I meant late 19th century. What an idiot I am.
Golly - up to three posts already, and it isn’t even noon yet!
dono, I love your posts so far! Keep posting.
“Ham in my pancake batter” — Priceless!
tevya, thanks for your words of encouragement! I’m glad you weren’t offended by the rolleyes in my first post. I certainly meant no disrespect to your and Fenris’s work. Of course, that sort of analysis would be vital to producing a defensible thesis. Its just that I’m more of a Big-Picture person, myself.
I thought the thread Fenris pointed us to was hilarious - I’m gonna poach the line about “making sense out of a bowl of Alpha-Bits”. It’ll come in handy some day here at work.
Now, I really should scuttle on over to the FAQ’s and see if I can figure out out to put things in bold and italics …
tevya, I’m glad your “issues” with Fenris are settled. See how much better it is when we all play nice?
Oh yes, dono is going to fit in just fine around here.
To bold and italicize, just put brackets around a b or an i. Then, turn them off by using brackets around /b or /i. See? Easy as ham pancakes.
Thanks for the code tip, DAVEW0071.
I couldn’t wait to get off work yesterday so I could get to the bar and do a little research! I am relentless in my search for Truth, particularly if Truth is to be found in a bar.
I was in luck - Arlene was there! She’s the person I mentioned who cooks for the sheep camp. A correction - she doesn’t cook there a couple of weeks a year, more like three or four months. She’s also 80 years old, so she’s an excellent source for the oral traditions of the subculture. I asked her if she ever put ham in the pancakes she serves. She looked at me like I was some kind of mental defective.
(Which in itself is not that unusual. Since I work for the government, I’m generally regarded as the Village Idiot around here. Think Hank Kimball, the County Agent on “Green Acres”.)
“Of course I put ham in the pancakes!” It’s a way of using up leftovers. If there’s leftover ham, but not enough to make a meal, in the pancake batter it goes the next day. “I hate wasting food,” she said. “That’s how I feed a crew of eight herders on $1200 a month!” Other leftovers are used that way, too: leftover potatoes, vegetables, etc. But it seemed that ham was the preferred leftover for pancakes; something that she might actually cook at home as well. “You can even put jalapeno peppers in pancakes!”
That’s where I ended the interview. I mean, I like jalapenos better than just about anyone, but even I’d get a little balky at finding them in my pancakes.
So if the extrapolation from sheepherder to cowboy is valid (and I believe it is) I can conclude that cowboys do indeed love ham in their pancakes, at least compared to the other crap they might find in there.
As for the thesis, it also demonstrates that the differentiation between the ham and pancake cultures is to be found much earlier than the migration to Wyoming. Since the migration of cowboy cultures occured in primarily an east-to-west direction, this is not inconsistant with the Kodak/Xerox Subcultures theories postulated by previous posters.
(Can you tell that I work with a lot of archaeologists around here?)
In an effort to trace the consolidation of the two cultures eastward, I asked the bartender (who is from Kansas) how she likes her pancakes. She just thought I was flirting with her. Which is ironic, because it’s probably one of the few times I haven’t been flirting with her. This is science, dammit!
The search for Truth continues …
Well and truly there is Truth in Pancakes. I do believe I shall make a pilgrimmage to my local Internationl House of Truth, where I shall reflect upon the wisdom of the ages.
dono, you have won major point from me, not that they’re worth anything. Still, anyone who can justify breakfast out is subject to adulation in my book. How incredibly pathetic that sounds…
Welcome to the madness - I look forward to your future posts with eager anticipation… or is there redundancy in there??
Thanks much, FCM! I shall treasure your point always! Be sure and check the menu at the IHOT (which qualifies for Things That Sound Dirty, But Aren’t) for hammiecakes (gee - another TTSD,BA).
And no redundancy - anticipation can be dread as well. Which is how I’m looking at my day here at the office.
It also had “rich creamery butter.” I have seen and eaten all variety of artery clogging foods in my life but have never seen an American put butter on meat. My brother lived in Japan for a while and verified that they put butter on those well marbled, beer fed, hand massaged Kobe steaks but hamburger?
Disneyland used to sell a cheeseburger with a slice of ham on it. SIGH Those were the good old days…
Hasn’t anybody heard of Pigs in a Blanket? A pancake wrapped around a sausage link. Same idea. I don’t know what it has to do with cowboys, though.
Pull up a chair kids and I’ll be able to clear this up for you.
It all started in Western New York around the turn of the century (the century was done on one side and needed to be flipped). A young boy was born (as young boys are wont to be). His parents (one a cook, one a James-Joyceian professor of math) were concerned that the young lad (who was named Emerile Hawking 0071 possibly an ancester Dave) was not too bright because he never spoke, did not do well in school, and waayyyyyy overused parenthesis. It was not a lack of intelligence that plagued this young man (for he was exceptionally bright), but rather an naturally introspective personality, and a concern over his parents relationship. When the young man turned 13, his parents divorced after 5 years of bitter arguing over the relative worth of their jobs. That was a day that drove this lad to greatness.
After the bitter divorce, he threw himself into what had caused so much pain in his life, trying to reconcile his parents. He dedicated himself first to the study of mathmatics and James Joyce. He studied under a young genius named Fenrtevyadono, who was studying both the work of Hiryuiticus and Johann Hibbenschtubbel. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from M.I.T, he went to Sorbonne to study great cooking. He spent 5 years in the finest French Restaurants, when he was summoned back to New York because his father was deathly ill.
His father had taken ill the previous summer, when a huge band of cowboys, confused after they spent the night talking about time travel and pork products and all worked up after their stop at IHOT, got lost on the western trails and ended up in Rochester. Doctors were unable to tell what was wrong with his father, so Emeril Hawking went to the Great American West (after stopping in Kansas to flirt with a female bartender) to find the solution. After arriving out in Wyoming, he found the cowboys were all ill also from the same thing his father had. Emeril Hawking then began to apply everything he had learned and came up with what he termed the Grand Unified theory (no, not the one Einstein was looking for, although rumor has it Einstein developed his theory of relativity after having ham pancakes that had gone bad, but that’s for another tedious story). This theory is commonly known as the Free Association Logic, Culinary Trigonometry, Late 18th-Century Migration Theory. Using this new theory, he was able to synthesis a cure for the deadly disease. That cure was … adding ham to pancakes. Of course, the cowboys were healed, his father was healed and soon reconciled with Emerile Hawkings mother, and they all lived happily ever after.
If you actaully find the restaurant again and can reread the menu, DAVE, you’ll see it says (as your OP points out):
Cowboys love 'Em
'Em was Emerile’s nickname amongst the healed cowboys.
[Paul Harvey voice]
And now you know, the rest of the story.
[/Paul Harvey voice]
Geez Hamlet, can’t you see we’re trying to be serious here? I’ll never get my thesis done with you telling your incredibly funny stories.
I’m gonna get out of here and do some more research. If anybody needs me, I’ll be over at the, um, “library”.
::Zappo runs for Hershey, breaks into the Antique Auto Club of America Museum and Library and makes off with a '53 Hudson Hornet Hollywood. Getting onto I-81, he points the big chrome bomb on the hood toward racinchikki’s house::
Gotta go with you guys here. . .meat next to pancakes is fine. Bacon dipped in syrup is fine. Scrapple with syrup is even better.
But meat in pancakes? That just seems wrong, somehow.
Zap!
Stories??? Stories??
Why if I had a gauntlet, I’d be flinging it to the ground. Feh! It was a very well researched, historically accurate recounting of the events in the life of an extremely well known theoretical physicist/stream of conciousness writing/cooking genius. Stories indeed.
I’d provide cites to the numerous volumes of ancient historical texts that I used in my tedious research, but … I’m tired, my computer broke, I hear my mommy calling, floods, typhons, and a plague of locusts have made it impossible. I don’t think I’ll be able to even type in another single wor…
Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse cooks their steaks in butter.
Two years ago, Mr. Rilch and I were at the Ruth Chris in Vegas. Mr. Rilch had brought two cigars with him. Vegas allows smoking everywhere, while LA allows it virtually nowhere, so he was going to have a post-prandial smoke. He hadn’t yet decided which one he would have, so they were sitting on the extreme left of the table when the waiter brought our sizzzzzzzzzzling steaks. The butter dripped off the plate as the waiter set Mr. Rilch’s plate down, covering the cigars uniformly. The staff was overcome with remorse, and replaced Mr. Rilch’s five- and seven-dollar cigars with two twenty-dollar ones. Not bad at all! The steaks were superb too. I conquered mine in less than three minutes.
Here’s how I see it:
Pancakes are not good. Ham is very good. Someone first put the ham into the pancakes to make the edible, but instead they made the ham inedible. Ooops.
My point is, the people who say meat in pancakes is no good are correct, but for all the wrong reasons. It’s not because the pancakes are ruined but because the meat is.
And that I’ve filled one of my first posts with controversy, I’ll have to say that I agree with dono that biscuits and gravy is the best breakfast of all.
I must begin by apologizing to Hamlet for referring to his input as “stories”. I believe the term the archaeologists use for that sort of thing is “anecdotal evidence”. Very unprofessional of me.
(Feh??!? That’s a bad thing, right?)
I did a lot of research last night. A lot. My notes are somewhat garbled. And my head hurts.
So I decided that the best approach this morning would be to attempt to immerse myself in the culture I’m studying. You know, like Margaret Mead. Or maybe Jane Goodall. For breakfast, I made - you guessed it -
dono’s Buckaroo Flapjacks
Cowboys love 'Em!
Sourdough starter, refreshed overnight with flour and milk (about three cups total)
3/4 c buckwheat flour
1 c milk (actual amonts of the last two ingredients may vary depending on your sourdough starter)
some leftover ham, diced
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp bacon drippings (all real cowboys have a can of bacon drippings on their stove)
-
Mix everything together.
-
I don’t have to tell you how to cook pancakes, do I? For best results, cook in a cast iron skillet, in bacon drippings (and a tip 'o the chef’s toque to Candlemas), over an open fire, with sombody playing a harmonica in the background and the sun coming up over the Bighorn Mountains, watching the deer and the antelope play (at least I think they’re playing - hey, wait a minute - cut that out, you deer and antelope!)
They’re actually pretty good with maple syrup. But the real way to eat these is breakfast-sandwich-style - two pancakes with a runny fried egg between them so that when you cut into the pancakes, the yolk and runny white squishes all over everything. Mmmmmmmm.
Or is a fried egg between pancakes a Western thing, too? But that’s another thread.
Does this mean I have to change my sig again?
:ducks & runs:
In all seriousness, I wonder if the idea was to compare these pancakes to “western” omelettes, which among other ingredients often include ham? No, I can’t account for the lack of peppers & onions, but it’s a thought.
For myself, I prefer a western omelette with sausage instead of ham, but y’all know I’m weird, right?
In Madison, WI (and elsewhere, I think) there is a chain of burger joints called Culver’s. They are the proud “Home of the Butter Burger”! I’ve never had one because they sound so horribly gross. Apparently they toast the buns, then smear them with fresh Wisconsin butter. If they changed their slogan to “We slather your hot buns with butter!” I bet they’d do a lot more business.
-Fosfero
There’s something wrong with someone who doesn’t like pancakes. What are you, a communist?!