "YOU'RE DOING TOO MUCH, TRISH!"  I wish I'd had more arms.  In the end, I heard Karma, but it was too late.  I had unfluffy, burned pancakes, burned sugar and burned nuts.

We did what we could to salvage the meal. I scraped more sugar and picked out the nuts that hadn't quite made it.  I ate the pancakes with the most burn to them.  We added liberal helpings of whipped cream.  The coffee helped.

It was, well, mostly edible.  Still, I can't be disappointed by just one failure.  I will definitely try this one again.  But, if I want to treat my friends to delicious pancakes anytime soon AND still have them as friends after the meal, I may want to take them to The Crooked Duck where they know how to prepare them.

To my closest friends, those to whom I am not afraid to show my weaknesses...  I will, however, be sure to invite YOU over to my pancake... and fondue... making experiments.

To my oh-so-tolerant husband, Bujinkomix, I bet you're glad I can make Lemonade!

Tips, Tidbits, Things

• At this point, those of you who are keeping track of the rules of may realize that spending was involved here and according to the rules I can't spend anything, except for five times, which I've used on making fondue, on a lecture on the Kinect, on the Chicken taste test, at The Depot for Creative Reuse and a planned purchase at Lyon's Art Supply.  So I am thinking we need a new rule.  I am the game maker, so I can do this.  I loved the Hunger Games, did you?
• We now have a new rule.  Food purchases don't count in the spending quota.  This would mean that fondue, chicken and now pancakes and pancake ingredients don't count as spending days.
• Want to look at more Bujinkomix images?  

Want more lemonade?       

Next up:

I'm thinking about Geocaching.

If you would like to contact me, please email me at  info@handmadepenguin.com

Trish Tsoiasue writes as herself about creative and maker topics for and as Handmade Penguin for the Handmade Penguin Blog.  Trish is currently playing .