A week or two ago I was organizing my pantry and I realized I still had a lot of Pamela’s baking mixes tucked away, and their “best by” date was January 2008. Oops. Some time ago I’d ordered a big case from Amazon after discovering they make very nice Saturday morning waffles and pancakes with very little fuss and muss. I ordered from Amazon because, well, I’m just too cheap to pay the crazy price on the shelf, and I like free shipping on grocery purchases very much, thank you! However, DH and I had not been gobbling up waffles at the rate I thought we might- and I hadn’t gotten around to playing with the mix much, except for one sad and failed experiment with agave syrup in an apple muffin recipe. The discovery of my rapidly aging mixes spurred me into action, and I started playing around with some recipes on Pamela’s web site ^[1]. On a day when I had a late start for classes that then go quite late, I decided I needed to take a snack, so I threw together a recipe for muffins. BytheBay’s recipe for banana medallion pancakes ^[2] were floating around in my head and so, without looking at her recipe to check for how she made them, I adapted Pamela’s muffin recipe and threw some banana “medallions” on top as a nod to my favorite former-bay GF chef. They turned out well, and were just the thing halfway through a three hour class on Contributions to the Field of Buddhist Studies. They’re not fancy, but sometimes it’s the fast, get-you-out-the-door-and-fed in the morning recipes that sustain us gluten-free women on a daily basis.

All this experimentation with Pamela’s Mix has resulted in some exciting finds. The incredibly easy recipe for drop biscuits on Pamela’s web site (1 cup Mix, 1/4 cup organic trans-fat free shortening and 1/3 cup +1 tablespoon milk, combine, plop in oven and bake) was a big hit in our house, and I highly recommend it. Just a teaser- I’m working on a modified, healthier version that I’ll be posting one of these days, so stay posted. So why not spend some quality time with your favorite gluten-free baking mix and see if you can’t break out of the “pancake and waffle” rut? I’m sure glad I did…

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