Allow me to cut straight to the chase. I’m a breakfast person, through and through. My stomach makes noises only heard on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, so I couldn’t imagine starting my day without digging into the most important meal: breakfast. I know a lot of people who just can’t do breakfast, and I wonder why their bodily organs haven’t walked out on the job or given their owner a pink slip. On the rare occasion I do skip that meal, I face the consequences of a grumbling stomach that, when translated to English, sounds like this:
“Excuse me, EXCUSE ME! We need some help down here! A little sustenance please! It’s a team effort, you know and that includes you up there, Mister-lounge-around-the-house-like-you-got-all-day. Let’s get something down the pie hole stat, for crying out loud!”
In the background I begin to feel the vibrations off my esophageal passage as other major organs begins to pipe in:
“Breakfast, Breakfast, give us something that will last! Breakfast, Breakfast! All we got is fumes and gas!” (over and over til fading out…).
While I can drink the coffee and do the slow wake-up in the pajamas, look under the tree at all of the stash, throw open the shutters and throw out the trash, if I don’t eat something pretty quick after rising, it’s either because I’m in a coma or someone stole our refrigerator in the middle of the night. And since my wife does not eat breakfast unless it’s lunchtime, which is to say, she never eats breakfast, I fend for myself, diving into various oatmeal concoctions or an omelet, calming down the raucous crowd down along the beltline. Then it’s time to get out and let the honey have her kitchen back.
However, there is one breakfast every year that is sacrosanct in my family, one requiring mandatory attendance, and that’s the one on Christmas morning where I personally oversee the cooking of giant, platter size pancakes. Here is where I truly shine, an opportunity to prove that my skill set goes beyond the remote control and into the realm of the classic breakfast cake, and showcasing my cooking skills to the entire Bender clan. Like Punxsutawny Phil on Ground Hogs Day, my pancakes emerge from the griddle on Christmas morning exuding a golden deliciousness and usher in the festive atmosphere with a declaration that Christmas is alive and well. Not only will those in attendance soon be slathering on the butter and syrup but they can put their name in the hat for a personal invitation to the annual Global Warming Convention for the Advancement of Pancakes, held every year at our house, whose keynote speaker is me.
I’m not saying that my pancakes are renowned for their unique character and tasty consistency. Nor would I propose that my neighbors line up at sunrise, hoping for a deal-breaking give-away like a pancake version of Black Friday. I’m only stating what has reached near mythic proportions here in the Blunder enclave, the production of a griddlecake so yummy it practically cries to be in a food class all by itself.
Nonetheless, since my reputation has grown over the years, I get a bit of stage fright now, a bit wobbly at the knees, as the temperaments and mood of the morning falls on the success or failure of pancake making skills. I won’t make up an acronym for that feeling because it would not be appropriate but suffice to say that a great batch coming off the griddle can either lift the camaraderie and fellowship to delectable new heights or it can take on the frightening face of Jack Nicolson in The Shining, a domestic nightmare that turns out flatter than a…well…yea….
But let’s be honest here. It's pretty hard to mess up pancakes and that is one of the reasons why my family gives me full authority over the kitchen for twelve minutes each year. And really that’s fair, because pancakes aren’t complicated – most of what you need comes already prepared in a container – add an egg, some milk and there you go, a gleaming hubcap on a plate with some serious mettle, hold the skid marks please.
But wait. We’ve forgotten one thing, one ingredient, that adds a special level of sophistication to the mix. That would be me, the cook, a variable soul who is afflicted with an overactive imagination, driven by random incongruities such as phases of the moon or the sudden molting exoskeleton of a hermit crab. Then, the recipe for pancakes takes an odd turn, as I throw out all reason and logic and lean solely on inspiration to design a pancake no one has ever seen before, a completely original slapjack. Understand, I’m used to dealing with my muse, that voice that tells me to go off the rails. Sometimes it’s more noticeable than other times, but it’s always there on the surface, an affliction kind of like a birthmark.
“What’s that on your skin?” someone might remark as I go off the grid.
“Oh,” I reply, “that’s just a birthmark. I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
“Interesting, I never noticed that mark at all,” the observer might say, looking rather intently at my arm, “If you look at the right angle,” they add, “it looks a little like the profile of Winston Churchill.”
“Hadn’t heard that one before,” I answer, “but thank you, I guess. Yes, that’s mine. It’s different, for sure. I’ve been told it means I was kissed by an angel, but man, she sure was a sloppy kisser…not something I’ve discussed with my wife, but anyway…”
And so it goes with my creativity. The mark is there, it’s part of me, and part of everything I do, including making those now legendary Christmas pancakes. As a result, my imagination rises to the surface as I mix the pancake batter, sprinkling in sunflower seeds and cranberries and spraying hazelnut whip cream to the final stack. While others who try to make pancakes access the left side of their cerebral cortex, I’m at the griddle with the right side of mine, producing new and different pancakes every year, mixing my batter with chutney or coconut and not to be forgotten…my very favorite… a virtual diabetic nightmare, peppermint Hershey kisses and Nabisco Fig Newtons.
And let’s get something straight right here and now. When I use the word “mix,” I am using the word very loosely when it comes to pancakes. In fact, I looked up the word “mix,” and did not find one synonym that I felt gave my creations the proper holiday flare, not one. I saw words like blend, mingle, stir, jumble and merge, but all of them sounded more like the seasonal parties I went to when I was single, the mingles where my alone-ness got mixed up with other single people’s alone-ness. Flapjacks aren’t meant to be singled out for Pete’s sakes, they are meant to be part of a community of other pancakes, so I searched for better suited word.
And I discovered these: fuse, join, unite and amalgamate. Do they even sound like anything having to do with pancakes? No, they don’t. They sounded like an episode of The Apprentice, which meant that I would have to join a consortium of small businesses, get an audience with Shark Tank and have a board of directors. No, I thought, there will be no amalgamation going on with my Christmas morning pancakes.
Finally, in one last attempt I found these synonyms for the word mix: meld, mesh and blunge, all of which I do anyway right before I brush my teeth and go to bed at night, which falls into the category of a little more information than you need right now.
So no, and No! with a capitol N. Inventing the unique pancake on Christmas morning demanded a new kind of all-encompassing word, a word that would both represent the larger global picture of pancakes, but also a word that would leave enough room for a spatula to slide in and take over, flip the pancake narrative, and make it a sort of one of a kind signature experience for my family so that Christmas breakfast would no longer be just the standard for our household, but more of a destination pancake, a once in a lifetime getaway that could never be ignored or forgotten.
The word I came up with is panoramacakes.
Yes, from now on I would be making the quintessential pancake times two, the panoramacake, a noun describing the full range of what is possible from a global perspective regarding everything pancakey. This would mean I could not only add anything I darn well please to the batter landscape but also sprinkle in that essential ingredient, the one that flips a regular pancake over onto its new side, revealing a panoramic vision for peace and goodwil, for all men.
Thus, as I add a bit of eggnog to the batter, I envision a small town in Germany where a plaid family gathers around the table, singing “Alles Gesundheit,” possibly sneezing, before sitting down to a towering stack of panoramacakes. Then, as we travel across the globe, we see Australian children on a Christmas Walk-about, who have paused to sit down in the oppressive outback heat, take their daily vitamins with kangaroo extract, and eat a panoramacake with butter made from the milk of a wallaby. We begin to see the whole international picture now, how pancakes can be a unifying force on this special day, Christmas. Even in the barren and remoteness of Siberia, an area that has been purposely omitted from Google maps, a band of Russian herdsman who have been subsisting on nothing but fur and Yak hooves, sit huddled around a fire and make one mammoth panoramacake the size of Moscow and eat it from the outside in, and sip Vodka from their boots.
It's a beautiful picture isn’t it? One large, sweeping, round pancake, the panoramacake, an intercontinental experience that fills the griddle, starts to bubble on top, then rises into the morning air as it flips and rotates in silence like the earth does on Christmas morning, then falls to greet every member of the human race in every kitchen across the globe.
You say it’s just breakfast, that I really shouldn‘t be making such a big deal out of it, but now as you take your first bite, this panoramacake has expanded to the edges of your plate, and the syrup is running off the edge of your table onto the carpeting, across the Strait of Magellan and the Chwynoafx Peninsula in China, into the nickel mines of Sudbury to the Halls of Montezuma. Good will has amalgamated into that humble breakfast cake made with a little flour and a couple of free-range eggs, perhaps a few blueberries or boysenberries, and butter from a Yak if you are so inclined, syrup of course made from dried daisies, crumbled Oreo cookies and maybe a dash of ground sesame seeds and a Fig Newton with nutmeg or even turmeric…