Celebrating Mom’s Everywhere

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the Mom’s out there! I love holidays like this because they are all about being thankful and taking the time to appreciate those who we often take for  granted. I am so blessed to have a wonderful mother who I am also able to call my friend. She is wonderfully supportive and so much fun; we will be traveling together with my aunt (who I consider my second mom!) to see my other aunt in California at the end of the month:) How lucky are we?

This morning we decided to have brunch together, which is my mom’s favorite meal, to celebrate Mother’s Day. My dad began cooking as I slowly awoke from an evening of drinks with my co-workers. I really love going out with people from work because we rarely get to see each other in a relaxed environment and in normal clothing. I work at my local hospital, registering patients that come into the emergency department. Although I am not on the nursing staff we have a great connection with the nurses we work with and I really have enjoyed getting to know many of them. Although we have our fun at work, its nice to get out and let loose a little every once in a while. Last night was a going away party for one of our medic’s that is being deployed the Middle East. Thankfully he is an army medic working in a hospital and not in the field but it is still sad to say goodbye to someone that is going overseas. I wish him the best of luck over there, can’t wait to see him when he returns to us!

Back to the brunch….

So my dad began making his usual bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, etc. These are thing’s I really don’t/cannot eat, especially in the way they are prepared. I was considering just having a typical bowl of oatmeal when someone mentioned pancakes. Now I am not a regular eater of pancakes, mostly because they aren’t the healthiest of breakfast items and they are usually prepared with milk and other things that I cannot eat. I decided to check out Angela’s recipes though, knowing that she has tons of vegan options for amazing breakfasts 🙂 Well I found a great recipe on her site for whole-wheat vegan pancakes! I decided to give them a try. I whipped up the batter which consisted of:

2/3 c wheat flour, 1 T sugar, 1 t baking powder, 1/4 t salt, 2/3 c soy milk, and 1 egg (she used egg substitute but I am not vegan so I didn’t mind the real thing)

While I was prepping the batter I had started to eat a banana and thought, “what would be better than banana pancakes!?” So into the skilled went the batter and I made 1/2 banana and 1/2 regular pancakes. As I  was cooking and thinking of toppings I decided I wanted an upgrade from maple syrup. I was thinking about my favorite banana toppings and decided to mix up some Maple Syrup-Almond Butter! Yum:)

As I was making these delicious pancakes my father was using the other burner to make the eggs. He is usually pretty skeptical of any of my recipe variations (he’s very old-school in his food preferences and likes things the way he remembers them to be only!). He said that they looked great and I gave him one to try to which he remarked “wow, these are really good!” SUCCESS! He’s probably my toughest food critic, mostly because he is so set in his ways.

Anyway, I made the pancakes and sat down for brunch with my mom, dad, and mom’s grandparents (Memere and Pepere), who live upstairs from us in an in-law apartment. Soon after we began eating my aunt called and she and my uncle stopped by and we sat and ate and talked for the good part of the morning. I love being home on Sundays; its such a relaxing, family-oriented day. We usually have a form of brunch every Sunday, this one was a little more elaborate than usual. My ultimate Sunday would have started with a run or bike ride first, but I was still recovering a bit this morning when I woke up. I am hoping to do something exercise-related this afternoon. I would love to take a bike ride but its cool out and super-windy! Oh well, we shall see 🙂

Hope everyone has a wonderful day today, especially all those mothers out there!