Pumpkin Pancakes

We decided last year to begin a new tradition of eating pumpkin pancakes for breakfast on Thanksgiving morning. So we've been building it up for weeks now, how yummy they were going to be, how unique they are, etc. Thanksgiving morning, I'm slaving away in the kitchen making these yummy pancakes when Daddy walks in and tastes one. He looks at me and says, "Have you tasted these?" A horrified look crosses my face, what have I done?! Luke comes in and sneaks a taste of one and his face screws up into an ewww-yucky-kind of-face. Now I'm almost in tears. I taste one, hoping they're exaggerating, only to realize that somehow I've ruined our Thanksgiving morning special breakfast. :o( Daddy suggests that we try to eat them anyway, maybe the boys won't really notice. Of course, Luke had already noticed. We sit down at our lovely decorated table with cute little Thanksgiving plates. Joshua starts tearing into the pancakes. Finally, he says, "Usually I like pumpkin pancakes, but when I swallow, I don't like these very much." In the end, I had to confess to the boys that I had messed up breakfast and maybe we could try again the right way the next morning. We threw the rest of the pancakes away.

It was the vinegar. It calls for 2T of vinegar. When I was pouring it into the measuring spoon, I spilled a little. So I just figured that maybe I had spilled more than I realized. The thing is, the vinegar taste was SO strong in the pancakes that I couldn't figure out how I possibly could have spilled that much. The more we pondered (and tasted) the problem, the more we tried to figure it out. Later Daddy had to run outside to get some eggs for me at the little store in our apartment complex. He noticed the vinegar that he had bought for me the day before (which I had used that morning) and saw that it said 70% proof. When he got home, he checked out what we were using before he had bought this new stuff. It was 6% proof! No wonder my pancakes were awful! The vinegar I used was more than 10 times as strong as normal vinegar! Just another adventure of living overseas and not really being able to read food labels. Later that day we bought a new bottle of "normal" vinegar and I made the pancakes again the next morning. They were very yummy! And I was able to redeem myself in my children's eyes. :o)