Pancakes

Whenever I want to remember my dad, I make these. (Which is often) Dad loved making these for breakfast on weekend mornings or for Friday night dinners during Lent. This will stay up there with Fish Soup on Christmas Eve as a Kellen tradition! (Although I have extended the Fish Soup to New Year's Day as well - an Osterman tradition!)

2 cups flour
2 cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg

Mix together, batter will be very thick. This is OK. Spoon onto heated griddle and cook. You can add blueberries or some bananas (chopped), mixed with chopped pecans and cinnamon/sugar/nutmeg mix.

Various and Sundry

Spring break is almost over. Oak pollen has replaced pine as the current irritant. But that means new leaves very soon. :-) One of the three oaks in the back has little leaves unfolding, while the other two are flowering. The front oak is taking its dear sweet time as always. In about 2-3 weeks, just when we are thinking it is dead, it will drop all its brown leaves, bud out, flower, then leaf out that quickly. It is our "squirrel tree", planted by a squirrel in our back yard a few years back, yielding a nice little sapling that had promise. It continues to surprise us!

Catherine and Megan left for Japan and are now returning for a week or so until things settle down there. While it is a tremendous relief to know they are out of harm's way for now, I do hope they are able to return soon and continue the amazing adventure.

And so it goes.