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This is actually a post I wrote while living for a summer in South Korea! Since I know some of my readers are new and likely haven't gone back and read every post in my blog's history, I am reposting this one. I made some changes to enter it in a writing contest, so if you think you've read it, technically, you haven't. And fear not. It is being read and edited by my talented copy editor of a cousin, so if there are mistakes they will be remedied before it's mailed.
Food seems to be the most consistent memory, the element that anchors the past days of life with all that come after. My love affair with pancakes started early, and helped begin my life's list of memories. Looking back at my childhood table, I can still see the glass bottle labeled "Griffins", with stray syrup streaming down the side. The same stray stream would end up on the plate, the table, and my hands. Breakfast for dinner was, and still is, a favorite. Part of the appeal is the shroud of rebellion. It’s supposed to be breakfast, not dinner; Consuming it out of its intended order is something wrong that feels so right. Shortly after the beginning of the pancake tale, memories of sitting at my grandma’s kitchen table arise, and I see my childhood self staring up the walls smeared with ornate wallpaper, my hands resting on her plastic gingham table cloth, waiting with great anticipation for the circular goodness she was tending in the skillet, making with love, for me.
Somewhere close to the time when my age hit double digits, I began to take the pancake matter into my own hands. An innately early riser and the first one up on Saturday mornings, pancakes continued to find relevance in my life. I remember studying my father's effortless pouring of pancake batter onto a sizzling griddle, from a mix that only required the ability to read, measure milk and crack an egg. This would have been one of my earliest “I can do that myself” affirmations, and came forth around the beginning of adolescent independence. I no longer needed someone else, namely an adult, to make something of value present in my morning.
Smashed in the middle of adolescence striving for adulthood, I was invited on a road trip to South Carolina over spring break. This kind of trip is a right of passage for college freshman, and was, appropriately, a turning point for my pancake story. The more southern of the Carolinas was home to a friend, and much of our trip was spent at her house. For me, that meant much of the trip was spent in the kitchen with her mother. Exposure to a new way of doing something you've been doing so ordinarily for so long adds a vibrance that has previously been missing. Mrs. Blees put strawberries in her salad, cut up fresh pineapple instead of canned, and added oatmeal to her pancakes. As if that wasn't enough, she paired her from scratch pancakes with homemade orange syrup. This pairing, whole grain oatmeal pancakes with tart orange syrup tasted and looked like something out of Martha Stewart Living. I scribbled her recipe down and tucked it into my suitcase. I was the same teenager that arrived a few days prior, but having driven myself across half the country, I was a teenager that felt more aware of her capabilities, in both life, and pancakes.
My early twenties consisted of testing those very capabilities. They were quintessentially awkward; Both my twenties, and the pancakes that made their way to my early twenties tables. There were the South Beach Pancakes, which had both oatmeal and cottage cheese in the recipe. During my no dairy coupled with no friends phase, I made for myself light and fluffy soy pancakes most nights of the week, which were usually covered in sugar-free syrup. Awkward is probably an understatement, but regardless of their ingredient or intended purpose, pancakes were faithful, and chivalrous.
Leaving behind the sunshine state enabled me to leave behind my pancake wrong turns. I headed home, to reconnect with tradition, and reaffirm what I knew to be true. Many a Saturday, my roommates and I could be found on our front porch, leaves swaying in the wind, with a pancake breakfast before us. The chosen syrup on my more adult less awkward table was now real maple, but I still didn't discriminate what had made up my beginning. Most Sunday mornings I could be found at the breakfast table of my parents, alongside my grandparents, eating whole wheat pancakes prepared for me by my father and listening to stories I had already heard but knew I would one day miss. The pancakes were still made from a mix, but had changed from buttermilk to whole grain. It seems my parents pancake taste refined over the years too, though the syrup was still Griffins.
Going with the theme of testing capabilities, the summer of two-thousand-and-eight found this mid-westerner living in South Korea. The traditional breakfast fare on the Korean table threatened to bring my pancake journey to an abrupt halt. There were mixes at the grocery store, but my inability to speak or read the language left me confused and insecure; my grocery bag was usually filled with cereal, eggs, and bread. I began to genuinely miss, dare I say long for, a plate stacked with the circular deliciousness that had always been so easily attained in every other corner of my story.
Because of our history and their ever consistent presence in my life, I have always felt a sort of distinguished kin-ship with flapjacks. They have served me well, and in one humble form or another, proved to be unwavering. That is why I approached, with seriousness, a trip to Butterfinger Pancakes in the city of Seoul one month into my Korean stay. It was not just a trip in search of breakfast. It was a journey. And due to the fact that my fellow pancake soldiers didn't know exactly where the shining establishment was located, and were following directions written by someone with pancake batter for brains, it became more like a quixotic pilgrimage. We were so, so hungry. I mean really hungry. We were searching for the iron griddle on empty stomachs. Our appetites had to be wanting, we told ourselves. We also weren't planning on getting lost. After a subway ride, followed by a walk in one direction that was followed by one in the opposite, multiple trips to the same street and multiple attempts at asking for directions, and also the passing of an hour and a half, we found access to our generation's savior: the internet, and consequently, our destination. The result? A conquering sense of bliss.
There was a wait of fifty minutes. We would have waited longer. The menu was thorough and beautiful, on a laminated legal sized menu of brown craft paper, with bent corners and daring pancake concoctions (stuffed mozzarella and tomato, anyone?) and endless breakfast options, covering both sides of the page. I decided on the blueberry right after reading the “none of our fruits are canned” disclaimer at the bottom. One could find irony in the fact that they, as relayed to me by the kind Korean waitress, “run out of blueberry”. I ate, with a noble amount of devotion to the cause, every single bite and scrap and crumb of the harvest grain and nut pancakes I settled with.
I sat back in the chair of our high top table, looking at the sleek interior of the pancake house, and at the empty plates of my equally stuffed friends, and I was thankful to have people in my life that also get what is so very great about pancakes, as it felt like a validation of my history. I was even more thankful that they did not yield when faced with obstacles, like hunger and confusion, but endured and pressed on, like true pancake knights.
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