In the kitchen with Seema

Today's lesson: Charcoal pancakes in 9 easy steps

1. Use leftover pancake mix, if you have it. Ideally, the mix should have a gray tinge to it. If it doesn't have a gray tinge to it, let sit for a week -- covered -- in the fridge and come back to this recipe next Saturday.
   
2. Put stainless steel pan on stove, turn burner up to HIGH
   
3. Find olive oil and don't measure the amount needed to grease pan because the pan is very, very HOT. Dump in liberal amounts of olive oil.
   
4. Stir up the batter to make sure that gray mixes with the beige colored part of the mix so that everything is gray
   
5. Dump batter into stove. Watch in fascination as olive oil bubbles OVER the edges of the batter.
   
6. Try to flip the pancake over. Realize that the oil is keeping the pancake from solidifying. Fight with the pancake until you manage to somehow peel it up off the pan and realize it's kind of flat and fried. Realize pancake has absorbed a bottle's worth of olive oil. Remember olive oil is good for the heart.
   
7. Drink a bottle of red wine while you make the second pancake. This time, turn on the fan over the stove just to avoid setting off the fire alarm (unless, of course, you are wondering if the batteries in your detector are still good, in which case, this step is optional. Not the red wine though -- it's good for your heart*).
   
8. Struggle to flip the pancake again. When the burner is on HIGH, you see, things cook faster than the speed of light, especially gray pancake batter. Panic when you see the charcoal, flip into a plate. Burn fingers pulling off the burned bits. Realized it's neither cooked nor fried all the way through.
   
9. Eat anyway, dosed heavily with Vermont maple syrup, with a side of orange juice. Serve in front of the television, preferably in front of an episode of the X-Files you haven't seen before. Think, "This is the worst damn breakfast I've ever had," but keep eating anyway because of children in Africa and all that.
   

Tune in next time, viewers, when we talk about how to make absolutely tasteless Indian food!