Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

It’s Saturday morning. I haven’t made myself pancakes in literal months. I’m fresh off a visit from my dear parents who came to the city to see a concert. It ended in me returning from the gym on Friday morning, finding my dad standing on a stool in my living room taking apart my ceiling fan. Moments later, a simple plan for a plant hanger caused me to raise my voice and put the kibosh on my parents vision of engineering a NASA-level plant display complete with electrical wiring and reclaimed wood.

A stressful morning lead to an evening of decompressing with beer and some enhanced gummies. All this to say I woke up with some delayed munchies that eggs just couldn’t satisfy. I had bought a ton of fruit and crap like peanut butter to feed my folks breakfast during their visit and most of it went untouched. The fruit was on its last day of being edible and peanut butter is my literal kryptonite. I had to devise a plan to use both up before the fruit flies show up and/or I found myself standing next to my sink eating the entire jar of PB with a tiny spoon in the middle of the night. Neither is a welcomed scenario. ENTER PANCAKES.

Feeling dazed and oddly hungover, the intense malaise prevented me from doing anything elaborate. Between beer, gummies, shoveling hummus into my maw at an alarming rate and drinking three bottles of regular Mountain Dew that I thought was Diet, my blood sugar was out. of. WACK. I turned to nature’s sugar to set me right. Blueberry banana oatmeal pancakes. Just add peanut butter…sauce. And breakfast booze.

Nothing screams freshness like a half blackened banana being so ripe the peel could barely be stripped away, but it meant less work when I got to the mashing. What energy I saved in rotten banana mashing, I needed for the blueberries which were strikingly under-ripe and firm. Those fuckers wouldn’t mush. I spent what felt like hours trying to flatten them in some type of cathartic release over the psychological gauntlet the last few days had provided and ended up with an acute attack of mentally-imposed arthritis to go along with my actual arthritis.

Once the bananas were mashed and blueberries pulverized, all I had to do was add an egg (beaten, like my morale), a few tablespoons of oatmeal, a few tablespoons of oat flour and a dash of baking powder. I mixed it all up and let it rest while I got my pan ready to receive my my rotten banana batter.

The peanut butter sauce was also pathetically easy. One scoop of crunchy PB into a bowl, some vanilla extract, almond milk and a dash of granulated sugar and cracked salt…and VOILA. Fucking peanut butter sauce, man. I added just enough almond milk to get the consistency thinned out but still able to coat a spoon. You don’t want peanut butter water. Well, you might but we’d need to have a conversation about what’s going on in your life.

Coffee is brewed, a few Key Lime LaCroix’s already anxiously slammed and we’re ready to drop batter. I went for smaller pancakes, about ¼ cup each, and got to work pouring these baby banana bloob barfs into my butter-flavored PAM coated pan. After a few minutes, they were all nice and browned on one side and ready for a flip. While these dainty cakes were finishing up, I put my mixing bowl of peanut butter sauce on the burner, just long enough to avoid seizing up and to keep it pourable.

AND POUR I DID. Once I got my banana flapped jacks on a plate, I got to dumping that sugar-laiden crunchy peanut-buttery goo right on top of that stack. I watched it consume my panned cakes from top to bottom and decorated my banana tower with some of the remaining voluptuous blueberries. I decided to garnished with a ridiculously ripe peach that had a giant brown dented bruise on one side. Whatever, it still fucking tasted good.

In hindsight, I probably put too much peanut butter sauce on these petite pancakes. The initial bites were completely coated, but the crunchy aspect brought the texture. Once I got to the center of the stack, the nuance and bright flavors of the banana were immediately present alongside the tart, acidic flavor of the under-ripe blueberries. It was a nice counter to the richness of the peanut butter. 

For as little work as I had to put in, I was deeply satisfied and decided to reward myself with more of nature’s sugar. Instead of additional rotten fruit, I went with intentionally fermented fruit, pouring a glass of my own home brewed hard cider. Dry AF, tasty and tart to boot. Besides, I had a beer fest to photograph later in the day. What better way to prepare your liver for 10 hours of drinking than to have yourself a glass of alcohol.