Ok, many people think I’m all about über health all the time. Yeah, okay, so I eat vegetables for breakfast. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have pancakes for dinner.

Which is exactly what I did tonight. The perfect antidote for my fatigue, hunger, and day-long crave-fest for all things sugary and carbo-hydrated.

The second time around, I remembered to take a picture

It’s funny how they say necessity is the mother of invention. ‘Cause as I was totally blissed out downing the fluffy things at my kitchen table, I realized that every main ingredient I was gleefully shoving into my mouth was locally grown! It turns out I could have my (pan)cake and eat it too! Redemption was born out of my guilty pleasure.

Now, speaking of religious ironies, I am reading this really far out book right now. (“Far out” is used a lot in the book having been written in the 70s…but it’s really the best way to describe it.) The book (well actually it’s a few transcribed lectures) is called The Only Dance There Is by Ram Dass. It’s basically a guidebook for understanding the nature of consciousness. Basically.

Anyway, yesterday I was reading a part where he talks about the Four Noble Truths which the Buddha thought up after he became enlightened. The first Noble Truth, the one that I want to focus on here for a minute, is Life is Suffering (i.e. all life has suffering in it): birth, death, old age, and sickness all have suffering; not getting what you want and getting what you don’t want have in it suffering. What remains then, is getting what you want and not getting what you don’t want which we don’t generally include in the category of suffering. Ram Dass says, though, that these two are in time and anything in time is going to go…and he gives an example of eating an ice cream cone. He says,“…even in the first bite of the ice cream cone is the suffering of the anticipation that it’s going to be over. … That’s true about everything you ever wanted.”

Now this is all pretty heavy stuff…and I was starting to feel kind of badly about finding so much pleasure, albeit temporary, in my dinner. So I decided that the Buddha probably never tasted local/vegan/wheat-free/sugar-free pancakes before and they therefore must be exempt from these particular “Noble Truths.” Every moment was joy I tell you.

The suffering came all too soon, however, when after dinner I went to a meditation group sporting my 4-pack of pancakes in my stomach. And let me tell you, it’s hard to let go of your body and empty your mind when your body is full and your mind is laughing at you over the irony of the situation.

All this suffices to say that I suppose my redemption will have to wait until the morning, when I try and rebalance all this with some veggies for brecky. All this yang deserves a little bit of yin, don’t you think?

Oh right! The RECIPE!

I used the Apple Pie Pancake recipe from La Dolce Vegan! by Sarah Kramer and added my own topping suggestions.

3/4 cup spelt flour*
1/4 cup rolled oat flakes*
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup “milk” (I used homemade oat milk)*
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 large apple, diced*

Stir together dry ingredients. Add the “milk” and fruit and stir gently until just mixed. Portion batter onto a hot lightly oiled frying pan (cast iron’s ideal) and cover. Let sit on medium heat until the centre starts to bubble and becomes sturdy. Flip panckae over and cook other side until golden brown. Repeat process until batter is gone. Makes 2 large or 4 small pancakes.

To top it all off with some added local flavour…
- Apple Butter*
- Peanut Butter*
- Maple Syrup*
- Honey*

I would have posted a photo but it didn’t occur to me until all potential of presentability got stuck to my fingers. I’ll try and do better next time.

* = locally grown (for me, that’s Ontario). For those of you in Toronto, I list where I’ve found some of the harder to find local items on the Foodie Finds in Toronto page of this blog.