Strange times…

February 16, 2025; Athens, Georgia:

The past few months have been a whirlwind as we have bought a house and car and are getting used to being back in this country which seems to have changed dramatically since we last lived here. Friends posted overseas in various government and nonprofit jobs are trying to figure out how to get by as their jobs are ripped out from under them and they watch the humanitarian, educational and medical programs they have worked on to stabilize world health and peace being stopped dead in their tracks. Food rots. Our allies are bewildered. And diseases will spread.

My career has been mostly centered on food writing, though I have had other artistic pursuits all my life. I have finished three novels and recently hired a literary editor and agent, so perhaps others will see my fiction writing now as well. My personal life has always been centered on homemaking — creating an exciting, art-filled home, caring for it and its garden, and feeding my loved ones. I have always maintained that if world leaders would sit down to table together that there could be world peace. But the oligarchs seem to have taken over. Today’s robber barons are more powerful than ever.

Mikel, my husband (and partner of 32 years), just retired from three decades with the service programs of the federal government, most recently as Peace Corps Country Director in Bulgaria, China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Having lived in three authoritarian countries, we know from personal experience the dangers of those governments. We’re trying to avoid the news as much as possible and to concentrate on our house and garden and lives together, but times are scary. Mikel has even begun to cook! And not just from MY cookbooks, but from books that he has purchased himself. By authors I do not know. He did make the Sweet Potato Cake that I developed for the International Olive Oil Council (see photo, above) and first published in my “coffee table book,” Hoppin’ John’s Charleston, Beaufort & Savannah: Dining at Home in the Lowcountry (Clarkson Potter, 1997). I blogged about baking with olive oil many years ago and a version of that blog entry was included in Charleston to Phnom Penh, the anthology of my writing that the University of South Carolina Press published late in 2022.

After six years in the tropics, I have enjoyed the four seasons here in Georgia, though the weather has been downright bizarre. It was 80 degrees F here last week — the first week of February. 50 mph winds hurled around us through last night’s thunder and rain. And they say by Wednesday it will dip below freezing again. Thank goodness our camellia has almost finished blooming. We have stopped eating big breakfasts, but occasionally I’ll make a big, late one for us. This morning I visited an old favorite, Banana Pecan Pancakes, which appeared in my second book, The New Southern Cook (Bantam, 1995). I was inspired to make them by a gift of maple syrup from our friends Blair and Betsy Dorminey, who own an inn in Vermont where the syrup is made at Stone Hollow Farm.

The wind is whipping through these bare trees. The ground is covered with camellia blossoms. I didn’t have buttermilk, so I substituted whole milk and used two teaspoons of baking powder instead of baking soda.

Here’s the recipe:

Banana Pecan Pancakes from The New Southern Cook

Most southerners forgo traditional breakfasts these days, but we all enjoy an occasional old-fashioned eye-opener of pancakes and bacon or sausage drenched in good syrup. These buttermilk pancakes are made special with the addition of fruit and nuts, and by using soft southern flour, buttermilk, and baking soda, thay nearly float off the plate. None of those heavy flapjacks from camping trips here!

2 cups all-purpose flour, preferably soft southern flour such as White Lily

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, separated

2 cups buttermilk

2 tablespoons melted butter

1/4 cup chopped pecans

1 or 2 bananas, peeled

Preheat an oven to its lowest setting. Preheat a well-seasoned griddle to medium hot. In the meantime, sift the flour, soda, and salt. In a small mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. In a large bowl, mix the yolks with the buttermilk, then stir in the sifted ingredients. Stir in the butter and the nuts and mix well. Fold in the egg whites.

Ladle batter onto the hot griddle in circles about 4 inches wide and 1/4 inch thick. Slice the banana a little thinner than the pancake and place about 4 slices on each pancake. Cook until the pancakes are full of holes and have begun to brown on the edges. Turn and cook on the other side. Remove the pancakes to a plate and place in the warmed oven while you cook the rest of the pancakes.

Serve immediately with butter and syrup, and breakfast sausage or bacon.

Makes about 12 pancakes or 4 servings.

 

 

 

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