“If you whisk it too much, it makes thin runny pancakes,” he said. “We want our pancakes to rise and to be thick and fluffy.” He checked his pan, heating on the stovetop, dumped some butter in, and said, “Do you have anything to go on them?”
She looked at the melting butter and said, “Well, … butter?”
“Maple syrup, fruit puree, whipping cream, anything like that?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said.
“Jam?” he asked hopefully, but she shook her head again.
“No, I finished the jar and haven’t got a new one yet.”
“Huh.” He walked to the fridge, looked inside, and started to smile.
“Uh oh,” she said. “What’s that smile for?”
“Are you willing to try something different?”
“Is it edible?”
“Of course it is,” he said in outrage. “Everything I make is highly edible.”
“If you’re making it, I’ll eat it.” She gave him a fat grin.
“Okay,” he said, “but no comments until you taste it.”
Worried now, she watched as he pulled out sprouts and eggs. “Okay, now you’re worrying me.”
Then he brought out the little jar of salsa she’d bought. He held it up and said, “I’m surprised to see you have this.”
“I bought it for nachos,” she said, smacking her lips. “But, when I brought it home, I didn’t know how to make it look like the stuff in the videos.”
He cocked his head at her. “What do you mean, the stuff in the videos?”
“Well, it comes out of the oven with melted cheese and all this concoction around it, including bowls of salsa,” she said. “But that jar of stuff does not look like what’s in the tiny bowls of salsa.”
He reached up, covered his eyes for a brief moment, and took a long slow deep breath. “Okay. On the menu this week will be nachos.”
“Really?” She stared at him in delight.
He nodded. “That has got to be the simplest meal to create.”
“You’re only just now telling me that?” she cried out in outrage.
“Well, I’m sorry,” he said, glaring at her. “Who knew Miss Hoity-Toity over here with the lobster diet actually likes nachos.”
“I’ve always liked pancakes,” she said, “but I was never really allowed to have them.”
“That husband again?”
She nodded.
“So, how do you know you like them?”
She stared at him, shrugged. “I don’t know. But they look good.”
He groaned. “You’ve never even had them, have you?”
She gave him a sheepish look. “Nope, I guess I haven’t. Unless I had them as a kid and have completely forgotten.”
“Wow,” he said. “Okay, your education is sadly lacking.”
“Maybe, but I’m getting there.”
He gave her a big grin. “Absolutely,” he said. “You are totally getting there.” He walked to the stove, and she watched as he dumped ladles full of this lumpy mixture into the hot fry pan.
She raced to the side to watch, as they bubbled and frothed in the pan. “Oh my,” she said, “they smell delicious.” She watched, fascinated, as he waited a little bit, then tilted the edge of each pancake, as if to look for some magical sign that it was ready to flip, then put it back down again. Her gaze went from the pancake to his face and back again.
“Why are you leaving it? Or rather, why did you lift it?” That started a long explanation on the nuances of pancake cooking. She knew it was far over her head, but, as soon as the bubbles started popping, he got to business.
“That should have been done just a fraction earlier.” And he caught the other two just before they popped. She was fascinated to see them immediately poof up into these big lush fluffy pancakes, and she was almost clapping her hands in joy by the time he filled their plates. But there was a spare pancake. She stared at it, then at him and again at the spare pancake.
He said, “I’m bigger than you, so I should get the sixty-forty split.”
“But I’m starving,” she said, “so I should get the extra one. Plus, I’m injured.” He glared at her and then sighed and nodded. Then he handed it to her. She looked at it and said, “Okay, how about we split it?” She used a knife and quickly cut it in half, so that the pancakes were evenly distributed on their plates, and he chuckled.
“I can do without the half.”
“I probably can too,” she said, “but I don’t want to.”
He smiled. “There is something special about cooking for somebody who absolutely enjoys food,” he said, “so I certainly don’t mind.”
She watched as he then proceeded to put butter on the pancakes and then covered all of them in salsa. When she saw that her jar of salsa was almost gone, she stared at it sadly. “I had no idea that’s all it would do,” she whispered.
“You need to buy the big jugs of salsa,” he said. “They’re much cheaper.” She looked at him in surprise. He nodded. “Seriously, if you buy these little jars, you’re mostly paying for the little jar,” he added. “Otherwise it’s much cheaper for the food manufacturers to package big amounts, so it’s always cheaper to buy large containers. Everything you bought here would have only cost you a couple bucks more, if you’d chosen the larger sizes.”
She stared at a little bag of flour, the even tinier bag of sugar, and the little jar of salsa. “But that’s not fair,” she said. “I can only afford a little bit.”
“And they ding you for it,” he said cheerfully. “For the difference in price, you could have gotten a big jug of salsa.” He added the eggs to the skillet.
She sighed. “You know something? I never knew about these tricks to grocery shopping before.”
“Absolutely there are tricks to know.”
She watched as he took the sprouts from the container and split them into thirds, leaving the last third in the container for her. Then he sprinkled them atop their plates. She stared in fascination as the cooked eggs went on top of that. “I’ve never seen pancakes with anything green on them. Or eggs.”
“Then you’ve never had my pancakes.” He picked up their plates and said, “Grab the cutlery and the coffee, and we’ll eat outside.”
She said, “Well, I would, but I don’t have anything to eat on.” With that, he stopped and glared at her, as she shook her head, her palms exposed. “What am I supposed to do? Create a table out of nothing?”
“We’ll have to fix that.” Then he put the plates on the kitchen table and said, “Come eat.” She sat down beside him, slowly watching as he dug in. She tried her first bite and was pleasantly surprised. By the second bite, she was over the oddness of it, and, by the third, she couldn’t get enough. She plowed through her meal, until he reached across, grabbed her hand, and said, “Slow down. You’ll make yourself sick.”
She looked at her plate. Her food was over half gone, and she sighed. “I’m starting to realize how hungry I was.”