Our favorite breakfast food

   Today as I was making breakfast, I thought why not write a post about our favorite breakfast food... It is not African by any means but I didn't say everything would be African did I?  So as I sit here drinking my morning chai, I will try to write a post that hopefully will have some meaning to it.
    I grew up knowing that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, my mother always had breakfast ready for us.... but she made PORRIDGE! (hot cereal to my American friends).  I hated porridge and felt that the benefits of not eating breakfast outweighed the benefits of eating breakfast.... and also when I did have to eat porridge I had so much sugar on it that it probably just gave me more cavities.  I ate a spoonful of porridge with at least 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar, so not very healthy in my book.... So, what did I do ~~ I stayed in bed, and jumping out just in enough time to get ready for school and leave.. with no breakfast.  My poor mother, she tried but she was from the era that breakfast needed to stick to your bones and living through a Saskatchewan winter~ ~ you need good hot porridge to stick to those bones. So I was never one to eat breakfast, until after I got married.
     After I got married, I started flipping through cookbooks to try and figure out what would be good for breakfast.  One weekend, we had company so as my husband and I were getting up we were trying to decide what to make them... pancakes...NO... waffles...NO..... eggs....NO.  By the way the no's were coming from my DH.  So down I went to grab my cookbooks and I came across a recipe for oven pancakes.  I thought, this sounds good and yes, I do make new recipes for company It turned out delicious and has been a staple breakfast food for us. Over the last couple of years I have tried many different things when I have made them, especially with the cooking time as we like ours really crispy and each time I make them they turn out just a slight bit different..but they are very easy to make.

                                                         OVEN PANCAKES
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
3/4 cup milk ~~ at Christmas time I use a half and half mixture with eggnog
3/4 cup flour
2 eggs
pinch of salt

Melt butter and spread in 9X13 baking pan ( I use a glass one and think it works better).  Mix together  the rest of the ingredients and pour into pan.
Place in cold oven and turn heat to 450 degrees.  Cook for 15 minutes.  Turn down heat to 350 degrees and cook for another 20 minutes.  Eat with toppings of choice.  We eat ours with powdered sugar (or icing sugar as this Canadian's would say) and fresh fruit.

I found this recipe in a church cookbook and it is pretty easy.  A couple of tricks I have learnt... I do preheat my oven slightly -- as I have a gas oven, I find that it does turn out better to turn the oven while I am mixing the batter.  I also mix the batter with a spoon just so everything is mixed.  After the last 20 minutes of cooking, I turn off the oven leaving the oven pancake in until it is crisp.  We love it when it is crisp, so I just leave it in as I am getting everything else ready.  I have also left it in for a few more minutes at 350 degrees if it isn't as brown as I would like it.  

                                  
  Hope you enjoy this... til next time.  Marlys


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