Eight Days of Hot Oil

The holiday that legitimizes fried food is fast drawing to a close. This is day #6 of Hanukkah. We had our traditional and non-traditional (curried sweet potato) latkes with roast chicken on Friday night (below). But today was a first – pancakes for 200!

Micah Cooks made pancakes for the entire religious school and their parents. I had never before made pancakes from a mix, preferring instead to combine the 6-8 essential ingredients myself. But after turning out 600 pancakes, I now see the worth of Bisquick.

I was happy to be in a position of being assigned to jobs and not having to be in charge. I would have predicted utter disaster as we debated 15 minutes before the hordes were to arrive whether to serve each table or do it buffet style. Someone decided we would serve at two stations and I was assigned to a large platter of banana pancakes.

I quickly realized that only some adults ate banana pancakes, with chocolate chip being by far the most popular followed by plain. Bowls of fruit salad languished on the tables as everyone ate seconds and thirds of pancakes floating in syrup.

After the sugar level was soaring Teddy cranked up the electronic keyboard and we sang all those Hanukkah favorites at the top of our lungs – Una Candelika, Light One Candle, Sivivon, Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah, etc. Parents were dancing with two-year-olds. I was scraping leftover fruit salad into big bowls.

Then it was over and the children were off to religious school. The disaster I had anticipated actually turned out to be quite an enjoyable morning. The 4 plain pancakes I ate were not quite up to my usual standard, but they were certainly good enough.

As we cleaned up, we noticed there were but a few pancakes left. I jokingly said, “Like the oil, the pancakes held out just as long as they needed to.”