So Says The Mouse In My Hair

Mmmmmmm Breakfast!

Why do advertisements for pancake batters and syrups and warm fuzzy families eating breakfast always have that picture perfect stack of pancakes glazed with syrup and topped with butter?

Funny thought: pretty please with butter on top?

Several inherent problems with this picture. In order for all pancakes to look the same they have to be forged in a mold. Or when as embryonic batter it is pored large enough to fill the entire pan. But that could also be argued is for all intents and purposes a mold in this case as well.

Or they could be using fake pancakes.

But we aren’t here today to revel in the perfection of stacks of pancakes. It is at the behest of a much more deeply rooted and extra sinister image. That of the butter on top of the syrup. Is that how you want to teach young people today to eat their pancakes. This is an issue of butter side up/down proportions and if we don’t do something then all we have to do is refer to Dr. Seuss for the endgame.

Let me put forth this little jingle: “Butter before syrup you can sit in a stirrup.” Not the most logical saying ever, but that is not where my love lies.

My point is thus. The butter sheaths the pancake in a light protective coating of fat, hindering ultimate penetration of the pancake by the syrup. A girl does not want a saturated and soggy mouthful of pancake. She wants her syrup to know it’s place in the evolutionary order of breakfast, and that is on the outer levels of the griddle cake.

There are those as well who would argue against butter in these situations completely, to whom I would reply, “the butter introduces a necessary counterbalance for the sweet of the syrup and possibly the hotcake itself. As you see in the case of Poppycock, or caramel in and of itself, a mouth loves a variety of flavor. The sweet and the salt or the peaches and the cream, or the Jack and the Coke. Two opposite but complimentary tastes are much happier than one taste all by itself. In this way it is quite human. It desires company. Besides, the texture of the pancake is completely wrong and far too watery without the butter.”

Now perhaps there are those of you out there who disagree with these opinions and would argue that butter absolutely belongs as the last touch upon the breakfast. Or perhaps there are those who are simply bored with life and would choose to enlighten me because a certain satisfaction comes from advocating for the leader of all that is evil. Feel free.

posted by Sarah Eliza @ 1:39 PM