A Sweet Spoonful

I knew I’d be traveling to my mom’s cabin in Upstate New York long before Sam and I started dating. But a few months ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to share this place with him. So I wrote a letter with my flight number and a few lines. Something to the effect of: Family is important to me. You’re important to me. I’d love for you to be here. A few weeks later—after having not seen each other for five weeks and after coming to terms with the fact that Sam was swamped with work and wouldn’t be able to make it to the cabin —weeks that had started to feel like months as the reality of tight hand-holding, knee-cap cupping, and the sexiest neck on this side of the Mississippi became more of a memory than I was all that comfortable with, I too got an email with a flight number. It wasn’t my flight number. The passenger’s name was Sam. 

And so it was: we would travel to the cabin together. And it’d go a little something like this: Sam would make fun of the size of my suitcase  (it was a little overboard, I’ll admit) but would also be the first to lug it up curbs and staircases. He met my aunts and uncles, grandparents, a few cousins and significant others and settled right into the fine art of porch-sitting with comfort and grace.

He sang along to “America the Beautiful” after a few Negronis at the dinner table on the 4^th of July (this is, for the record, the first time we’ve done this. I swear.) He flipped blueberry pancakes like a champ for a gaggle of brightly-chinoed and loafered men and cousins gearing up to get in a run in before the mosquitoes descended.

He beat me at tennis after I’d boasted that it could never happen. He helped me quickly lick the too-big soft-serve cone I mistakenly ordered just so it wouldn’t drip all over the hot car. He volunteered to always drive and point out landmarks so I could easily find my way around the country roads if need be.

Sam entertained himself while Zoe and I whipped up banana pudding in the kitchen and had earth-shatteringly important conversations such as how to best relay tone in text messages or the average price of a studio apartment in Manhattan.

In the late afternoon, Sam would disappear on the kayak around noses and bends and row back after what seemed like hours as if it were nothing. He’d ask my grandmother how she and my grandfather met and tell me things about the two of them I’d never known before. We’d stay up late reading in overstuffed arm chairs while everyone else was tucked into bed, taking turns refilling the one glass of bourbon that we passed back and forth. The whirring upstairs fan, the clanking of ice cubes, and the turning of pages the only sounds disrupting the hot, still night. He’d study maps of the area surrounding the cabin and read old books on local history strewn throughout the bedrooms. And chat with men on ferries.

Thinking back on the past week and a half, I feel a sense of calm. A calm that is so common after a good vacation where the days are punctuated only by meals, swims, occasional tennis matches, and chapters of whatever novel you’re reading.

Days stretch on and on and you begin to feel farther and farther from the stresses of your business or rent checks or finding a decent parking spot outside of your apartment. So it’s that calm, certainly. But it’s also a calm that has stemmed from a certain kind of knowing. A knowing that, despite the distance and the time that inevitably must pass before we see each other again, things are just right. We’re doing things just right. And I know the future will include many more drinks, walks, morning runs, early evening swims, airplane trips, talks about books, and pancakes.

So I leave you this morning with a recipe for the blueberry pancakes we made up at the cabin. Pancakes have been written about before, for sure. In many ways, there’s nothing revolutionary to discuss—there are only so many ways to do a new kind of pancake. So you won’t find that here.  But you will find a rock-solid recipe adapted from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook that has a likeable (and not all that common) splash of melted butter in the batter itself—a recipe that you can whip up in moments to feed a hungry morning crowd gathered around your dining room table.

A recipe your grandpa might talk about the next day. As with most pancake recipes, feel free to add your favorite fruit or little bits of chocolate. You can easily turn these into fluffier pancakes (referred to as griddlecakes in the book) with a trick that Sam taught me and that The Fanny Farmer Cookbook mentions, too: whip the egg whites and incorporate them separately.

Blueberry Pancakes
Slightly adapted from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook
The amount of milk you use here determines the thickness of the pancakes, so start slow.

Ingredients:
½-3/4 cup milk
2 Tablespoon butter, melted
1 egg
1 cup white flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 Tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
3/4 cup blueberries

Directions:
Beat the milk, butter and egg lightly in a medium-sized bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt and add them all at once to the first mixture, stirring just enough to dampen the flour. Add blueberries and stir to combine. Lightly butter a griddle and over medium heat, pour about ¼ cup (for larger griddlecakes) of batter to form each pancake.

Makes: 16 pancakes

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