Cooking Lessons

It's easy to forget how much time it took you to learn a skill that you perform as unconsciously as breathing; like tying your shoes, riding a bike, or skipping. Attempting to teach those skills can be difficult as you try to think through exactly how it is you do it. I had another one of those experiences this morning as I tried to teach the boys how to make pancakes.

I was in a purely supervisory position, trying to explain how to crack an egg without getting shells in the batter, how to use a spatula, how to know when it was time to flip the pancake. Much accumulated instruction goes into something so simple.

The boys did relatively well with the mixing and pouring of the batter. The real challenge lay in the flipping of the pancake. Too slow, and the pancake breaks or folds over on itself. Too fast and the pancake is not properly positioned and falls half off the pan, or onto the other pancake cooking on the griddle. We experienced these mishaps several times, but less and less as we went along.

So, I present the first pancakes cooked by The Rationalist and Intuitive Monkey:

They were great.

Bon Appetit!