The Big Pancake

When I was young and going to school every day of my life, my mother woke up at the crack of dawn, before me, and made pancakes for breakfast. She did this almost every single day. She would often mix it up during the week and the different pancakes ranged from buttermilk and whole wheat, to matzo meal and corn meal pancakes. I think this may have been what caused my undying love of pancakes as well as my desire for having constant variety in my life.

As I grow older, whenever I can, I mix up some batter, fire up the skillet and fry up some pancakes. They aren't my mom's pancakes, but it's a comfort food I can always enjoy.

But in the process of making pancakes I can always see an important aspect of what it means to be an artist, and there aren't too many foods that you can create where you get to enjoy the concept of "The Big Pancake."

"The Big Pancake" is exactly that; it's the biggest pancake in the batch made from the batter at the bottom of the bowl that you pour onto the griddle at the very end of the morning(or beginning, if you've been up late). "The Big Pancake" represents the final salvo of pancake making; the big finale of your griddlecake show; the home run knock-it-out-of-the-park pancake that- you get the idea.

You can't do that with steak.
You can't do that with a salad.
You can't do that with macaroni and cheese.

When you're making pancakes, when you get to the end, you pour the rest of the batter onto the sizzling griddle, scrape all the last buttery, milky, eggy, drips onto the pan and you grip your spatula with anticipation for the flip; and when that last pancake is done, golden brown on both sides, and you are already full of the other 15-some-odd pancakes you've wolfed down, you look at that Big Pancake and you know- it may be from the bottom of the bowl, it may not fit in your stomach easily, but that pancake has got to be the best one of the whole batch.

It's the credits rolling.
It's a standing ovation
It's happily ever after. With butter and syrup.

And what could possibly be better than that.