Free Rangin' Friday ~ Pancake thingies, Cabbage Steaks and Some Mystery

For some reason I haven't been cooking a lot lately. It might be that food keeps showing up around here, the latest being some split pea soup from the friend I shared one of my two precioso ham hocks with. Give away ham hock, get back split pea soup, how's that for a perfect circle?

Not cooking a lot doesn't mean I'm not thinking and reading about food. Especially dishes I've never made. One that ran by me recently was something that looks so easy and apparently is very popular. I'm still overwhelmed in my mind with possibilities of sweet or savory. The potential rolls farther than wordy description - but when did that ever stop me?

I used to make muffins every day and I have Lola and Lucy, my Treat of the Day girls, to prove it!

But these aren't muffins. Whatever they are, they are not muffins. I've seen them called mini Dutch baby pancakes, which I read about on Lifehacker but from the comments, no Dutch person would call them such a thing. They'd call them something Dutch. Then, as comment sections interestingly or not tend to do, it devolved into a discussion of what they were and might be.



All I know is, the photo of whatever they are looked good to me. Of course, he, the Lifehacker guy, found them on a blog called Real Mom Kitchen. SHE called them mini German pancakes but says at their house they call them Hootenannies and they have nothing to do with pancake batter, so what do I know? Or what do they know? It's very confusing out there in blog world and food blog world in particular. I need to start cooking my own food again and remember to take photos!

photo credit: unknown

On the blog Topping Pressure House , they were called pancake cups. Because she didn't have a recipe to follow, but rather a photo to go on - good for her! - she describes her process and mistakes made along the way(I appreciate that!) as well as how she'd do it the next time.

Why pancake batter? Why not just plain old muffin batter? I have no idea, but I like the idea, mainly because I am not a big fan of pancakes on their lonesome. The gasp you just heard was from my children. "What?? What about those thousands of pancakes you cooked for us?" Hey, did you ever notice I graciously and sacrificially made sure you ate ALL of them? Because I was the best Mom in the universe? Remember that?? Well. Sorry.

I'm not sure what it is about pancakes for me. There's not enough syrup or butter in the world to make them more than a vehicle for syrup and butter.

Now they tell me

And what about the International House of Pancakes, a rare foray indeed (I know my Dad didn't take us, that's a definite)? To enter that hallowed hall of my imagination, allowed to order anything I wanted, knowing I had only one desire and it would be sated as soon as that perpetually smiling woman got her self to the kitchen with our order? I listened to those clattering plates, cutlery clicking like castanets. Soon, I would join the sugared fray...was that WHIPPED CREAM I just saw go by me, piled on...oh oh oh, that is MINE! Shouldn't that have fixed things?  I thought those chocolate chip pancakes were going to be a nirvanaic experience, piled up discs of Food Heaven. It wasn't like that at all. It was, instead, kind of semi-hard-and-nasty chocolate chips in...a pancake. With whipped cream.

So here I am, as I approach the end of my sixth decade on this plane, still trying to deeply enjoy a pancake. Will one of these little cuties end my pancake purgatory? And one day I'll like beer more than wine.

From Everyday Maven

Then I saw this. And maybe you've seen it too since it seems to be on every food blog in the universe; we don't get out much here. Like pancakes, I've had my struggles with cabbage. I thought I hated cabbage until Bill Marz (the guy who taught me how to cook in a restaurant and lived to tell the tale) made a coleslaw for me. Snap flash! I become an addict. It had hot sauce in it, not a lot but enough to change everything about this vegetable in my mind. Since then I make cabbage salad fairly often, red, green I don't care. Sometimes I make it with with a warm German dressing, sometimes barely dressed, just salt and pepper and a little olive oil. So when I saw this I thought, hmm. Not cooked a lot (sauerkraut shudder), simple and it has garlic, what can go wrong? I don't know, but I'm going to find out. But wait...

From Cook Eat Live Vegetarian

Unlike the pancake cups (or 17 other names), this dish showed up dozens of times under the same name Garlic Rubbed Roasted Cabbage Steaks, copied from basically one blog, called Everyday Maven and she doesn't remember where she saw it to begin with. In looking around a bit more, I found the same idea but with a little more going on, using red cabbage. If you like cabbage, you know there is a big difference between white and red cabbage, in taste for sure. I like red cabbage, and this recipe in particular sounds good, but I think it's best to mix the two up because the red one didn't have garlic. No garlic? Baffling, I tell you.

You can keep it simple or spice and herb it up. I'd leave out the spices I can't get here (sumac can be replaced with cumin and I love cumin so that's an easy adaptation. Unless you have sumac - then go for it). Then I'd roast a head of garlic (yes, a head of garlic, not 2 or three cloves - once roasted you have a very different beast) and use half of it on the cabbage while cooking, saving half for after it comes out of the oven. If this seems like a pretty scattersourced recipe today, it is and you have to do some work to get where you want to go. Most important to not forget - play with your food, it's good for you!

Here's the Mystery 

How can a first world country (the US) have any hungry children at all?

Bang on, if you like, about politics and welfare, about fast foods and a sloppy society.

The truth is, there should be no hungry children on the planet, let alone the United States. But there are. It's a mystery.

If you want to help make a place at the table, here is a starting place.

Have a find your favorite Friday. Do something farther.