I’m a firm believer that a weekend hasn’t met its full potential until there’s pancakes. As silly as it sounds… I give pancakes a lot of the credit for me finding a relationship with cooking that gives me so much joy now. When I was spending more time traveling, I made them often and shared them with friends or people I was staying with whenever I could.
I swear pancakes really are my love language.
I was pretty much always guaranteed to find oats no matter where I was to make flour as a base for any variety of healthy-ish pancakes I’d want. It was so simple but fun to throw different things into the mix and no matter what, be able to make a pretty plate out of basically a $3 bag of oats and a couple bananas at the end. Anything that sparks a genuine, organic sense of joy is priceless and so worth our time. Nothings too small to do that. We just get it in our heads we’re too big. I’ve been fortunate to be able to pursue other passions. So, what makes this different? I think it’s that I wasn’t grasping for it. I wasn’t trying to make it something it’s not. Not trying to contort myself to fit into what I thought it should be for me. I didn’t seek it out as something to make me feel more valid or interesting as a person or to make my life more exciting. I was completely cracked open to doing things differently whether I liked it or it felt good or not, I was praying a lot too. It’s been humbling, liberating, energizing to realize that that childlike curiosity/creativity can come at any point. I grew up a pretty worried, anxious, hyper-aware kid that I don’t think felt like there was the space, security, or a reason to just play and enjoy for the sake of it. But there’s no expiration date or age cut off. I’m convinced now that that innocence is actually always there somewhere at some level.
It came for me finally at 26 making pancakes in Mexico so never say never.