Pancake Travels

O.K., so in my head, I sang the title of this post to the tune of Oh Christmas Tree.  Try it, it works! Unlike last year, we didn't attempt to make latkes every night of Chanukah; however, we have made them three nights out of four. We made traditional latkes for the first night.  We don't have any pictures of them, but here's the recipe we used if you'd like to make them: Ingredients ·          4 medium Potatoes, peeled ·          1/2 lrg Sweet Onion, diced into 1/4 ″ pieces ·          3 cloves Garlic, crushed or finely minced ·          3/4 T Sea Salt ·          fresh cracked Black Pepper, to taste ·          2 large Eggs, beaten ·          2 teaspoons potato starch ·      ...

We've now reached the third night of Chanukah, and I think my tummy might not make it to the 8th night.  Latkes are VERY filling when eaten night after night.  Here's a cool picture Sam took of the chanukia tonight. So we were going to make a "modernist" (as it was described by Saveur magazine) style latke tonight, but we had some trouble tracking down potato starch.  We DID (key word being did) have a box of it in the cupboard, but we somehow used it all up.  I thought it would be readily available at the grocery store, but I was sadly mistaken.  After the second grocery store and no luck.  Sam informed me that he bought it at the Vons/Pavillions store the last time he bought it.  Oh well!  The one grocery store I didn't go to. While at the second grocery store, I decided to pick up a couple of sweet potatoes and come up with my own version of a sweet potato latke.  I say it's sort of a sweet potato latke because I did use some regular potat...

Welcome to our eight nights of pancakes, or rather, I should say latkes.  We decided to prolong our break from our "travels" since it's Chanukah, and instead we are exploring the many different types of latkes that people are making during this time of year. Traditionally latkes (yiddish for pancake) are made out of potatoes; however, as often happens over time with many things, the view of latkes as always being potato pancakes is being challenged and changed.  Because of this, we decided to devote each night of celebration to a newer idea of what a latke can be. For the first night of Chanukah we decided to stay somewhat traditional in our latkes in that we did make potato pancakes.  However, we used a slightly different recipe than what we would normally use.  Generally speaking, we usually grate the potato in large shreds, but this year we did the smaller shreds.  We also opted to leave off the traditional applesauce or sour cream topping.  You may reca...