return of the pancake

with no posts for five months, now seems like the perfect time to crawl out from under this huge rock i've been hiding under. and what better way than with pancakes? pancakes make any meal a party. or brinner.

for my edible flags, i relied on the "perfect pancakes" recipe from vegan brunch (find the recipe re-posted here. my preferred pancake recipe--also one of chef isa chandra moskovitz's--is on her website, but i was afraid that the excessive rise in those might make the hotcakes plus fruit too difficult to flip!).

i subbed in gluten-free flour mix, as i'm dabbling in mostly gluten-free dining. going (almost) totally GF has really opened up my eyes to how much wheat and gluten there is in EVERYTHING. soy sauce to veggie broth to pizza dough (well, duh) to most vegetarian meat substitutes to licorice to beer (and i had just found some sour Flanders ales that I was starting to really love!).

over the past few months, i've experimented with millet and barley. i've made a lasagna using rice noodles. after being disappointed by several local GF bread options, i found bready love in the form of Udi's (especially the loaf with a chia/millet base). i now own a pound of tapioca flour. and after thinking burritos and anything wrapped was beyond reach, i found a delicious tortilla made from teff, the African grain use in injera.

with all of these successes, i encountered a few bumps (like the flourless chocolate cake that, on both attempts, refused to get past the fudgy goo stage), but really, i've enjoyed the change. and physically, i feel a lot better without all of the heavy wheat and gluten.

but back to the pancakes... any guess what day these were made? if you chose arbor day, you're totally sparkly spankingly wrong.

p.s. these looked way cooler before they're flipped. but the important thing is how they tasted: like little bits of fruit-filled heaven!