Weekend Eats - Pancakes & Albondigas Soup

Every Saturday morning, my daughter and I leave my husband sipping coffee on the couch and head north to our spectacular country estate - a.k.a. My parents' house. After seven years of Saturday visits, we have a good system down. Grandma and Grandpa get to see their adorable grandchild, and I get to re-live my twenties by drinking their coffee, eating their food and doing the occasional load of laundry.

Lucky for me, it also made my Saturday Menu ridiculously easy:

Breakfast - 1/2 container Vanana (Vanilla/Banana) Yogurt - $1.40

Lunch & Dinner - EPIC cheat - take advantage of unsuspecting senior citizens by eating their snacks and using them for Chicken and Mole for dinner. Cost = Priceless


Today, Sunday, I was forced to slip the thirties back on, wear my crows feet like an old nubby sweater and feed a little bird who woke up with breakfast on her mind. As I often do on lazy Sunday mornings, I agreed to make pancakes. In this recipe, you can substitute 2.5 cups of organic wheat flour for my gluten-free mix.

Simple Pancakes

You'll need:

2.5 Cups Flour (or my gluten-free mix detailed below)
1 pinch salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs - $.40 (@ $2.50/dozen)
1.5 cups milk $.47 (@ $4.99/gallon)
(optional - 1/2 teaspoon vanilla)


GF Flour mix (See Master Staple List for ingredient prices):

1 cup sweet rice flour (My supermarket has this in the Asian section next to potato starch)
3/4 corn flour (Bob's Red Mill Organic)
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Mix flour with a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of baking powder. Make a well in the bottom of the dry ingredient bowl for the eggs. Drop the eggs in the well (sometimes I scramble them first, sometimes I don't - depends on how many dishes I want to wash). Slowly add the milk while you stir in the eggs. Depending on the humidity or the alignment of the planets, too much liquid can make your pancake batter too runny and therefore your pancakes un-fluffy when cooked. If your batter looks good, but there's still milk left, STOP. It's cool.

Here's what my batter looked like this morning:



The other trick to pancakes is flipping them over at the right time. Make sure your skillet is heated to just shy of medium. It needs to be hot enough to quickly seal the batter off, but not hot enough to burn it before it's cooked in the middle. Flip your pancakes when there are little bubbles covering their entire surface, like this:




If you do this right, the second side will seal off and your pancakes will begin to fluff up. When your pancakes are springy and you can push down on them without denting them, you're done!

Minicrat ate hers with sprinkles and I melted a little butter on mine. Daddycrat ate his plain, like the manly man he is. About maple syrup....this is hard to admit...we all love it, but at $8 or more for a small container, we find that powdered sugar or frozen berries cooked with a little sugar are more delicious and affordable.

Dinner - Albondigas Soup

Because we had a big, late breakfast, I decided to skip a formal lunch and go for an early dinner of Albondigas Soup. Albondigas are meatballs in Spanish, and this soup was one of my favorites as a kid. I'll also have enough leftovers to take some to work for lunch tomorrow.



In Mexican cooking, "authentic" depends on what region of Mexico you're from, so my version is a light, savory broth with onions, carrots, celery, tomatoes and diced red potatoes. I use cilantro in my meatballs instead of mint and in this case, I ditched the cumin my recipe called for because I didn't have any. Still turned out delicious, trust me. This recipe can also be made with ground turkey instead of beef, or with loose rice in the broth if you're vegetarian or don't want to buy meat.

Albondigas Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 or 3 stalks celery, diced - $.40 (@ $.79/bunch)
1 yellow onion, diced - $.66
2 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds - $.66 (@ $1.99/bunch)
3 small red potatoes, diced - $.75 (@ $3.69/5 lb bag)
1/2 can diced tomatoes w/ juice - $.94 (@ 1.89/12 ounce can)
1 clove garlic, minced
6 cups broth - $3 (@ $2/quart) OR bouillon & water - $.50
1 package natural 4% lean ground beef - $4.80
1/3 cup uncooked organic rice - $.40 (@ $3.99/2 lb bag)
1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro - $.34 (@ $.69/bunch)
1 fresh lime, cut into wedges - $1
Salt and Pepper to taste

Grand Total: $12.95
For the meatless option, even cheaper: $8.15


In a large soup pot, fry the onion, garlic and celery in a little olive oil until the onions become translucent. Add broth and tomatoes w/ juice, cover and simmer while you make the meatballs.

In a bowl, mix meat, rice, egg, salt, pepper and 3/4 of your chopped cilantro (the rest will be used for garnish when you serve the soup). Form the meat into one inch balls and drop them into the soup with the diced potatoes and carrots. Cover and simmer for 35 minutes. When it's done, it will look like this:



Serve in a bowl with cilantro garnish and (this is CRITICAL) a squeeze of fresh lime. If I had had a little more time I would have fried up some tortilla strips to sink in, but I'll save that trick for a future Tortilla Soup post.

Enjoy!