Cooking

My daughter and I were recently making pancakes for supper. She had mixed up the batter, complete with rice flour all over herself and the counter, I was putting the batter on the griddle, and she was flipping the cakes over.

My little lady doesn't help often in the kitchen - she tends to get bored waiting for things to cook - but she is always ready and willing to participate in pancakes.

As we were talking, she asked me to make her pancake animals, but quite frankly I wasn't in the mood. We had recently made a trip to the Amboy Cottage Cafe, where the cook makes AMAZING pancake animals (seriously, they will blow your mind) and I didn't feel like having my skills compared to that.

Guilt took over when I saw how earnestly she wanted a butterfly pancake, so with the little batter I had left I made three oblong shapes connected to each other, roughly in the shape of a butterfly.

It was a lackluster effort, but this child was overjoyed. She thought the butterfly pancake was fantastic, and she begged me to write a story for the newspaper about my talent for cooking. If she was a teenager, I would think she was being sarcastic.

This is a child who tells me every night, unless it is pizza, that she doesn't like what is on her plate, even before she eats it. Every. single. night.

I told her couldn't write a story like that, but she insisted it must be done. So, this one is for you Bella, a story about my cooking talent. On the record, so you never forget what a wonderful cook you think I am.