Lemon Bag

Other projects around the house are like, taking time to enjoy food, watching some movies but not a lot, and pretty much any home innovation that might make things a little better for when(?) one of us eventually(?) gets sick. For that last point it's like, cleaning, de-cluttering, and declaration of zones. Declaration of zones is kind of a wartime-only event but the rest is, again, pretty reasonable. I read that losing your smell is an early marker that you have the novel corona, so I've been... not sniffing everything, but very sniff-aware. I washed the first klatch of socks the other night and they dried in the morning sun-- when a big whiff revealed no lingering odor I felt proud and then paranoid. I had to get a deep draught of coffee smell to know I'm holding steady. I'm not really scared you know, personally, but it's on my mind.

In a desire for warmth, comfort, and animal fulfillment, here's a reprint from Mothers News issues #39, it's a pancake recipe. This first pic is a scan of the piece of paper that's been on my fridge for at least 10 years. OK to copy this recipe in sharpie onto a piece of paper and then put it on your fridge. I've also prepared a print-ready version, that's here: [link]. All you need is that little bit, everything else is just finesse.

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Ok, people always ask me so here it is, this is the good pancakes recipe. It's a vegan recipe, but if that freaks you out just pretend it isn't? It doesn't matter. Even my mom was fooled! I keep writing this down for other people so listen, just, here it is. It's right here.

The trick, as with any pancake recipe, is to not stir too much. You have to stir some, obviously, but if you get all the little chunks out (don't ask me why) the pancakes will be not as fluffy. If you are cooking with someone who "loves to stir", don't let them stir- I got burned this way one time...

Cook them however big you want them, that's not my problem, some like 'em one to a pan some like 'em three. Two per pan is a poor pour plan. Don't let the pan get too hot, but if you cook them at too low a flame, your crowd will get antsy and previous cakes will get cold before later cakes are ready. It's breakfast time and everyone wants to eat a nice hot breakfast. Remember "The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good".

If you're cooking for a kid, check this out: with the pan hot, write the first letter of the kid's name in batter, backwards. Let it cook for a little bit, then pour batter over it and cook as usual- the letter will be a little darker on the finished cake. You can get pretty good if you practice but don't get carried away or you'll Nero them. Which is to say, you'll burn them while fiddling. And if you're cooking for 2 kids don't do this at all! Because they'll fight over whose cake looks best, and who wants a fight at breakfast? Not me. Don't do this for adults either, it's corny. You know what? Just decide that you could do this if you want but at every instance, defer to "I'm not fucking around with that". Cakes are best appreciated at the stack level rather than at the cake level and besides that a big warm golden stack of cakes is a blessing and blessings are best left unattributed.

If you're with a kid, make a large cake with 2 big ears then let them draw a face on it (after it's cooked) with pieces of fruit. This also works with adults. It's ok to take a picture of it. In my mind this was a 1980s Bob Dylan album cover but in other parts of my mind i know- no it wasn't.

for 3 fluffy pancakes in a regulation stack

• Butter the top of the stack
• Flip the top cake over
• Butter the top of the stack
• Flip the top 2 cakes
• Butter the top of the stack
• Syrup over everything

This buttering strategy was developed over years and years by this writer, after having viewed the movie "My Blue Heaven" in which Joan Cusack mentions that Rick Moranis has a system for eating pancakes whereby no pancake gets more or less butter than any other cake. No pancake scene was ever shown and after conferring with cast member Corey Carrier ( who was Rick Moranis's son in the movie, in addition to being young Nixon in "Nixon" and young Indiana Jones in "Young Indiana Jones") we learned that no pancake scene was ever shot or scripted. With the idea that a serviceable system was at hand, we mutated and assembled countless systems before deciding that this was the best, or perhaps 2nd best (1st best is probably don't really care).

17th century mathematician Pierre de Fermat used this same method of creation by hinting in his famous Last Theorem, which states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for any integer value of n greater than two. He implied, in the margin of a page, that he had solved this problem but the margin was too small to contain the proof. Then he peaced out, leaving generations of mathematicians to puzzle it, which they succeeded in doing a mere 358 years later, in 1995. In his marvelous story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Jorge Luis Borges gives us the word "hrönir" for just such a situation: a lost object that is duplicated by the act of searching for it / believing in it. While hrönism has been successful in at least 2 major ways (listed), it is perhaps best suited for fairly trivial concerns, like pancake buttering protocols, mathematical formulae, and has anyone seen a US$20 bill that fell out of my pocket in the United States of America? $10 finders fee available. [2010 c/o Mothers News PO Box 29081 Providence RI 02909]

All of that notwithstanding, let's call this the buttering protocol "the Jacob method" after the ladder of the same name, the ladder seen in a vision (by Jacob) that went from Heaven to Earth and back again, both ways at the same time, with angels on both sides of the steps, above and below. In this case the angels are represented by butter.

OK, here you go while we're on the subject- it's one cup of flour, one cup of milk, and one egg. It seems like you should put more stuff into the batter but: don't. You start with one cup of flour, then you dump a cup of milk, you dump an egg, and then you don't dump anything else. When preparing Swedish pancakes just remember this helpful mneumonic:

Cook in a pan as big as the cakes you want, and when the pan is hot pour in juuuust enough batter to cover the bottom. i like to put butter and cinnamon sugar in them and then roll them up but you can eat anyway you want but i recommend rolling.

Use Swedish pancakes in savory dishes too- spicy lentils with yogurt why not. Eat with hands. If anyone queries your savory pancake style tell them it's "international". Don't say it's the Swedish way, because that would be dishonest, just say it's "international", which isn't even wrong. Remember my dude, who would wear a sufficiently international untucked shirt over khakis to any formal event, and no one had the guts to quiz him on it because no one knew if it was formal or not in whatever culture it came from. That way can can get over picking up any kind goopy food item with a pancake and calling it Christmas: "international". And who'd call it otherwise? The world is always turning after all.

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Links

• I'm sure everyone's got their relaxation youtubes. This isn't "relaxing" by any per se but it is relaxation-adjacent and anyway I like it: Tibetan Buddhist Chants of Namgyal Monastery [youtube]. I admit, I searched for this ("Tibetan music") a while ago based on a conversation with Jace Ewing about aliens, and how a purported CIA disinformation guy spread the rumor that grey aliens like "strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music". I mean I definitely like those things. I like this music and yes, I would travel to Earth for this. I mean I did, in a manner of speaking.
• It was Ornette Coleman's birthday on the 9th and I juuuust missed the marathon birthday broadcast on WKCR(.org). I tuned in at 11:58, long enough to hear the transition from Ornette's birthday to Bix Beiderbecke's. The next day I went to Phil Schaap's website and listened to a couple hours of Ornette birthday broadcasts, which are archived there, along with marathon birthday broadcasts: [link]. There's a kind of crazy documentary about Ornette called "Made In America" that starts with him getting the key to the city of his hometown, Ft Worth Texas. Cut to him later that night, backstage at a black tie concert full of Ft Worth Who's Whos. Ornette pulls the band in close and says "Remember: we're gonna let out all the dogs tonight". Great energy.
• I zoned out hard to this Bill Nace / Samara Lubelski vid: [youtube]
• Keith Fullerton Whitman has been dropping everything in the back catalog into a streamable/downloadable format, including everything on Creel Pone, the bootleg CD-R label that he did pseudonymously even though it was fairly obvious. It's mostly what I would call "academic" synth music, or maybe "tape center" music. They're all good, I think, or they're all good enough that you could start anywhere not make a bad start. Here's a total weirdie from Pierre Henry: [youtube]