Leftover Pancakes

Extraordinary things happen to me. Things that don’t happen to everyone else. They happen to our dog, Nora, too. In her case, extraordinary might seem miraculous.

On Monday, as my husband scooped up the dirty tea towels from the end of the kitchen bench like he does every morning on his way to the laundry, a plate escaped from the pile. It clattered onto the bench, bouncing a few times.

“Imagine if you’d thrown the plate into the washing basket with the dirty tea towels,” I said.

Later, as I filled the washing machine, tossing clothes through its door, something strange fell onto the floor. Peering closely at it, I realised it was a pancake. It must have been on the plate under the tea towels.

“Imagine if I’d tossed the pancake into the washing machine,” I said to myself.

When the washing machine cycle had finished, I reached for the wet, clean clothes, and my eyes opened wide. What was wrong with my washing? I peered closely at it and then realised it was covered with bits of pancake. There must have been a whole stack of pancakes on that hidden plate.

How was I to get rid of the mess? Wash everything again? Or would that just redistribute the clinging pancake bits? I took the clothes outside and shook each item vigorously before hanging everything on the line. I hoped the breeze would shake any missed bits loose.

As I was shaking and pegging out the washing, I noticed Nora at my feet. She was wolfing down the pancake that was falling onto the grass. An extraordinary, unexpected breakfast had appeared from the sky. A miracle.

Andy said that evening after dinner, “I’d offer you leftover pancakes for dessert except we don’t have any. They got washed!”

We all laughed, and my daughter offered to make a new batch.

The other day, while walking through the bush with our dogs, I felt a lump in my shoe. A small stone? Was there something wrong with my foot? I continued walking. At various moments during that day, I thought about the lump, but it wasn’t until bedtime that I discovered what it was. A hard, dry pancake pebble was in the foot of my tights.

Maybe it’ll take more than one wash to remove the pancake mess.

The moral of this story: never leave leftover pancakes on the kitchen bench where they can get hidden under a pile of tossed tea towels. Transfer them to the fridge. Or better still, eat them.

So, how do you eat your pancakes? Do you stack them in a pile and add syrup on top? Or do you, like us, pour a little syrup onto each pancake, roll them into cylinders, and then line them up side by side on a plate?

Imagine if the hidden pancakes had been covered with syrup.

Images

Jenny and Quinn in our laundry.

Nora and Quinn in our back garden.