Saturday, January 17, 2009

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 9


Is it week 9 already? I still have a freezer full of food and a pile of squash, so things must be going okay.

This week's meal was the grumpiest brunch ever, as I learned that people who are feeling poorly after surgery shouldn't try to cook brunch before taking their pain medicine. Duh.

The stars of the show were blueberry pancakes with a blueberry/maple syrup that I made with the extras (I cooked them down a bit in a sauce pan, mushing some of them for juice and adding maple syrup toward the end. It's a great way to use the juice left over from frozen fruit!) There was a very nice blueberry farmer at one of the markets this summer (in Westerville, Ohio), and I managed to put a fair bit up in the freezer. The pancake mix was from Quiver Full farm (who grow and mill corn and soft wheat) and the syrup from Pleiades Maple farm. On the side was our usual pepper bacon from Blue's Creek.

I expect to repeat this same brunch with raspberries, blackberries, and more blueberries. I've been making pancakes with apples (I still have a fridge full!) so the berries have remained in hiding until now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was just thinking the same thing, week 9 already? But maybe that's a reason to hope that the "dark days" will soon (well, not soon enough!) be over and we can celebrate the light and growing season. In the meantime though, blueberry pancakes sound like a good start to remember a taste of summer. How does the blueberry and maple taste together? I've had berry toppings and maple syrup but always separately. Does the maple come through strongly?

Anne said...

The blueberry and maple are great together! The maple wasn't very strong, but I think it should have been... I didn't quite sweeten the topping enough though, so it was a little tart. Next time I will probably add some maple sugar to sweeten it up more (I didn't want to add too much maple syrup, as two people can only eat so much topping!)