Last night’s dinner
I forgot to mention how great these nuts are with cocktails. A martini made with vodka, lychee juice (just get a can of them), a splash of cranberry juice and a dash of cointreau is a really good match.

Something that I am finding out
It is pretty obvious that my weekend posts are going to be different from my weekday posts. Weekends will likely concentrate more on entertaining and weeknights will be practical dinner food.

The inspiration
Each Sunday my mom would make a special breakfast for us and we would all hang-out at the table talking, reading, planning…. It was usually eggs and bacon or pancakes-the usual. My mom is not a great cook (great baker though) and the eggs were invariably WAY overcooked, the bacon tended towards the burnt side (I still love super crispy/burnt bacon)and the pancakes were always from a mix and had a weird kind of spongey texture. However, we thought it was great and always had lots of maple syrup fresh from the farm. We didn’t know that pancakes could taste any different and eggs were supposed to be rock hard or with uncooked eggwhite. I didn’t even know that you could make pancakes from scratch until I was an adult and looked for a recipe one day when I didn’t have any mix.

Here is a super easy recipe that I find even handier than the mix because I don’t have to remember to buy a box of stuff.

This week I have bananas (unexpectedly) in my organic bin and there is nothing tastier than banana pancakes on a Sunday morning.

1 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/4 tsp baking powder, 2 T. sugar, 2 eggs, 1 cup milk, 2 T. olive oil and one banana chopped. Put everything together until JUST mixed (overmixing leads to tough pancakes).

You can use this mix for waffles too.

Serve with maple syrup. For something extra spectacular try heating the maple syrup with a bit of butter and briefly whisking.

Makes enough for two very hungry people to have for brunch after being up all night with a baby. Actually that would be the case every other night but last night Madison slept for six glorious hours IN A ROW. I have never felt so refreshed in my entire life.