As a teenager, I participated in my church youth group’s summer service project, where we helped build and repair houses for people who couldn’t afford it themselves. My first year, our leaders picked a location around the southern border of Washington, so we split the 15-hour drive from where we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area into two days.
On our way up, we stopped in Oregon for the first night, and we stayed in a church in Bend that graciously opened its doors for us to keep our travel and hotel costs as low as possible. Everyone had packed sleeping bags, so we unrolled them in the church’s dining hall to get as much rest as we could.
After our full week of construction, we packed up our three vans to head back home, but we stopped in Northern California for that night, a few hours south of Bend, to minimize the driving on our last day of the trip. We spent the night on a different church’s floor, and our leaders surprised us the next morning by taking us to IHOP for breakfast to celebrate all of the work we had done and lives we had changed.
As my first time in the restaurant, my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I saw the menu. Up until that point, I thought there were only two flavors of pancakes, plain and blueberry, because that’s all Mom ever cooked for us at home.
Yet the restaurant’s menu boasted nearly a dozen different options. In addition to the two I knew, they offered chocolate chip, strawberry banana, cheesecake, birthday cake, pure chocolate, nut and grain… And five different syrup flavors too, not just the regular maple syrup we bought at home!
Although I ordered plain pancakes that day, I started to become a little more adventurous afterward, especially once I began college, moved into my first apartment, and started cooking for myself for nearly every meal. Over the years, I created many more pancake recipes compared to what I saw at IHOP that day, ones like carrot cake and peach pie and fudgy brownie-like pancakes…
And now, I can also add these Lemon Poppy Seed Pancakes to my list! They’re light and fluffy with lots of bright sunshiny flavor and a smattering of those cute little poppy seeds in every bite. Yet unlike the restaurant’s pancakes, these contain no refined flour or sugar and just 129 in each stack!
Continue reading & see the rest! ›› Healthy Lemon Poppy Seed Pancakes
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