We Are Supposed to Share

I love how kids respond to food. To rephrase the nursery rhyme (about the little girl with the little curl), "When it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's horrid." You can see that chocolate ice cream is very, very good. I suppose someday she will learn to stifle her exuberance at the table, but I hope not too much.

Lately, my little one has been refusing to eat alone. "I want to eat chocolate ice cream WITH YOU," she demands. She will not be appeased until I sit down at the table with her, with my own bowl of chocolate ice cream. I don't mind the forced ice cream feeding, but I'm also proud of her. My three-year-old has figured out at least one rule: that eating is something we are supposed to do together. She's so smart. Or I should say, she's so human. She enjoys the ice cream more, seeing that I'm enjoying it too. I don't bury my face in the bowl, though I wish I could. I just scrape the last drops as best I can onto my spoon. (OK, I'm lying. I drink from the bowl too, when it's just me and her. Hopefully she'll figure out there are separate rules for family and for company.)

 

One of the best eating together rituals we have in our family is Saturday morning pancakes. We even make the pancakes together. Sort of. The three-year-old makes "something gooey" in her own bowl, while the five-year-old and I work together. The other day in the grocery store the three-year-old saw some blueberries, and insisted on buying them. Never mind that they are not at all in season and had traveled thousands of miles to get here. The girl loves blueberries, and believe me, I am not going to go all Alice Waters on a three-year-old in a grocery store. (Although I deeply respect Alice Waters. I'm just not made of the same stuff.) Anyway, the blueberries weren't too bad. They were better in our Saturday morning pancakes, with a little butter and honey on top, eaten together as a family in a leisurely Saturday morning fashion.

Saturday Morning Blueberry Pancakes
(heavily adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinammon
2 eggs
3 tablespoons oil
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl with a fork. In a second bowl, beat together the eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just enough to combine. Don't worry if there are lumps, they'll smooth out during cooking.

For each pancake, pour about 1/4 cup of batter onto a nonstick skillet set over medium high heat. Sprinkle about six blueberries onto the top of the pancake and let it cook. Flip to the other side after bubbles appear all over the surface of the pancake. Cook the other side until browned, about one minute.

Serve with butter and honey or maple syrup. (And don't use the fake high-fructose corn syrup stuff. I know real maple syrup is crazy expensive, so if you can't afford it, just use honey instead, like we do. Trust me, bee barf tastes much better than maple flavored corn syrup from a factory. Not to get all Alice Waters on you or anything.)