I’m sure I’ve said it before but do you ever like, stop and think to yourself, “it’s as if life is a series of unrelated events that are by and large out of our control?” No sooner had I landed myself a plummy new job and started to enjoy the unsought but distinct pleasure of bartending as a non-General Manager with absolutely zero wider responsibility, no sooner did all that come to fruition than I bloody went and fainted while trying to procure a ticket to a film (Call Me By Your Name, and no, I still haven’t seen it), falling straight over backwards in some kind of misguided trust fall, landing on my head and achieving what I’m quite certain is a concussion that’s really keen to overstay its welcome. As a result I’m aggressively lethargic with bursts of low-key nausea and just a general inability to do much of anything, and it’s SO annoying. Like, I didn’t put in all that effort to come out the other side of depressionfest 2016/17 just to land in the middle of this faux-depression bedridden state. Like, why don’t I just contract mono while I’m at it, who would even know the difference! Might as well develop anemia! What’s the point in anything! I would drop kick something at the wall in contempt to prove my point right now but I don’t have the energy (does anything prove a point as much as drop kicking something contemptuously though? I think not.)

I mean I’m like, totally fine, I just require a lot more resting than usual and it is a hope devoutly to be wished that I bounce back to my usual self soon. Pretty much all I’ve been doing is resting and drinking a metric butt ton of water, neither of which can be doing me any harm, all things considered. But just as Whitney Houston was saving all her love for you, I save all my energy for work, and then have been up to absolutely SQUAT of consequence in between, hence why it’s taken me a while to get my act together to write another blog post already.

Luckily I made these coconut pancakes a while back and then forgot to write about them, so the photos have been sitting patiently and serenely waiting for me to remember they exist, allowing me to produce a blog post all of a sudden with very little prior effort.

This recipe comes from my own cookbook, which was published roughly three lifetimes ago by Penguin (when I say three lifetimes ago, like, my old flatmate looked at it and asked if my sister wrote it because she didn’t think the person in the photos was me.) The excellent thing about these pancakes is that you can make them when you’ve got barely any ingredients in the house, and even if you must dash down to the corner shop to pick something up there’s nothing of great expense involved. In turn, they are also vegan, if that’s of interest to you: I chose to smother them in butter because I really like the stuff, but obviously if you’re already not into dairy then you can put what you like on them.

It takes barely a minute to whisk together the ingredients and even less time for them to fry merrily in a pan, yielding you a fat stack of thick, fluffy pancakes, the sort that might appear on the breakfast table in a Disney cartoon or a TV show where they’re inexplicably constantly eating lavish brunches that they continuously and wastefully abandon (okay I’m talking about Gossip Girl and I’m still mad about it, why are they always sitting at these groaningly laden tables if they’re just going to eat like, one strawberry and then stride off in a huff about the cotillion ball?)

coconut pancakes

a recipe from my literal cookbook

• one can coconut milk (the standard size kind, I think they’re like…330ml? 400?)
• 250g plain flour (roughly one and a half cups)
• half a teaspoon baking powder
• 50g sugar
• quarter of a teaspoon baking soda
• two teaspoons vanilla extract

Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda together and stir in the sugar. Tip in the can of coconut milk and the vanilla and whisk to form a smooth, pale batter.

Heat up a large nonstick pan and cook heaped spoonfuls of the batter on it, flipping them over carefully when small holes form on the surface. Stack em up and eat them at your leisure.

I chose to make these more diminuitive, pikelet style, but big, small, Mickey Mouse ears, whatever you like works. They’re not actually particularly coconutty in flavour – it’s more a mellow sweetness, helped by the generous addition of vanilla. I don’t know how they’re so softly light and fluffy when there’s no eggs, I believe some magical alchemy occurs when baking soda interacts with pretty much anything, but they taste so good that I’m happy to not really question it too much and instead congratulate myself on my eyes-closed-head-first-can’t-lose instincts that helped me formulate this recipe in the first place. It’s also worth knowing, perhaps, that they reheat well in the microwave should you not be able to snarf them all in one sitting.

For all the dramatics (and I maintain that I’m never actually dramatic, I’m just responding at the precise level that a situation requires and that just often happens to require HIGH DRAMA) I have actually achieved 1 (one) thing recently: I started a Frasier food blog. I know, I struggle enough to keep this one updated! But! I also do what I want and I wanted to do this! It’s called La Cigar Volant and basically what I do is make a recipe inspired by every episode of Season 1 of the show, it’s very very low key because I didn’t want to make it into too much hard work but I’m also really quite pleased with it. It’s something that’s been in my head for a while now and I just watch SO much Frasier and hearing the immensely sad news that John Mahoney, who played Martin Crane on the show, had died, kinda spurred me on.  So if you’re even one finely-shaven sliver as obsessed with Frasier as I am, kindly give it a hoon.

And if you’re particularly on a pancake buzz right now, may I also draw attention to other blog posts of mine, such as Halloumi Pancakes with Fried Sage, Butter and Walnuts;  Lemonade Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce; or Cornbread Pancakes.

title from: PJ Harvey’s snarly and deliciously named song Primed and Ticking, a relative rarity from a John Peel session.  

music lately: 

Kate Nash’s new song Drink About You, like…shut up Kate Nash! I don’t need this right now!!!! (It’s perfect.)

Stabbing Westward, Save Yourself. I made a Spotify playlist called “songs to pierce ur eyebrow to” and you know this was the first thing I put on there. (There’s also like, Filter, Linkin Park, Hed PE, that song about the bodies and letting them hit the floor, you know the vibe I mean!!)

Scritti Politti, The Sweetest Girl. I love this odd, otherworldly, strange song so much.

next time: Mate! I went to the vege market today for the first time in forever and bought some perfect peaches, I’m thinking maybe peach crumble or some kind of rustic (read: messy as hell) tart.