Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

It’s all in the wrist.

I learned that as a pancake-flipper in training at this Sunday’s Edgar FFA Alumni June Dairy breakfast held at the Jim and Tammy Fahey organic dairy farm, town of Cleveland.

I received my introduction to production pancakes with the help of Edgar FFA alumnus Kelly King, who loaned me use of his black spatula and gave me a few key pointers.

The first step in pancake making is to spray down PAM, a miraculously slick vegetable coating, on top of a gas-fired grill. Pancake batter is squirted down in portioncontrolled circles. The flipping now begins. Once one side of the pancake is brown and crispy, it is time to flip the griddle cake.

It’s all done in a single, smooth and fluid motion. A flick of the wrist is essential. The pancake flies through the air briefly and silently lands on the uncooked side.

My grill cooked unevenly, but this difference in heat was predictable. This meant I was able to anticipate picking off the earliest “done” pancakes from the center of the grill and move outward towards the edges.

What was important was to make sure the pancakes were cooked thoroughly all of the way through. A gooey center in a pancake was a no-no. I went for a solid brown pancake, not a barely tan one.

Once my pancakes are browned on both sides, I tossed them into a stainless steel bowl and the bowl was carried to a serving line. I gave my finished pancakes a little spin as I whipped them into the bowl. You gotta do this kind of work with some personal style.

Hopefully, you were able to make it to this year’s Edgar FFA Alumni breakfast and dig into a large platter of delicious food.

There is a possibility that you were served some pancakes that were not just cooked, but cooked exquisitely well. The cakes were fluffy, but slightly chewy. The edges were crispy, but not overdone. The pancake bubble holes were in perfect alignment. The browned pattern of pancake dough resembled the Mona Lisa.

Those pancakes were mine.

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Trout fishing on the Big Rib River in Taylor County on Saturday was nothing short of glorious. It was all about stoneflies.

Stoneflies are a large, bi-wing insect. They are not a snack stick to an ordinary trout. They are a rib-eye steak. Trout, including big trout, lunge after these things.

I fortunately had a couple of dark brown extended body dry flies that pretty well matched the specific stoneflies that were flittering about the cooly, breezy June evening. I caught numerous fish over a foot long. It was pretty fun.

I enjoyed a classic evening of Midwest trout fishing. Everything was clicking. There even wasn’t much mosquito pressure, either. I marched up and down the river, catching nice fishing everywhere I went.

June is the best month for trout fishing. Everything was beautiful.