Woman in Real Life

It's What I Ate Wednesday once again, and boy what a busy week. With Shrove Tuesday yesterday and Valentine's Day tomorrow, there's lots of food to be made (and eaten) this week.

Yesterday's dinner was...well, pancakes of course. But let's get back to that later.


On Sunday, our weekly menu plan called for "husband cooking." His choice was rigatoni with homemade tomato sauce. Simple and delicious.


Another toast picture. Sorry, but that's mostly what I have for breakfast these days...spelt bread toasted with peanut butter and jam. One small change, though - I had decaf coffee that time instead of decaf green tea. And I added strawberries for a festive touch.


I did have a different breakfast one day. I am a big fan of Daiya vegan cheese, but I had yet to try a grilled cheese sandwich. So, I gave it a try. Pretty good. Not like traditional cheese, but good.


I decided to prepare our pancake dinner right after the kids got home from school yesterday, at 3:00. Kind of early, but my daughter had dance class after and she needed to eat first anyway. Later in the evening my son asked what we were having for dinner though. He didn't believe me when I said the pancakes were dinner. Um, yeah, I'm not cooking again. Sorry.

I cut heart shapes out of watermelon using a cookie cutter and cut strawberries in half to (sort of) look like hearts. The kids really liked the heart shapes.


As I wrote about last year, we put money in the kids' pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. My mom used to do it too. How much fun is that? Here are the coins freshly washed and laid out to dry.


I don't stir the coins in the batter. I pour out the pancakes and lay the coins on top so that I can make sure the kids get the same amount. Yesterday was what my son would call a "fail" though. Somehow I mixed up their pancakes and gave my daughter more money. She refused to share with her brother and I had to tell him I would pay him later.



I only put coins in the first six pancakes so they would know when they had to be extra cautious about not eating coins. I didn't add blueberries to those ones either, because I figured things would just get too messy. I added blueberries to the rest of the batch and enjoyed my pancakes once the kids were full.

I used a different recipe this year. I quite liked the results. Think vegan pancakes can't be fluffy? Not so. These ones puff up nicely...and they're tasty too! Serve the pancakes with vegan sausage and fruit for a complete breakfast. Here's the recipe.