Grain-Free Blueberry Pancakes

I grew up with a pretty incredible father and live with one, now, too. When Garth and I started dating at the age of nineteen, potential fatherhood wasn’t one of the qualities I chose him for. In fact, we’ve always driven each other completely crazy — we’re total opposites but equally stubborn — yet we have always been each other’s person, as if there was a contract signed on our hearts and our bodies were required to oblige.

We don’t like the same movies or music. He likes sports; I don’t, with a passion that surprises some people. I cook, I make, and he cleans up. We literally have nothing in common except what we’ve built for ourselves during our eons together: a devotion to a select handful of very embarrassing sitcom television shows; seeking out and devouring regional cuisines from far-flung continents; reading Harry Potter books before bed; and our consummate dedication to our two sons. In general, who we are as individuals remain alien to the other, including the finer points of our jobs.

It wasn’t until we had our sons and I had cancer that I saw The Reason why I married him. There are so many, even if viewed purely academically, like I’m living with an anthropological study. My emotional lens on life that carries me through the world is inspiring and safe to me with two glaring exceptions: the breadth of parenthood and being diagnosed with cancer. Being a parent involves managing details I am not good at, which seems to grow as they do and their lives become more intertwined with the world around them. I am the resident expert on the complexity of feelings and emotional communication, so I have a big job in a house of extremely sensitive individuals. In general, I am the one whose lap they climb into and ask the important questions of. But remembering dentist appointments, pickup times and meetings isn’t my strength, it’s his. I am a better mother because he is the father.

When I was diagnosed, I slipped fully into a realm of managing my emotions. I tackled it as a full-time job, the biggest example of privilege if ever there was one: I spent my days writing out the thoughts in my mind; I dove into what my instincts were telling me; I embraced strange sources of comfort. I understood I had one job to do, if at all possible. To survive. So I followed every possible lead cast by community and experience, and held strong to my sons as their mother, gratefully clinging to a role I recognized like a lifeboat at sea.

Garth’s capacity to manage details, once a charming yin to my yang, became my watching him desperately juggle single parenthood from the sidelines. The boys started to ask him the important questions first, to need him first. I knew he spent late nights after he put them to bed researching clinical trials, reading articles I refused to, researching new treatments that I wouldn’t let him tell me about. I saw him grow truly exhausted, breaking down the way I was, except without radiation or chemo. Most of all, he set himself aside — a natural worrier and pessimist, who swims comfortably in fear– to let me blissfully mine for hope anywhere I could find it. He not only worked tirelessly as a father after he would return from work, but reoriented his perceived source of self-strength, his inner narrative, too, to accommodate mine. He praised my strengths, held strong my belief in life, even though I know fear smoldered inside him that I would leave him alone with two motherless children.

It wasn’t just me whose world was turned inside out with the diagnosis, who had to change their life entirely to adapt and survive. Garth did, too. For all those reasons we are different, but also trying on some new ones that made us more similar than ever before.

So, for my beautiful and noble husband, I open my whole heart with all the love I can give that has always been yours and that which we’ve nurtured together, and celebrate you on Father’s Day. You make me not only a better mother, but a better person. We survived together.

Blueberry Pancakes

Garth and the boys love these pancakes: they’re fluffy, delicious and willing vessels for warm maple syrup and melted butter. If I’m feeling particularly awake and ambitious, I like to keep these pancakes warm in a low oven as I make them. I set a metal wire rack (the sort used for cooling cookies) in a large rimmed baking sheet on the top rack of a preheated 200 °F oven. As the pancakes are cooked, I crack open the oven and slide the pancake from the spatula directly onto the rack.

2/3 cup almond flour
2/3 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, optional
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, optional
3 large eggs
2/3 cup full-fat yogurt (not Greek, preferably), plus more for serving
2 to 4 tablespoons salted butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (such as Kerrygold), plus more for serving
1 pint organic fresh blueberries, washed and dried, plus more for serving
Warm maple syrup for serving

1 / In a medium bowl, whisk together flours, baking soda and cinnamon, if using. In a separate bowl, combine vanilla, eggs and yogurt; whisk until mixture is light in color and texture. Add dry ingredients and stir to combine. (Batter is thick.)

2 / Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high. Grasping nob of butter with a piece of paper towel, draw it along surface of hot skillet to coat with a thin layer of fat. When it bubbles and begins to brown, spoon batter into skillet to make the desired size pancakes. (The skillet should sizzle a bit when the batter hits the pan; adjust heat to ensure it does.) Scatter surface of pancake with blueberries. Lower flame to medium-low and cook pancakes until they are golden brown on their underside and the bubbles on their surface have paused in batter that no longer looks wet-looking at the edges. Flip pancakes, ideally with a thin spatula and a bit of gusto, and cook until they spring back when pressed gently, a few minutes more. Repeat this step with remaining butter, batter and berries.

3 / Place pancakes on a serving platter, dollop with yogurt and scatter with a handful of extra berries; drizzle with warm maple syrup. Or however you want to eat them, including standing next to the stove in between sips of coffee or tea.

This post was originally published in June 2019, right here on this blog. It’s a favorite, so I thought I would post it again! Thank you for being here and continuing to read while I work on new projects. To hear about them, sign up for my monthly newsletter here. I’ll be honored to keep you posted!