Last night I worked 3rds.  aka 11p – 7a.  aka 8 hours of testing my ability to stay awake.  I did a pretty good job, I was able to keep my brain busy…Didn’t drop my chin to my chest and catnap.

But this morning, I feel like I’ve been on a 3 day drunk.

How do I know how that feels?  Don’t.  Ask.

Anyways, I didn’t really feel like putting forth much effort in feeding the herd.  My husband got called in to work anyways, so it’s just me and the curtain climbers.  I decided that pancakes sounded pretty good.

Pancakes are food that says, “let me fill your belly so you’ll go to sleep”.  And my boys hear it loud and clear.

I thought maybe they needed some protein…all that stuff they say on TV about growing kids.

During my sleepless marathon last night, I was thinking about my funny dad.   I remember he called my bologna-potato-chip-cheese sandwiches “the laziest sandwich I’ve ever seen”.   Like I didn’t have the energy to take a bite of sandwich and then add a chip.  Too much work.

So when the pancake urge hit me, I thought it would be awesome to throw in some protein.

And what’s the best protein ever invented?  Oh, yeah…B.  A. C.  O.  N.

So let’s get that smoky pig on the FAH-ER!

Yep, that’s the whole package.

Render it down, drain bacon on paper towels.  Save.  The.  Grease.

Now let’s move to a basic pancake batter:

Wet = 1 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tbsp bacon grease.

Dry = 1 cup flour, 1/4 sugar, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp cinnamon.

Dry Meets Wet.  Dry and Wet fall in love through whisk and make pancake batter.

Getcher griddle hot…Smear a little bacon grease on there…

Look, even Jim the Fish is interested in bacon pancakes…

Sorry, Jim.  You don’t get these because we can hold a fork better than you.  And you eat dried flakes of unknown origins.

These are little for my tribe.  They’re probably normal sized to you…

Add the bacon pieces…

Then flip…

Maybe a little premature flipping going on…

But see how the pancake sort of comes around the bacon?  It’s like, ‘”Here, Bacon…lemmee give you a hug…”

These are so awesome, what would happen if….

I added strawberries?

Orrr….

Bee-Nanas?

I’ll tell ya what happens…a whole lotta AWESOME, that’s what!

It’s a pancake buffet…I should swing open the doors and sell plates.

I’ll have a little one of these…

And maybe a little one of these…

and well…I better grab a little one of these too!

Ooops, my fork made me grab two!

Oh, well…state regulations forbid me from putting that back.  Guess I’ll just HAVE to eat it…

With some butter and syrup…

Ahh…if this doesn’t fill the bellies of those boys – nothing will.

Pancakes Gone Wild

Adapted from a recipe by Laura Sherwood

1 pkg bacon, fried crisp and crumbled.  Reserve fat

1 cup flour

1/4 cup sugar (adjust to taste, I like mine sweet.  2 tbsp up to 1/4 cup)

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup milk (can sub. buttermilk, sour cream, heavy cream etc)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

bananas, strawberries, nuts, assorted fruits, etc.

Preheat griddle to 350.

Whisk together dry ingredients, in another bowl, whisk together wet ingredients.  Dump together and whisk until combined.  Grease griddle with bacon fat, pour pancake batter into desired size.  Add crumbled bacon and/or desired fruits to pancake and flip when large bubbles begin to break in the middle.  Cook on griddle until golden, serve immediately.

Which was my favorite?  The banana one.  Next time will add pecans to it.

My strawberries were tart, I would have like them better if they were sweeter.  For  the strawberry ones, I wish I would have mixed a little strawberry jam into the batter before pouring out onto the griddle.  Now THAT would have been off the hook (as the kids are saying these days).