IHOP's got nothin' on me!

my friend xenia from the blogger realm said she has been craving IHOP cuz apparently, "they don't have fluffy american pancakes" in her neck of the woods. this of course was after my rant about why going out to breakfast sucks. i stand by that rant and decided that sunday i would test myself by cookin' up some pancakes.

since i did not travel to black out island saturday night i was able to get up and get to the grocery store at a reasonable hour. also, it was pay week so i splurged and picked up some sausage links. i got the maple flavored ones. yum. yum. yum.

my favorite pancake recipe is an old standby and can be found in the joy of cooking. here's what it looks like inside my edition.



wow. that photo sucks. you should probably own a joy of cooking anyways. go pick one up. get it from the library if you must just so that you can write down this recipe and the one for banana bread. YUM!

speaking of bananas -
i always seem to have rotten ones lying around.



i decided to make use of this one and i mashed it into the pancake batter. this is really, really good.
i've done it before and i'll do it again!

while i was whippin' up this batter i started cookin' up a few of those sausage links in a lil' skillet and i got my griddle nice and hot. (i LOVE my griddle/grill. it rules. get one of these too.)

once it was nice and hot i used a 1/4 c. measuring cup to pour the batter out onto the griddle. when they get bubbles that start bursting they are ready to flip.
these ones are just about ready to flip.



they should look like this:



i loaded these babies up with real butter (again - fuck margarine!) and a lot of maple syrup! i poured maple syrup all over the maple sausage links too. outta sight!!

(historical side note - when i was a youngster i didn't like syrup cuz i hated to have sticky hands. wtf?! what a neurotic little nut case i was. man, i missed out on a lot when i was a kid!)

the other day i mentioned that although the egg-in-a-hole (aka picture frame eggs according to the viper) was delicious it would likely not replace my usual hungover weekend breakfast of dippy eggs and fried potatoes and it has not. last saturday i whipped up my favorite breakfast simply because it is my favorite.

here is what it looks like:



dippy eggs are rather self explanatory. you crack two eggs in a hot pan and when they are lookin' about done you flip 'em and let 'em cook for just a few more seconds and you're good to go. the potatoes though - i'll go ahead and break those down so you can give 'em a whirl.

i use red potatoes. i like to cut them up in little cubes. however, before i do that i slice up about 1/2 an onion and toss it into a hot pan with both butter and olive oil. once they start to brown i toss in the potatoes and sprinkle the whole mess VERY liberally with lawry's season salt and cook 'em until they are nice and crispy. so good. so very, very good.

now please, please, please do me a favor and cook your own breakfast from here on out! you can do it and i guarantee it will be better than any over priced crapola you'll get out there!