By SUZY HOLT
My husband comes out in his maroon moth-eaten robe, a beloved hand-me-down from his grandfather. It baffles me that he wears that scratchy wool relic. “Morning” as he moves behind me for coffee, then sits at one edge of the round oak table to welcome the hotcake that fills his plate completely.
His hairy arm stretches from the sleeve to reach the jar of peanut butter and plunge his knife deep into its nutty depth. Bringing out a teetering mound, I hope it won’t drop to the table before he slathers it on the hotcake. His spoon dips into the bowl of Nancy’s plain honey yogurt; a thick layer hides the peanut butter.
Martin is a giant in physique and spirit. He lives large.
He calls this “Mountain Martin’s Famous Hotcake Mix,” and we mix it up to serve to friends, relatives, and his work crews at every occasion. It’s a thing.
I concoct it with a riff on Adele Davis’s recipe in Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit. In 1970, she encouraged us to “Breakfast like a king.”
Whole wheat and soy flours, oat bran, wheat germ, and brewer’s yeast intermingle in one of his pottery jars. They wait for milk and egg to come alive.
At the stove another ladle of batter sizzles on the griddle, and I finish frying three eggs over-easy. As he streams our homemade chokecherry syrup artfully across the yogurt, I hoist the cast iron skillet from the stove to the table and place two eggs to top off his hotcake.
My tasting brain recoils at the thought of egg yolk mixing with sweet syrup; my yoke goes to the edge of my plate. Orange juice adds color to the tableau. Crisped bacon liberated from the beep of the microwave releases its irresistible aroma.
The combined fragrance of earthy hotcake, fried eggs, and salty, fatty bacon floods the room, floods our senses, gets us salivating.
No conversation interrupts our forks sliding through the top layers and pushing through the slight resistance of the hotcake into our expectant mouths.
Our teeth and tongues smush and savor the sweet and tart flavors, the crunchy and tender textures, in a breakfast ritual nourishing a marriage for 46 years. MSN
