Breakfast for Dinner

The girls had their annual pancake breakfast fundraiser this weekend, which was quite successful by the way, and it reminded me of the time when House Dad and I cooked pancakes for Monday night dinner.  *Time out - (yes, Zach Morris style) if you weren't aware, part of our employment consists of cooking Monday night dinner for the entire chapter, which is a little over one hundred members.  And no, we can't just go to Subway and order sandwiches.  *Time in*  We called it Breakfast for Dinner Night.  (We name all of our dinners and I'm not sure why.  I guess it makes it easier when a girl asks what we're cooking, rather than give her the entire menu we just shout out Asian Night!  Mexican Night!  Italian Night!  It seems to work pretty well that way.)  So I guess our first mistake was our definition of breakfast.  Sunday breakfast was quite a spread at my house growing up and House Dad and I have continued the tradition since we started dating.  I guess in my parent's eyes they wanted us to have a good, hardy, stick-to-your-ribs breakfast so my sister and I could do more yard work.  Ugh, yard work.  But that's a whole other story of how I am scarred from childhood and will require hours of extensive therapy during my mid-30s. 

So now we contemplate the menu, considering what we know about the products that Costco and Smart and Final carry.  Of course, pancakes top the list and eggs are easy, sausage is delightful and a nice accent, what about bacon?  Sure!  Why not?  Costco carries the pre-cooked kind and all you have to do is microwave it for a minute.  Oooooh, what about some sort of hash brown item?  I heart potatoes...and salt...and a crispy exterior.  Let's even have orange juice instead of the usual mass-produced lemonade!  So the menu is settled.  Time to go shopping!  Unfortunately, Costco didn't carry the sausage we wanted.  Not that we are picky, just selective.  Costco also didn't have any sort of hash brown option.  Boo Costco.  But, they did carry two types of pancake mix - one which requires eggs and milk and another that only requires water.  Not only would the water one be fool-proof, but it saves me from having to bust out my phone calculator and do the math on how many eggs and how much milk we would need to make pancakes for a hundred people.  Score one Costco.  Now onto orange juice...Costco sells some pre-made, but it was kind of pricey and House Mom being the bargain hunter that she is decided that we might get a better deal at Smart and Final with the frozen cans.  *Insert witty story about trip to Smart and Final where we find everything we need, including browns that resemble the delicious potato cakes that Arby's sells* 

On to Monday afternoon and a sweltering kitchen.  By the time I get home from work, House Dad has already started the sausage.  I start in on the pancake mix and scrambling eggs.  We decided to try out a batter dispenser we had gotten as a wedding gift.  "The perfect amount of batter every time!"  It actually worked fairly well, but definitely is not for cooking mass quantities of pancakes.  A good ol' measuring cup would have been just as good and way easier to clean.  The layout of the kitchen isn't conducive to two people cooking on the stove at the same time, so House Dad mans the stove while I do all the prep work elsewhere.  He earns an A+ for multi-tasking.  At one point he had two pans of sausage sizzling, was scrambling a large skillet of eggs and flipping pancakes at the same time.  We are cooking the pancakes as fast as we can, but the skillet only fits four at a time and we didn't think to pull out the large skillets in storage.  The eggs don't take long, but a couple batches got burned so House Dad trashed them.  The sausage just takes forever to cook.  Oh and the hash browns.  I curse that oven.  It's seriously terrible.  It takes three times as long to cook anything if you are also using the stove.  So we've got one batch of hash browns ready and another one almost ready and three more that are still frozen.  Lovely.  Crap!  It's 5:55 and we don't have nearly enough food cooked yet.  The hashers set out the food that is ready and I tell them to let the girls know there is plenty more on its way.   I furiously mix more pancake batter and scramble eggs and give them to House Dad.  He empties his skillet of eggs into a foil chafing dish, checks his pancakes to make sure they are done and then empties those four into another dish.  I practically run outside.  They just started serving so they haven't run out of anything yet.  I empty my dishes and run back inside.  The next batch of eggs and pancakes aren't ready yet, but the hash browns and sausage are.  We put those in foil dishes and run those outside.  Line at buffet is still long.  Food supply is dwindling.  Cue anxiety attack.  Run back inside.  Eggs and pancakes still aren't ready yet.  Cue House Dad turning burner to high.  Stand and watch stuff cook.  Yes!  Eggs and pancakes are ready!  Put in foil dishes.  Run outside.  Line is still long, but now it's not moving because girls are waiting for pancakes and I only have four.  I reassure them that we have plenty, they are just taking forever to cook.  I silently pray they don't chuck their plastic forks at me.  The eggs and pancakes charade is repeated another ten times or so until finally we are out of eggs and pancake mix.  Luckily we had just enough to feed everyone. 

Dinner is done.  Now it's time to clean the kitchen.  I'm not sure what it is about batter, whether it be pancake, cookie, or cake, but it never fails to get everywhere no matter how hard you try.  It's like batter and counter tops are star-crossed lovers that always find a way to reunite.  Anyway, aside from the batter-spattered counter tops, the pile of dishes is bordering obscene and the entire kitchen has the lingering scent of sausage and bacon.  Ugh.  The funny thing about Monday night dinner is that even if you wash the dishes as you cook, there are still a ton of dishes outside on the buffet...chafing dishes, beverage dispensers, salad bowl, condiment bowls, the list goes for days.  It's seriously depressing because we got all the dishes washed and the counters clean and then the hashers brought in all the stuff from outside.  Within seconds all available counter space has been overcome.  *sigh* 

Despite the overwhelming success of Breakfast for Dinner Night, we have yet to attempt it again.  Perhaps the vivid memories of pancake batter everywhere has soured my disposition.  However, we've learned from our mistakes and definitely know that next time we need to cook more than four pancakes at a time on a temperamental stove.