Around the time I got married (19 years ago) we were in a little family-style restaurant/diner. Family owned, by a Greek family, IIRC. Very nice place. Clean, pleasant, good food.
The menu had a brief description of every offering, along the lines of Bacon CheeseburgerAn American Classic! Served with Fries. You get the idea.
Well, there, on the breakfast menu, was Ham Pancakes. No big deal, they’re pancakes with diced ham tossed in the batter. Fine. But the description underneath said Cowboys Love 'Em!
Huh? Keep in mind this was in Rochester, NY, not Casper, Wyoming. And this wasn’t part of the children’s menu. Where the heck did the cowboys come from? Do they work at Kodak, or something?
I’ve been trying to figure this out for two decades.
Referencing the Cowboys/Redskins rivalry and vis a vis the Hogs perhaps? Still, what that has to do with pancakes I don’t know, it just doesn’t stack up.
I suppose it’s better than describing them as the “World Famous Award Winning Pancakes.” Then you’ve got to spend all breakfast looking around the restaurant for the damn plaque.
Speaking of meat on pancakes, does anyone remember that episode of the Simpsons where Homer buys the subliminal weight-loss tapes? At the beginning, he’s watching a commercial for a fast food restaurant where they advertise a burger that had beef, bacon, ham, and a fried egg on it. I went to a dive this weekend where they actually sold that!
Mmmmm… ham in pancakes… I’ve never had it, but bits of ham cooked up into waffles is excellent. Haven’t you people ever had ham with a honey or maple glaze on it? Ham with waffles & maple syrup is heavenly!
Ham in panckakes makes perfect sense. Ham and most pork products are delicious with fruits and sweet products. I got a recipe for pork cops with cranberries and orange marmalade today – guess what I am having for dinner!
I don’t like pancakes much but I could see me eating ham in my pancakes with a lush maple syrup. Pancakes are just a sweet bread like thingy…
Come to think about it more, they have honey ham that is just sweet but the salt of the ham works well with it.
My parents always threw bits of bacon into the waffles. They claimed it was to keep the waffle from sticking, but I never liked it. Eventually they let me eat ones without bacon. (While I do like meat mixed with maple syrup, I like jam or jelly on my waffles and not syrup. Fruit & bacon I do not like together.)
As for the restaurant’s menu, I think it was something along the lines of, “Hey, maybe some folks in Rochester, NY want to live the carefree rough’n’ready lifestyle of the Great American Cowboy. So if we stick Marlboro cigarettes in the pancakes and say, “Cowboys love 'em”, they’ll eat it up! 'Cause what do residents of Rochester really know about cowboys anyway?”
Using my patented Free Association Logic method, I believe I’ve come up with the answer. Western omelets usually have diced ham in them. Cowboys are usually associated with the west. Cowboys probably love western omelets. Ergo, cowboys love pancakes with diced ham in them (which resemble western omelets).
Well, I don’t know about ham in pancakes, but bacon in waffles is the best breakfast ever! With real Vermont maple syrup drizzles over it, filling up all the little indentations. Mmmm…
(Damn! Now I’m super hungry!)
What’s to understand? I love bacon dipped in my pancake syrup. There’s a little place in town that serves bacon pancakes, now that I think about it. It’s called The Pancake Shop. Har de har. Seriously, ham in pancakes might be a little bit of a stretch, but I would think that fried okra is much grosser. And maybe cowboys do like them. Maybe cowboys ride in from all over the Americas just to have the ham pancakes.
Do you know what’s really good? Pancakes cooked on the same griddle that bacon was just cooked on. I guess another way of saying that would be, pancakes fried in bacon fat.
God help me.
bouv, I’m having bacon waffles for dinner tonight. No two ways about it. Mmmmmmmmm.
DAVEW0071, you’ve obviously never heard of the famous Xerox Cowboys of Rochester, the roughest, toughest, meanest, ham-pancake-eating hombres you ever did comw across.
The college I went to served something similar. A cheeseburger with a fried egg on it-that was a “Colby Eight”. Add bacon and you had…you guessed it, a “Colby Eight with bacon”.
They were good. Unfortunately, I can’t have one anymore.
