Saturday Brunch

There's a delicious breath of freedom in the phrase "Saturday Brunch." First, it's Saturday - sleeping-in Saturday, lounging-around Saturday, do-nothing-unless-you-want-to Saturday - twenty-four hours of unscheduled bliss. And then it's brunch - like breakfast, my favorite meal of the day, only later and bigger and friendlier.

That said, here's what I made for Saturday Brunch:

Grain and Nut Whole Wheat Pancakes
As usual I kind of did my own thing - you'll notice some imprecise measurements.

• 1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal (ground up in my coffee grinder - only I left a handful of oats whole)
  
• 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• handful of chopped walnuts
• smaller handful of whole flax seed [Edit: have since learned that I should grind flax seed, as it won't digest otherwise. Don't ask me how I discovered this.]
  
• lots of cinnamon
• little bit of nutmeg
• 2 teaspoons baking soda (or thereabouts - the box was nearly empty so I just dumped some in)
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup plain yogurt
  
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 cup honey (Tip: a touch of olive oil inside the measuring cup keeps you from wasting the honey remnants that stick to the cup. Although those were always fun to lick out anyway.)
  
• 2 eggs
• a few generous drops of vanilla
  

You know the drill - mix dry ingredients, mix wet ingredients, stir together just until blended (the biggest mistake people make with pancakes is over-stirring!) I always cook pancakes in real butter, and I spread these ones out a bit because they get too dense if they're too thick. They're also quite filling, so I make them a little bit smaller than usual.

Top this yummy, hearty deliciousness of a flapjack with real maple syrup, real organic whipped cream (sweetened with agave nectar and a touch of vanilla), and a sprinkling of cinnamon, and you'll forget there was ever such a thing as a five-day work week in your recent history.

Also on the table: strawberries and blueberries with more of that real whipped cream, a French press full of fresh-ground Sunergos Sumatra (I saved some heavy cream from a whipping to put it in my coffee, unsweetened), some Bolthouse C-Boost juice (mango, cherry, and apple...and apparently camu camu fruit and maitake mushroom? what?), and bacon (which I avoided, but it did make the house smell like a Southern mama lives here rather than a passel of single females with varying degrees of domesticity).

Top this off with a dollop of quality conversation with Hannah, for whom I am increasingly grateful, and Saturday Brunch becomes a true Sabbath of rest, remembering, and celebration. One might call it a Gospel Brunch and only be half joking.

This was plenty of food for me and Hannah to eat our fill and various housemates to roll out of bed and shuffle through the kitchen to fix their plates. (Although some did insist on defiling my healthful whole-grain pancakes with fake pancake syrup - and not just any pancake syrup, but generic, lite pancake syrup. Lite!)

And there are leftover blueberries and whipped cream, giving me something to look forward to - that and a Saturday afternoon that, according to the sunshine outside my kitchen window and the forecast on my homepage, seems promising.