Pancakes for one

I don't understand how people overeat when they're depressed. In my experience, breakups are Nature's appetite suppressants.

Cooking for one? What's the point? So much about the eating experience for me is about *sharing* meals and conversation, about nurturing those I care about with wholesome and delicious dishes. How many times this week have I opened the fridge and been completely disinterested? Who am I going to share good food and scintillating conversation with now that yet another relationship has tanked? My houseplants? The worm bin residents? My bicycle? Bah. Looks like cheese and crackers for dinner again. (It's a good thing I've had lots of cooking classes to teach, else I'd have wasted away altogether: who can resist sampling mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup and garden thyme prepared by 2nd graders, or beet and apple salad hand-grated by 4th graders, or spicy kale chips baked by middle schoolers? Not me. It may be significantly more lonely in my apartment these days, but thanks to my students at least I'm managing to get some good food in me a few times a day during the school week.)

The most depressing meal to prepare and eat alone, I've decided, is not dinner (partly because it's socially acceptable to have a couple glasses of wine during dinner) but weekend breakfast. You know, that time when one lazes around a bit in bed, snuggling and maybe dozing awhile before putting on some espresso and bustling about the kitchen to assemble a little something tasty for two. And then sometimes heading back to bed? That's the time I'm talking about, when loneliness is the most stark. Well, I'm tired of feeling sad. And today, for the first time in a week, I woke up hungry. So this morning, since I had minimal supplies around -- I am less motivated to buy food when self pity hits, too -- I decided to try a recipe my friend Carina had mentioned to me a few days ago: 2-Ingredient Pancakes. I had both ingredients and somehow this morning the idea of making pancakes for one seemed less pathetic than it did last weekend. Maybe it was the unexpected sunshine pouring through my bedroom window when I awoke. Maybe it was the fun time I spent with my dear friend Quynh last night. Maybe I'm starting to heal. Whatever the reason, the result was delicious and I devoured the whole plateful myself. And so, dear readers, single and otherwise, I offer you my adaptation of:

Flourless Banana Pancakes for One
Makes about 3 pancakes
Ingredients

• 1 medium, ripe banana
• 1 large egg (or probably two small ones would work, and yield an extra flapjack)
• 1 pinch baking powder
• 1 large pinch ground cinnamon
• butter

Directions

1. Heat a skillet on the stovetop to medium heat.
2. In a small mixing bowl, mash banana well with a fork. (There can be small lumps, but you don't want big banana globs or it will be weird.)
3. Mix in the egg, then baking powder and cinnamon.
4. When pan is hot, add a small pat of butter, which will melt and coat the bottom of the pan.
5. Pour a Tablespoon or so of batter into the pan and cook your awesome little pancake until the bottom appears set (20-30 seconds, when you see a couple small bubbles pop on top), then flip with spatula and cook another 10 seconds or so til cooked through, but not burnt.
6. Repeat with remaining batter. Serve warm with butter and syrup.

I suspect this recipe scales up just fine, but it is handy to have a 2-ingredient, 3-pancake recipe around.

Squeaky clean

When folks hear that I biked around the country, some get the misguided impression that I'm some sort of crackerjack bike mechanic. Those of you who have been following the blog for a little while probably know otherwise. This year, feeling a little bit extravagant, I decided to take Ollie in for her first professional tune-up. After all, she'd be a solid sidekick for close to six years now. She deserved a good deep cleaning of the drivetrain, new cables and housing, non-ratty bar tape and handlebar hoods. In short: the works. (Okay, maybe some of this extravagance was brought on by the fact that the bike shop was having a half-price winter service special, but my steady Ollie has needed some serious TLC for a little while now, as evidenced by the fraying brake cables, missing screws, and squeaking crankshaft.)

It'd been three weeks since I left my dear two-wheeled partner in the shop, and I must say that when I picked her up from The Bike Rack yesterday, she looked beautiful. Now let's see if that persistent squeak in the pedals remains....

Floridian foraging

This winter, after a trip even further north to visit friends in Connecticut, Vermont, and Canada, after Christmas, I was fortunate to head south at last with one of my oldest and dearest friends. The least expensive flights we could find were to Florida, and though Becky and I were both leery of the proliferation of pastel shorts and mobile homes, we could not resist the chance to be in a warm, sunny climate for a week. So we went.

After numerous flight delays and some misadventures with our first airbnb rental, we settled into things: long walks on the beach, cooking lots of fish and gorging ourselves on citrus, kayaking. On one of our final days in the Keys, as we headed out to run a couple of errands, Becky spied some low-growing banana trees. Sure, they were clearly on the edge of someone's yard, but c'mon, they weren't going to eat all of those... I kept an eye out for angry neighbors while Becky braved the potentially-tarantula-laden bunch to glean a few ripe ones for us to nibble on.

The next day, after a couple hours of pretty intense kayaking around the mangroves, narrowly avoiding getting pooped on by the many pelicans and cormorants and managing not to get stung by a beautiful but deadly Portuguese man-of-war, we noticed what appeared to be some ripe coconuts in the palms near where we'd pulled in. I was thirsty and they looked delicious. After some misguided attempts trying to climb the trees, then equally ineffective efforts to knock the coconuts out of the tree with some large rocks and chunks of wood -- most of which ended up perched high up in the branches next to the irresistible looking coconuts -- we hit on a foolproof strategy: using our paddles to knock the delicious treenuts down.

Success! And then, Lord of the Flies style, I smashed them against a nearby concrete slab. In the end, though the meat inside was not yet edible, we guzzled two green coconuts' worth of fortifying liquid and left the rest for the birds and lizards to feast on.

And vultures, apparently, though I didn't realize they were so abundant until we made our way to the Everglades on the last day of the trip....