A Very Shady Maple

Every Christmas Eve, JJ's whole family goes to a buffet in Pennsylvania called "The Shady Maple Smorgasbord". This year, we're going to be at my parent's house (side note: This blog may be called marikaandjohn. etc... but I think we've all realized that JJ likes me writing, he never gets around to it) for the Holidays, and JJ said the day he'll miss the most is Christmas Eve.

That's what got my new brilliant surprise plan in the works. I decided to make our own version of Shady Maple for dinner tonight (he always gets up too early for me to surprise him with a breakfast). So I went to the grocery store, bought all of the stuff, and got started at 3--since JJ was going to be home at 5.

I made biscuits and gravy first, then I made the bacon (a whole package, because Shady Maple is all about eating copious amounts of fatty meats and eggs). Then I got working on the pancakes. One of them became quite a pain in my rear.

Here's the story of the epic pancake:

Number One: I'm allergic to bananas. Like, eat-a-banana-and-die type allergic. But JJ's favorite is banana and walnut (I'm also allergic to walnuts). After figuring out how to get a banana open, I started making a GIANT pancake, pictured here:

The pancake filled up the whole pan! I swear I didn't start it this big--It GREW. Good thing I have a GIANT pancake spatula:
It's almost as big as m'face! So I go at the pancake with the flipper, and....
I think you can tell how I feel about this:
I decided just to put it in the oven with everything else while I made another of JJ's favorite pancakes, Peach and Brown Sugar. I made a peach, brown sugar, and pecan one for myself.
Then I decided to make our house look more like Shady Maple...

Seeeeeeee? Almost as awesome as my Christmas decorating scheme.

JJ was very happy with the dinner, anyway, and here he is after he ate his first course, a biscuit and gravy with eggs:



This picture is of the bacon after we were done:

And JJ after he's done eating 2 giant pancakes, a few strips of bacon, and 3 biscuits with gravy... and more than half of the 4 eggs I scrambled:

It was so much fun to see JJ happy! It wasn't the same as regular Shady Maple, because there weren't any whoopie pies, shoo-fly pies, doughnuts fried in LARD (which is a word you hafta capitalize always), plethora of soda machines, or millions of fat people, but... I made it feel more like Shady Maple by wearing a soup strainer on my head (like the Mennonites that own the place...okay, they wear traditional hat-thingies. But they look like soup strainers!).


...I'm officially Shady Maple Crazy.