Radical pancakes

Today is Sunday, pancake day. Since we are still having cold weather, autumnal pancakes continue to prevail, either pumpkin or sweet potato. Somehow, in all these years of making these pancakes, I had never thought to add cinnamon to them. So I broke it out, and it was pretty good. Then I realized that not only cinnamon was suitable to such a situation, but also cloves and other stuff. I started rooting through the spice drawer and discovered a bottle of "Pumpkin Spice," which had cinnamon, cloves, lemon peel, and a bunch of other stuff. I tried that on a round of pancakes and served some to Graham.

Then I started pressuring him for feedback: "Which one do you like better?" Graham can sometimes be a deliberate eater. He often gets up and paces around the room  between courses and sometimes even between bites. But I -- being in the throes of culinary creation, albeit of the most obvious and pedestrian sort -- really wanted to know his opinion.

But then I had to pull back from pressuring the boy, because he is taking the ACT on Tuesday, and he has been working pretty hard to get ready. He has been doing online practice. At mom's bidding, he has been adjusting his sleep schedule -- which can run pretty late these days, what with him being a 17-year old boy with limitless opportunity to play online chess or debate the fine points of any obscure topic that strikes his fancy. So there's a fair amount of pressure on him already, and I didn't want to ramp it up unnecessarily over my own breakfast food insecurities.

So I apologized, and Graham immediately began to speculate on how funny it would be if they added such a question to the ACT:

Which is a better spicing for pumpkin pancakes? 

A) Cinnamon

B) Pumpkin Spice

C) Plain

While at first we were envisioning as a right or wrong kind of question, we realized quickly that it would actually be more useful to recruiters from various universities for discovering which students are right for them, and we began to riff on the likely preferences of various institutions. 

Anyhoo, we kept ourselves amused for a goodly while.

Of course, when it came time for me to eat mine, I preferred the plain ones, the ones to which I have become accustomed over the decades. Mary was not shocked.