Our German Pancake Picnic

Sometimes it would get boring at the cabin, especially when Dad let us stay up there during the week while he worked down in Mesa.   The boys loved to hike up or down the creek, fishing, but we girls often ran out of things to keep us busy.  Then Mom worked extra hard to find fun things for us to do, so we wouldn’t start teasing or bickering with each other.

Early one day Mom was already tearing her hair out trying to find things to keep us happy.  In desperation, she tried to think of something we could do.  Suddenly, she announced, “Let’s go on a picnic!” 

“Where, where,” we all wanted to know.

“Can we go to Woods Canyon Lake?”  I suggested.  We loved to go to to the lake for the day, although it took about an hour and a half to drive there.  Woods Canyon Lake was on top of the Rim and always cool and refreshing.  We could fish and swim and catch crawdads, as well as have a picnic under the tall pine trees while we fed the squirrels.

“We can’t get there,” Mom reminded her.  “We don’t have a car.”

We sighed in frustration.  Getting to spend lots of time at the cabin  was fun, but when Dad let us stay while he worked during the week it was hard because we didn’t have a car.

“Where will we go?”  Julie wanted to know.  Compared to Woods Canyon Lake, nowhere close seemed much fun.

“We can eat at the meadow above the bluffs,” Mom suggested. 

“Oh, Mom,” Linda whined.  “That’s not cool.  We can do that any day!”

Instead of getting frustrated, Mom tried to think of something to make our picnic special.  We would be happier if she could make us a neat picnic, with chips and pop and cookies and stuff, but we didn’t have anything like that in the cupboards.  What did we have that she could make?

Suddenly, Mom’s face lit up.  “I know,” she suggested.  “I’ll make a German pancake for our picnic!  I’ll put apples on it and it will be delicious!”

That sounded pretty good.  We didn’t know much about German food, but we had seen "The Apple Dumpling Gang",  and  we'd heard Julie Andrews sing about shnitzles with noodles, so in our imagination German pancakes sounded like some kind of special desert, and it sounded good.

Mom got the big, cast iron skillet out of the cupboard, turned on the stove, and began to mix up pancake batter.  She poured all of the batter in the pan, baked it in a hot oven, then topped it with slices of apples.  Somehow, it didn’t look nearly as exciting as we'd thought it would.  Still, it was different, and it looked pretty good.  We took the old red, green and yellow striped Indian blanket Mom kept at the cabin for picnics and some paper plates and cups.

“We’ll just have to drink water,” Mom said as she filled a picture full of water from the sink. 

“Can’t we have fizzies?”  Linda asked.  We loved fizzies.  They were little, fruit flavored tablets that fizzed as they dissolved in water.  I thought they tasted best in fresh well water.  Then you could hardly tell the difference between them and pop.

“They’re all gone,” mom replied.  “I’m sorry, but we used the last ones yesterday.”

That was a big disappointment, but by this time were were pretty excited to go on our picnic, anyway, so we put everything in a brown paper grocery bag and walked down the road a little ways.  Then we cut through some trees and came out in the meadow above the bluffs.  Mom spread the Indian blanket on the grass, I took the paper plates and cups out of the sack, and Mom set the frying pan down on the edge of the blanket. 

The German pancake turned out to be pretty good after all, even if it wasn’t what we had imagined.  We enjoyed eating our lunch and resting under the shade of the trees at the edge of the meadow.  By the time we packed everything up into the paper bag and carted it home the afternoon was half over.  Soon the boys came home from their hike, and one more long summer day was coming to an end.