“Lumpy Pancakes and a Lesson on Stirring” Morgan Walker

Your pancakes will be dry, flat, and wholly unfulfilling if you stir the batter too much. Be careful not to disrupt the lumps. You can make good pancakes, great pancakes if you’re lucky, with Great Value pancake mix and water, as long as you don’t overstir. Just add water to the emptied contents of the box and stir; add more water if you can still see ribbons of dry mix. Stir again and then stop stirring as soon as the powder on the sides of the bowl is incorporated into the batter, which should be lumpy…as you know.

 

My mother has perfected her stirring, and she shares these secrets with me on a still Saturday morning over the rising steam of the griddle. I watch her stir slowly and deliberately, taking for granted the familiar scrape of wooden spoon on plastic bowl. There are no scalpels here. I smile as she stacks the cakes onto one another, watch them wobble with fullness. We do not yet know prosthetic unsteadiness. Plates towered high, we delight in the small comforts of syrup and butter.

 

If there are no lumps in the batter, your pancakes will probably taste fine. You won’t know what you’re missing, and you can spread your slab of melting butter without a second thought. But the lumps still have potential to change everything. They can help you appreciate the morning a little bit more, reminding you what a treasure it is to be alive and to sit at the kitchen counter, waiting for breakfast.