Grandma's buttermilk sourdough pancakes

I wish a had a picture of the pancakes my grandma used to make. She lived in a village with barely any electricity, and no running water or sewer system. The water was taken from a well in the yard, and the bathroom was an outhouse behind the barn. It was "rough"living, at least my mom recalls it being rough growing up there. I can certainly see how it probably was. But for kids it was glorious! We visited for a few weeks every summer in childhood until grandma passed away, around the time I was 10. Grandma did have a tiny fridge, and a gas stove but rarely used those. She mostly used her giant brick oven. In this brick oven she cooked the best pancakes I have ever tasted! She used to make them big too, probably 9"-10" we'd put one on the soup bowl and put a generous pad of butter in the center then run it all around till it melted and created a puddle of melted butter in the center. Then we'd tear off chunk of this delicious pancake dip them in the butter and enjoy. I so wish I had a picture of that.

For years my mom and her sisters tried to replicate the recipe, no one had it or thought to get it form Grandma before she passed. No one ever got even close! They all wrote it off on the lack of the big brick oven. Alas I think the problem was they didn't use sourdough starter. I started using sourdough starter 2 years ago and just randomly my mom mentioned that grandma used to have some bubbly mixture she kept going that she kept on a shelf in the brick oven, and she added this bubbly mixture to the pancakes. I figured it had to have been sourdough, test drove a recipe and what do you know, it tastes like grandma's pancakes!

The recipe I've come up with is rather basic, no eggs or oil/butter involved which works out great for those days when I'm low on ingredients. This batch is quite large but these freeze well and reheat well in the toaster. Anyways here it goes!

2 cups sourdough starter straight out of the fridge
2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
1.5 Tsp baking soda
1 Tsp. salt
3Tbsp. sugar (more if you like your pancakes sweet, I prefer mind pretty neutral)
Mix sourdough, buttermilk, sugar, salt and baking soda together. Stir in the flour and let the batter rest for at least 20 mins.

I cook them on cast iron over low heat, but proceed as you normal would with any other pancake. Enjoy!

Second time around, cloth diapering addition.

I didn't cloth diaper Penni full time till about 3 months old so I was super excited to put Cora in fluff from day 1. She's now 1 year old and never been in a disposable, kind of proud of that.  Second time around was a bit easier because I knew which diapers I preferred so I didn't have to waste time and money buying stuff to experiment with. The only, very minor, issue we've had is figuring out a new washing routine. With Penni there was a top loading washer, now we have a front loader. But that worked itself out very quickly. Some of the reasons we use cloth
  -It's environmentally conscious/ responsible.
  -Saves lots and lots of money. With Penni I spent about $600 on a stash, and when she was potty learned I sold it for about $200-$250.  So overall I diapered her for 2 years for just under $400. Can't do that with disposables, never mind natural or lesser chemical loaded disposables.
  -It's cute! seriously, adorable!
  -My baby deserves to have organic bamboo or cotton on her bum haha.
  -I don't like chemicals, I realize that you can't always avoid them, but I do my best with the resources we have, and using cloth has been an obvious way to lessen chemical exposure. Here is a link explaining the chemicals used in a disposable.

Lastly to prove my point, that fluff is cute, here are some pics!

This is 1 or 2 days old, aw how I miss having a teeny baby 

A couple weeks old, so cute, so little!

Our diaper stash, well it's a little different now but quite similar.

Cora is doing her part! her shirt says "changing the world one diaper at a time"

Those are wool pants (soft, not at all scratchy) wool is naturally water repellant so it makes a nice breathable cover.

Fitted diapers are my favorites, and that particular diaper is one of my all time favorites. 

If you've considered cloth diapering but are scared or intimidated by all the information out there, then please give them a try! It's a lot more simple than it seems, I promise. 

Penni and Cora, if you girls ever read this, I hope you'll cloth diaper your kids! I'll help.

Mother's Day 2014

Mother's Day has come and gone and it was a low key weekend, but I did feel special I suppose. Every time David is clueless as to what to do or get for me for some special celebration he suggests a trip to Santa Cruz. He knows I love that place and will always be excited to go, and it's always special!
We expected it to be windy and cold so we left the sand toys in the car not expecting to be able to play on the beach much. Well it ended up being lovely, but the car was far enough where we didn't want to go back to it for the toys. Penni didn't seem to care and frolicked in the ocean, got completely soaked and had a blast!

 

Cora played in the sand, ate some sand, kept offering Penni her sun glasses haha.

Eventually I took her to the water's edge and put her feet in the water, when we did that with Penni around the same age she started crying and wanted nothing to do with the cold ocean water. Well Cora didn't mind at all! She actually kept trying to wiggle out of my grip and crawl straight into the ocean, my little risk taker.

Went out to eat at one of our favorite places downtown, Rosie McCann's, that place just always serves up yummy food. It's technically a pub and I don't think they have any high chairs, so Cora hung out on the bench. Little opportunist took advantage of having full range of motion kept swiping handfuls of food from our plates even though we kept giving her food.

It was a lovely day, and to finish it up right we had to get some ice cream at Penny Ice creamery, Penni thought that was great! She approves of the ice cream as well.

On Sunday we all had a family gathering at my parents' house. Cora's favorite activity of the day was climbing the stairs. Repeatedly.

And some cake love for all the wonderful mamas, I hope every mom felt special and had a good day :)

12 Months Update

My baby is 1! How did that happen!? I can't believe how insanely quickly this year has flown by. Somehow I'm a mother for a 5 year old and a 1 year old. Wow.
Stats, she is 21 pounds and 31 inches long. Wearing size 18 months for the most part. Refusing to walk but crawls and mowgli crawls and lightning speeds! She has 6 teeth, 2 bottom front, 2 top front, 1 eye tooth and 1 random molar. They don't seem to come in any kind of order haha.
We are still exclusively bed sharing with no plans to change that.  When she does start sleeping through the night, whenever it may be, we will probably try to have the girls share a bed. Penni is so far excited at the prospect of sleeping with her sister, we'll see if she still excited by the time Cora is ready. Still breastfeeding, tons. Although she did finally start eating solids a few weeks ago, we are now giving her grains too and she seems to love it! Still doing baby led weaning, I do help her with yogurt and apple sauce but other than those 2 she pretty much feeds herself all the time, making giant messes of course. Still cloth diapering, still baby wearing, still rear facing in her car seat. She's also still never had a bottle, and at this point if need be I'd just pump and put that into a sippy cup. Have I mentioned that I can't believe she is already 1!? Sigh.
She is quite the character, plays peekaboo all the time, makes silly faces to get a reaction, unplugs any and all cords/night lights she can get her hands on.  Unloads any and all cabinets/drawers she can before getting caught.  Waves franticly when someone is leaving, squeals when someone comes over, and gives open mouth kisses at her discretion. She started signing "milk" this week so that's been exciting, sometimes she'll sign "all done"as well.
A few pics from the day of her actual birthday, her party is this weekend.