My New Clearance Griddle, And What it Has to Do With My Childhood

When it comes down to it, my childhood was fabulously awesome. I'm not saying that it was like- idyllic- but it was pretty great. This makes it difficult to have a child in 2012 because you know that that child is not going to have the sort of childhood that you had. Not that it's going to be bad, but much, much different. Once I told my mom that I wanted Brady to grow up in the type of neighborhood that I grew up in and she sort of shook her head and said "not going to happen". Which is sad, but true. If you let your kids do the things that we were allowed to do, they will most likely end up on a milk carton. Which don't even exist anymore, except in the world of school lunches. Which proves my point right there.

Most days in my childhood consisted of the following:

• Riding bikes up to Hill Elementary- which I don't even think is called Hill Elementary anymore- and playing baseball. This was interesting because we didn't have enough people for a baseball game, so we ended up saying "ghost on third!" all the time so that whoever was on third could come up and bat again. That got confusing very quickly. So, if the batter hits the ball and goes to first, does the ghost on third automatically get a run? How do you know he wouldn't have been tagged out if he had actually existed? Seriously. It's like string theory for elementary kids.
• Playing in the Edwards' garage. They had a sweet boat in there that we could climb in. Also, we played "Little Women" a lot. Which is weird because I've never read that book. Lisa was always the one who dies. Once, we put on a "show" for the parents in the neighborhood. We set up chairs in the driveway and each of us had an act, with the garage being "backstage" and the cement in front of it being the stage. My act consisted entirely of me standing on a skateboard, pushing myself across the cement and back with a broken broom handle, singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". Which I don't know the words to, and never did.
• Drinking Mrs. Edwards' super secret Kool-Aid which, it turns out, was a mixture of orange Kool-Aid and lemonade Kool-Aid. Yesterday I was walking through the grocery store and saw some Kool-Aid. I can't give Brady Kool-Aid because that crap is HORRIBLE for you. Then I felt really sad and thought "I can't believe this kid is missing out on Kool-Aid!!"
• Climbing the "Secret Tree". The Secret Tree was "secret" because there was a "secret" way to climb up it. Oh, it was complex, trust me. I think it was the precursor to the DaVinci Code books. This tree climbing logorithm was almost certainly the beginning stages of Erin becoming a federal agent.
• Listening to Madonna in the McClellan's attic and jumping off of their roof. We were a crew of braniacs, I'm telling you. It's a miracle that Natural Selection didn't bump any of us off.
• There was this little girl a few blocks down who we sometimes played with (WEIRD story), and she had all these fruit trees in her backyard. We decided we should make juice out of them. So we picked a few pieces, cut it all up, added water and sugar, and then we went around the neighborhood door to door trying to sell it. Basically it sounded like this: "Hey, we made some juice. Do you want to try it?" Then we offered them a sip from the cup and told them we were selling it. Shockingly, I don't remember anyone so much as taking a sip.
• Also worth mentioning are Jodeene's parties. Jodeene was an older woman, and the ONLY one in the neighborhood with a pool and we (I) thought she was totally fabulous for it. In retrospect, it was just an small above-ground pool with a deck, but in my childhood head it was very posh, and she sometimes hung up strings of lights and had small parties, and you could see the whole thing from my bedroom window and, in my brain, it was very, very Gatsby-ish. Jodeene was also a burgeoning photographer, so my dad got the great idea that Erin should have her senior pictures taken with her. The result was a number of pictures of Erin sitting beside a pond holding a small toy boat. Sometimes, just to piss her off, I like to remind Erin of that and ask her "What were you doing with that boat?" and hear her say "SHUT UP, LAURA!". I, on the other hand, did not have my senior pictures taken by Jodeene- I was a spoiled brat and had to have my pics taken by The Garrett, where all the cool kids were going. The result of that was a lot of pictures of me sitting backwards on a chair in a barn. You would think Erin would say to me "What the hell were you doing in a barn?" but she apparently hasn't thought of that yet.

Anyways, the point of all that is that I will not be allowing Brady to ride his bike a mile away to play baseball, and even if I did, there aren't any neighborhood kids his age to go with. I will probably stop him if I see him hanging upside down from the top of a swingset, and there really are no climbable trees in my yard. This is all very, very sad.

That's where the griddle comes in. One thing about my childhood that was crazy awesome was Sunday morning. Maybe it wasn't every Sunday, but in my mind we had good breakfast every Sunday. This meant pancakes or french toast or eggs and toast and OJ.

I have been wanting a griddle for awesome Sunday breakfast for a while now, but they're EXPENSIVE. And then I found this awesome griddle on clearance at Meijer. $20 and the plates detach and everything.

We had french toast this morning to break the new griddle in and it was awesome.

And in closing,

in honor of Sunday breakfast,

I am giving you my mom's awesome pancake recipe. You are welcome.

Mom's Oatmeal Pancakes

Yield: about 20 4" pancakes

2 eggs

2 c. buttermilk

1/4 c. vegetable oil

1 c. rolled oats

1 c. flour

1/3 c. wheat germ (I know... it's hard to eat something with "germ" in the title, but I'm telling you it's worth it this time)

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. honey

In a large mixing bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk and oil. Beat well.

Add remaining ingredients and stir just until well-blended

Fry on hot griddle (375 degrees), turning just once

Serve with toppings (such as applesauce)