In which Rebekah makes pancakes

During the months of July and August many of the small shops in Paris close down so that the owners and employees can go on vacation. This is very nice for the butchers and bakers (and candlestick makers), but not so nice for those of us left behind. Normally when we are in Paris, I go to the boulangerie each morning and buy a couple of baguettes for breakfast, which we have with butter and jam and Nutella. It's a pleasant way to start the morning, assuming of course that there are good baguettes available within a reasonable walking distance. We're fortunate in that there is a very good boulangerie only about a 2 minute walk from our apartment. However, it is now closed until the end of August, and the closest decent boulangerie that is open is at least a 10 minute walk each way; too far for daily breakfast runs. Since the bread at the Auchan is passable at best, and the store doesn't open until 8:30, we've been mostly reduced to cereal for breakfast. Worse, we've been reduced to daily bulk muesli with raisins, because the French seem to be of the opinion that all cereal ought to contain at least one form of chocolate, and if you can get 2 to 3 in there, so much the better. It gets a bit dull, so. . ..

It occurred to me on Friday that if I only had baking powder I would be able to make pancakes. We wouldn't be able to have them with maple syrup, but they're good with cinnamon sugar as well, and I had all the other ingredients in the apartment.

Problem 1: I have no idea what they call baking powder around here.
Solution: Blaise gets on the net and pokes around. He figures out that baking powder is called "levure chemique" and that instead of being sold in tins like it is in the US, it's sold in little envelopes. Armed with this information, I find a packet of 6 envelopes for 25 euro cents. Each contains about a tablespoon of powder, which is just about the right amount for a batch of pancakes.

Problem 2: The French don't actually measure things. Standard American style measuring utensils are, so far as I've been able to tell, unavailable here. I have soup spoons, tea spoons (which they call coffee spoons) and various sizes of cups, bowls, and glasses to work with. I also have a single graduated measuring pitcher, marked in centiliters, and the knowledge that there are roughly 24 cl in a cup.
Solution: I decide to assume that the tea spoons actually measure something approaching a standard teaspoon, and the soup spoons actually measure something around a standard tablespoon. If I were making rice or something like that (2 parts water to 1 part raw rice) it wouldn't matter how much my other potential measuring things held, but pancakes have eggs in them, and that means that the other ingredients have to be in, at least roughly, the right amounts. So, I carefully fill a white tea cup to the top with water and pour it into my measuring pitcher. 20 cl, almost on the nose. (Fortunately, since only every 5 cl is actually marked on the pitcher.) That means that 3 cups of flour, or 72 cl, will be roughly 3.5 tea cups. 2.25 cups of milk will be a generous 2.5 tea cups.

I mix the ingredients as best I can with a fork, and add whisk to the list of things that I don't have in the kitchen but desperately need to buy, along with a couple of decent knives and a cutting board that can actually go in the dishwasher (for the next time I buy a rabbit, of course). In Kansas, I have a really big nonstick skillet with a perfectly flat bottom. I can fit 4 decent sized pancakes in it without them running together. Here, I have a somewhat smaller nonstick skillet with a not quite flat bottom. I try making 4 pancakes, but they run together, and the outside third doesn't cook properly because the pan isn't actually touching the top of the stove. So I try lots of little pancakes, but get complaints from Blaise (and they take forever to flip). The solution ends up being to make one really big pancake at a time, which Blaise then cuts into sixths.

The next day, we're back to cereal.