We sat on the couch eating brown rice and salsa. He prefers to smush the rice down in the middle and make a puddle a la mashed potatoes and gravy, whereas I prefer the mix & swirl method.
But either way you slice it, it's not your normal breakfast.
Pancakes would've been better. Warm fluffy pancakes with real Vermont maple syrup or some fresh bananas sliced over the top. And orange juice. Reeeeeal orange juice. And blueberries. Blueberries and raspberries and strawberries. Oh my. Yea that would've been better. But for now it didn't matter.
We sat on either end of the couch with our feet crossing in the middle, and we smiled. We were home. In dire need of going grocery shopping, perhaps. But we were home. And that was all the nourishment we needed at the moment.
As we scraped the last of the brown rice kernels off our plates, we talked about the past five days and what a whirlwind they had been. And we talked about what was on our hearts.
You guys.
You guys are on our hearts. All of you. We met so many awesome photographers this past week who were there at WPPI for their very first time, who are just about to make their very own leap of faith for the very first time. And boy oh boy, did you guys have some questions!
And we get that.
We totally remember what it was like when we were first getting started to have so many questions and no one to ask. And being that we KNOW what that's like, you would think that we would've been better about making sure that didn't happen to other people. But that's all going to change right now!
Introducing: Pancake Sessions with J&M!!
Why pancakes, you ask. WHY NOT!? I say. :) Maybe it was because all we had in the house was brown rice and salsa when what we REALLY wanted was pancakes. Maybe we were just really hungry. But the name seemed to stick.
For you long time blog readers, though, I think the name will make a lot more sense. Remember this lil' ditty about the first time I ever tried to make pancakes for Justin? Just to refresh your memory:
The first set I burned.
And not just that "oh look it's a little black on the outside but you can scrape it off with a butter knife kind of burnt." No...it was more like the sound stage of Backdraft where I alone am the heroic firefighter and Kurt Russell is nowhere to be found kind of burnt.
The second set... I burned.
Yea, we'll just call this one Backdraft the sequel. Y'know but this time with the not so cute Baldwin brother.
The third set actually fell on the floor while I was trying ever so diligently to flip them. Where, they were promptly swallowed up by a hungry golden retriever who apparently did not mind that he had to scrape one side with a butter knife before eating it.
But the fourth set. Oh yes, the fourth set.
They... were... perfection.
Golden brown and light as air. I proudly carried them to the table, and with a flourish of real Vermont maple syrup we were ready to dig in. Yes, practice really does make perfect. There really is joy to be found in the journey.
Yea...UNTIL... we cut into them with said butter knife and soon began to see pancake batter start bubblin' from the center like Jed Clampett a shootin' at some food. Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
Now maybe it was the three failed batches of pancakes that came before them, or MAYBE it was the look on Justin's face as he tried with everything he had to keep from laughing, or maybe, just maybe, it was a lifetime of "I want it all and I want it now" all coming to a boiling point.
But whatever it was...before I knew what I was doing I had grabbed that soggy pancake up by the bootstraps and chucked it, grenade style, out of my left hand, over my head, and onto a nearby wall waiting across the room. Where, as most soggy pancakes tend to do, it landed with a splat and began the long and painful descent to the floor below. Where a hungry golden retriever sat waiting patiently.
Butter knife in paw.
So yea. We know what it's like to want to do something that seems so simple and so obvious, only to be met with setback after setback. Frustration after frustration. Splat after splat.
Now, I could've called up somebody and ASKED them how to make pancakes. But I felt stupid. I felt like I may as well be asking how to boil water. It was simple. It was obvious. It was batter in a frying pan for crying out loud. And who was I NOT to get it? Not to be born with an inherent pancake making knowledge naturally built into my brain. Not to be perfect the very first time I tried.
And I felt so small.
And I think that pretty much sums up how we felt our first year in business. Small. Stupid. Unable to do the Simple. Unaware of the Obvious. But as it turns out, simple and obvious only come with time. With practice. And with having someone tell you "oh you just have to wait until the air bubbles come through before you flip it."
Ohhhhhhhhhh.
So there you go. Let the Pancake Sessions be born!!! This is the place where no question is too stupid, no answer too simple or obvious, for the question to be asked in the first place. Because chances are there are a LOT of people out there struggling with the exact same things you are. So we'll try to do one or two of these a month and post them up here for everyone to see and learn from. Because we're in this together. We're stronger together. And we all LOVE pancakes together.
So shoot us an email (we've already been getting a ton of these for a while now, so we'll try to go back and grab some of those as well), leave us a comment, or send us a video with your questions, and we'll try our best to answer them. They may not always be THE best answer or the answer that is going to work best for you, but one thing I will promise you is that it will always be an honest answer. Because I think you deserve that.
** We think it would be a lot of fun to have some of these be a video Q. SOOO fun in fact, that we are offering a free seat to Spread the Love to the first FIVE people to send us their question in the form of a video! Helloooooo iSight!!
Pancake Sessions
