The First Church of the Second Breakfast

Recipes For the End of the World

Ginny & Walt and one of my adorable twin nieces, near Destin, Florida, 1976. Gulf of Mexico in the background.

In 2009 when my dad was 92, during the last six months of his life he lost his appetite for pretty much anything. “Everything tastes like sawdust,” he’d say in a tired voice. By then he and my mother had moved into a senior living facility apartment, with nothing more for a kitchen than a two-burner electric stove, a dorm fridge, and a small stainless steel sink. In her day, my mother was a fantastic cook, and in his day my dad loved her cooking — her meatloaf, fried chicken, casseroles, salads, breads, soups. She knew her way around a kitchen, that’s for sure. But those times were past — those days of family feasts around the table, the Christmas rib roast and crispy, custardy Yorkshire pudding, the glazed Easter ham with creamed new potatoes and peas on the side, the summer grill-outs with juicy burgers accompanied by Ohio’s incomparable sweet corn and a huge tossed salad with lots of tangy Italian dressing.

Now my parents shuffled on down to the communal dining room for a plate of institutional something. The kitchen did the best they could, but in a small Southern mountain town housing people of modest means, this was never going to be like the familiar meals mom used to make.

Sometimes my parents would pay for my adult kids and I to join them for dinner. “Mmmmm…” I’d say, giving my dad a meaningful look as I twirled spaghetti noodles around my fork. “This is so good!”

In response he turned his increasingly ashen face toward me and gave me his signature “You’re full of shit” look.

“You have to eat, Walter,” my mother would prod, and my father would take a forkful of pasta with watery tomato sauce, bring it to his mouth and chew wanly. He did this to please my mother. Nothing about it pleased him.

“You have to keep your strength up,” my mother would say. She took to making milkshakes with those uber-sweet canned nutritional supplement drinks for an afternoon pick-me-up. She’d hold the glass for him, aiming the straw at his mouth, like she used to when I was a kid home sick from school. In her expression I could see what my father might not be able to, dementia scrambling his mental processing. There was a tightness around my mother’s eyes. Inside I knew she was pleading. “Please eat. Please don’t go. Don’t leave me. Not just yet.” They were long-haulers, married for 67 years.

To get them out of their close apartment quarters and to add some variety to mealtime, I began bringing my parents out to my little country bungalow for Sunday dinner. I’m my mother’s daughter, so I’m no slouch in the kitchen. She trained me well.

Although it was challenging for my father to get in and out of the car and up the few steps to my front door, he gritted his teeth and did not mention his pain, pausing only a few times to catch his breath. I cooked all their favorite meals – meat loaf with mashed potatoes, leg of lamb, homemade chicken potpie, pork tenderloin – and always included fresh vegetables and homemade breads or biscuits, followed by something sweet like apple or berry cobbler, peach dumplings with ice cream, strawberry rhubarb pie, or gooey warm brownies. This was our routine for a couple of months.

Then my father took a bad fall, landing against the edge of the apartment bathtub and cracking a couple of ribs. He wound up in the hospital, badly bruised and sore. A week later he was back at the apartment, showing increased confusion and decreased mobility. He was no longer able to walk to the dining room or sit at the table, and so my parents began taking all their meals in their apartment, my dad in his recliner and my mom sitting on the sofa, both of them eating out of Styrofoam boxes that the staff delivered with sympathetic smiles.

With little appetite, my father would take a few bites, his eyes focused elsewhere. Eating became one of the unpleasant tasks in his day, like taking his meds. When he was younger and healthy, my dad stood 6’ 3” tall, with long legs and broad shoulders. Now his shirts hung on his frame, and my mother had to cinch his pants up by making new holes in his leather belt.

My mom and I decided to reinstate our Sunday dinners, now with me bringing carryout to their apartment – Greek, Italian, Chinese, Thai food, cheeseburgers and fries and creamy malts, anything that might spark my father’s taste buds. He would eat a little to be polite but then dozed off in his recliner, unable to feign interest in anything food-related.

One afternoon as my mom and I were reminiscing about happier times, a crisp memory flashed of one of the marathon breakfasts my mother and grandmother used to make — coffee powerful enough to raise the dead, freshly squeezed orange juice, bacon, sausage, homemade biscuits with jam, fried eggs, and of course the piece de resistance, my mom’s buttermilk pancakes.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, “how about we have breakfast for dinner this Sunday. I’ll make pancakes.” Somewhere in his dim blue eyes I saw a little spark. He nodded as he drifted off to sleep. My sister Debbie, gone these 44 years now, used to say my father made love to his pancakes. She wasn’t wrong. Watching him tuck into a stack was something to behold.

The next Sunday my kids and I arrived carrying bags of flour, baking soda, butter, eggs, bacon, buttermilk, maple syrup, bowls, whisks, wooden spoons and a large cast iron frying pan. My father opened one eye to see what the ruckus was.

“Dad, are you ready for some pancakes?” I asked, going over to kiss the top of his head.

His small smile was like a sudden flash of sunlight burning through haze. “Is the Pope Catholic?” We all laughed, feeling as if the man we knew had briefly re-entered the room, reminding us he was still in there somewhere.

That Sunday night and many after we celebrated our small feast. My father would frequently doze off, his fork in midair, but the instant I moved to take his plate he’d grip the edge. “Not yet,” he’d say, and then use his fork to skate bits of pancake through the syrup, savoring a last few bites.

I knew I was trying to fix my father’s unfixable situation and to hold at bay the inevitable, but if a few pancakes could accomplish that, so be it. We began to joke about our regular Sunday communion. One night my son dubbed our small fellowship “The First Church of the Second Breakfast,” insisting we hold fast to a doctrine of “pansubstantiation.” We all laughed, including my father. We were not really a religious family, but we knew we were about deeply spiritual work, celebrating my father’s life even as we were releasing it.

On the last Sunday, my father ate only one bite of pancake before drifting off to sleep, the syrupy plate balanced in his lap. When I reached to take the plate, his eyes flew open, and he put one hand over mine. “Leave it,” he said, his breath coming in small gusts. And then, closing his eyes again, he smiled. “It smells so good.”

One week later my father aspirated his three morning pills, and within 36 hours he was gone. The end of an era. My mom followed him into the Great Beyond five years later.

The recipe for buttermilk pancakes I faithfully used back then was from the Joy of Cooking. These pancakes always rise sky-high and fry up with crisp, lacy edges. After my father died, I never prepared them without acknowledging him — Hi, Dad — and remembering how he ate his pancakes with a concentrated joy that bordered on ecstatic encounter with the holy. To get the JoC recipe, you have to buy the cookbook, which is well worth the money for a lot of good basic information about cooking and holds a lot of heirloom kinds of recipes.

I was convinced the buttermilk pancake recipe from that cookbook was the quintessence of pancakedom until about three weeks ago when I stumbled on (or maybe it was some kind of divine universal intervention) a recipe for Fluffy Greek Yogurt Pancakes that was getting over the top rave reviews — “best pancakes ever!” “my new favorite pancake recipe!” “light and fluffy!” — and after trying them, I have to concur. These are knockout.

Go here (Chasing Vibrance) for the recipe. I used 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of white flour, and since we were out of baking powder I used 1/2 tsp. of baking soda and a scant tablespoon of sourdough starter. These freeze and reheat really well. I stored the ones that were left in a bag separated by slips of parchment paper to make it easier if someone wanted only one (ha, ha — okay, sure).

I shared the recipe link with my French language partner who lives on the French-Austrian border and is gluten free. She said she used buckwheat and rice flour in place of the other flours and gushed they were the best pancakes she’s ever had. Of course, she also admitted that she topped them with fresh strawberries and chocolate. (Ah, oui — vive la France.) Let me know if you try them and if you have variations to share.

Today is my dad’s 108th birthday. Walter C. Gummere, Jr. A true legend and once upon a time a champion pancake eater.