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| "All I want for Christmas is for the food I make to look as good as it tastes." -me, 2015 |
The thought process: Finally back to some creative thinking and getting to rewatch holiday specials! Which is a good distraction from a continuing sore throat. I have to say, though, I did not remember the blatant religious message in this particular special. It caught me a little off guard, but I still enjoyed it overall. I think even the more secular among us can enjoy it for what it is—after all, according to one of my favorite television characters, “the meaning of Christmas is the idea that Christmas has meaning.”
The great thing about cooking based on this particular special is that it was essentially cooking based on Christmas itself. I couldn’t have asked for a better starting point—so many possibilities!
I still wanted to do something a little more specifically related to the special, though. There is a scene towards the beginning where all the kids are catching snowflakes on their tongues and Lucy makes a comment about waiting until January to do so, as that’s when the snowflakes ripen. So, going off of that, I decided to look on the internets and see what fruits would ripen in January. I’ll admit I didn’t do extensive research, because once I even saw the word “apple” I knew immediately I wanted to make apple pancakes.
The recipe I found was for cinnamon apple pancakes, which was perfect. Nothing says Christmas breakfast food like cinnamon. I also wanted to shape the pancakes into trees based on the tree’s prevalence in the Charlie Brown special, but shaping pancakes is much easier said than done.
Self-reflection: I am a very impatient person. Again, not the best trait to have in the kitchen, but I cannot stand waiting for the pancakes to be at the point where I can flip them. This kind of food’s probably worse because I’m always anxious about flipping the pancakes—I’m pretty bad at it. A few of them tonight I did rather well, but let’s just say there were a few audible cries of “no!” that came out of me when one of the flapjacks folded on itself.
I also cannot believe that I forgot to put the cinnamon in the batter until after making the first pancake. I guess I was just a little overeager to get started on cooking them. I most certainly made up for the lack of cinnamon in the first pancake by “accidentally” adding in a tad more than the recipe called for to the rest of the batter.
Working with sharp knives always frightens me. As a violist/violinist my fingers are kind of extremely important, and I’ve always been scared of what might happen if chopping something goes horribly wrong. Despite this, I managed to get past my fears today and found that apples were surprisingly easy to chop. It was a little relieving—but still a little scary. I had a quarter of an apple left after I had all the pieces I needed, so I gave it to my sister and imparted the old adage that “an apple a day keeps the finals away.”
I’m not sure how evident it is in the picture, but the first two pancakes were terrible attempts at making a pancake that looked like a Christmas tree in shape. Eventually, I decided to go with cutting the shape out of a pancake rather than making the pancake itself the shape—which turned out much more successfully.
I will say that the way the pancakes tasted made all the misshapen art attempts, anxiety about chopping, frustration about flipping, and missing cinnamon completely worth it. They were delicious and I plan to make more whenever I can.
Quote to sum up the cooking process: “What kind of Christmas music is that?”
“Beethoven Christmas music.”
Recipe credit: http://www.countrycrock.com/recipes/detail/33676/2/cinnamon-apple-pancakes
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