O for Oatmeal pancakes.

this is one of my favorite pancake recipes. they are fluffy with a bit of chewiness from the oatmeal.
I don’t remember making these as a child, we mostly made pancakes without recipes though. and I must say that once I realized recipes actually existed for pancakes they have been turning out so much better. I mean I always knew recipes existed it was just we never used them, which meant it was about a one in ten chance the pancakes would be good. recipes changed all that.
now between this recipe and the one from a Betty Crocker cookbook my pancakes are fairly consistent, which is a good thing.


this recipe is pretty much like all pancake recipes. it basically mix everything together. the hardest part of making pancakes is the standing around waiting while they cook.

since unlike other recipes where you throw something in the oven and have time to go about doing other things while it bakes, pancakes have to have a constant watch. if you step away for even thirty seconds at the wrong time they will burn. and who wants burnt pancakes? not me. though I do have to admit I have at times scraped away the char and ate the burnt ones. but mostly I keep an eagle eye on them so I don’t have too. the other hard part is figuring out the timing of when to flip them. flip too soon its a globby mess, flip too late its chard. my method is to wait till bubbles appear nearly to the center of the pancake and a film has formed on the edges. this seems to work well for pancakes cooked on cast iron, I am not sure about other pans as I have always cooked with cast iron and don‘t have a clue about using other types of pans. watching cooking shows they definitely seem to cook differently.

and then on top of the constant watch you also have to make sure the heat is not turned up to high, or you can end up with a mess like in “Ramona and her mother” by: Beverly Cleary; when Ramona’s father slices the pancakes her mother just made and the batter oozes out because the pancakes are not cooked in the middle. I loved those books. I should totally read them again.

as for these oatmeal pancakes. they will remain the staple that they already are. I have always enjoyed a good pancake and feel they can be eaten for any meal or snack. they can be eaten with fruit added in before cooking or put on top after they are cooked. they can be sweetly topped with syrups and jellies; or they can have savory spices added to them and topped with meat or veggies. Pancakes are so versatile, I just love them.

N for nibble sticks.

Nibble sticks are pretty tasty. I knew this going into the recipe because we used to make this quite often.

When we were children in the summers we would go with a group of friends every clear Wednesday to the river for hours of swimming and fun. the area we used to go had several deep pools within about a quarter mile so if one was filled up you could always head over to the next.


the most popular one though had a large rock one could jump off. it wasn’t high out of the water only about two feet so it made it fun for all ages. we spent many hours taking turns jumping from this rock and working up an appetite.


Nibble sticks were the perfect cure for this. they were easy enough that we could make them on our own, and traveled well. by the time I was ten my mom had told us we needed to pack our own lunches for the river, so we did just that, making nibble sticks a staple. we had so much fun those Wednesdays.


nibble sticks are kind of a cross between biscuit and scone a little fluffier then a scone but not quite a biscuit either. they have Cheese an lunch meat mixed in which makes them feel more like a meal then plain biscuits. and easier then a sandwich because it doesn’t have to be assembled, and there is no chance of the contents slipping out and dropping out onto the ground. there is nothing worse then the contents of a sandwich slipping out of your bread onto the ground and being left standing there with two pieces of bread to eat, because dirt and pine needles are not palatable , and they will stick to cheese and sandwich meat.



my sister used to make these a lot for our trip to the river. and even though we would make the same recipe using the same instruction hers and mine always came out different from each others. to me hers always tasted better then mine. and I think the difference in them was the amount of mixing. hers were always a little more dense and flaky where as mine were more fluffy like a biscuit. I wonder which is the way its supposed to be. as the recipe gives no indication of finished texture. I guess it doesn’t matter though. both ways are tasty and that is what really counts.