Pancake Travels

Our next Sunday brings me to Argentina, the home of dulce de leche.  As I researched pancakes in Argentina, I discovered that Argentinians seem to use dulce de leche on just about any item they can.  I was sort of hoping for a more savory pancake from them, but I guess sweet was what it was going to be. I must admit that neither Sam nor I are overly fond of dulce de leche.  Don't get me wrong, I love sweets, pastries, cookies, etc.; however, dulce de leche was just something I have never been able to enjoy.  My lack of enjoyment of this sweet is so bad that I almost decided to skip Argentinian pancakes.  However I sucked up my disappointment and decided to forge ahead with Argentina anyway. I decided that I should try to make my own dulce de leche.  I hoped that homemade dulce de leche would prove tastier than store bought.  Here is the recipe I used to make dulce de leche: Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Pour one 14 oz. can of sweetened conden...

O.K., so even though I'm behind on blogging, I feel I still have to post about why I skipped a week.  The Sunday following Antigua and Berbuda  I was supposed to make pancakes from Argentina.  The plan was for me to get up early, run in my half marathon, and then come home and have pancakes for breakfast.  I had all of the components for Argentinian pancakes made the night before, so it would be just a matter of minutes to make them on Sunday. Well, the best laid plans never happen the way they are supposed to.  After my run, I was exhausted.  I expected to be tired, but I thought I'd be O.K. to make the pancakes still.  I knew halfway through the run that I shouldn't even have gone to the race.  I had just come off of a really severe cold (possibly pneumonia), and the run just finished me off for the weekend.  I decided to make Argentinian pancakes the following Sunday, and I went home and curled up in bed for the rest of the day. Sam did ge...

So, with the exception of Antarctica (which isn't really a country), Antigua and Barbuda is the second country I've come across that truly doesn't have a pancake recipe.  Anguilla was the first one.  Antigua and Barbuda is an island country teeming with fish recipes, as one would expect from an island country.  However, search as I did, I couldn't find anything resembling pancakes.  I did find a dumpling type of recipe called ducana.  It sounded really yummy, so I decided to attempt to modify the recipe and turn it into a sweet potato pancake.  Go here for the original ducana recipe and pictures, and you'll see why I wanted to modify this into a potato pancake.  Here are the ingredients I used for our modified recipe: 2 sweet potatoes, peeled 1/2 cup of unsweetened, shredded coconut 1 cup of flour 1/4 cup of sugar 3 Tablespoons coconut milk 2 eggs 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg After peeling the sweet potatoes, grate them using a hand grate...

Next on the list of countries is Antarctica.  To my surprise, they actually do have a cuisine; however, it's mostly the cuisine of whatever country the scientific researchers currently present in the country want.  I contemplated making some of the pancake items we found, but decided it would be better to leave them for each of their respective native countries.  I did learn some interesting tidbits about Antarctica in my research, and thought I'd share them. Technically, Antarctica isn't a country since it has no form of government. The continent can only be used as a scientific and environmental reserve. Antarctica can not, under any circumstances, be used for military purposes. Up to 5000 people live in Antarctica throughout the year. There is a University of Antarctica.  Seriously, I don't think this one is a true fact, but I did run across this website on the university (which I'm pretty sure is a complete hoax), which I found amusing to peruse.  Take a loo...

O.K., so life has seriously gotten in the way of my pancake blogging.  Here is what has been distracting me from blogging each week: A brand new fence to enclose my side yard!  Now I can eat outside, and it's all done just in time to enjoy my summer meals!  Yay! Despite life getting in the way of blogging, I've continued to eat pancakes each Sunday.  Up next is the lovely country of Anguilla.  On (figuratively speaking) this lovely little island I discovered the delicious version of a pancake called a Johnny cake.  It is not a pancake in the sense of what Americans are used to; however, it isn't quite bread either.  It is somewhere in between.  In doing our research for Anguilla, I discovered that it's believed Johnny cakes were originally called journey cakes.  This is because there was no rise time required while sailing on the ships to the islands when making these, thus making it easier to make while traveling.  Also, Anguillans eat ...