While sourdough bread has its place in the current moment, I’m drawn to a more familiar kitchen feat. The pancake. Much like the perfect, camel-colored cashmere sweater, the pancake upholds a timeless, platonic neutral idea of comfort. Much like the international diners erected to house them, in times of crisis, pancakes are reliable. Whatsmore, their softness is something like a proxy for so much physical contact now absent in our day to day.
The philosophy of making pancakes is an inherently optimistic act: If the first one comes out badly, throw it away (or as is more likely the case, eat it!) - a liberating mind set to say the least. On the flip side, the pancake plays as a perfect metaphor for our information overloaded moment. We are pancake people, “spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.”
Their appeal is an ordinary one. While pancakes can be made with relative ease at home, making them nonetheless implies a moment of slow living leisure time. A lovely thought: you are neither cooking, nor baking, you are simply ‘making pancakes’.
Has our “complex inner density been replaced with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the ‘instantly available?’”
This is hard to say. But in our visual world, to me the pancake appears proudly dimensional on a flat screen. It’s calm and serene and all very ‘stick of butter.’
If you’re not biting yet, I understand BUT in an article for the New York Times, “What Will We Eat in 2020? Something Toasted, Something Blue,” Kim Severson leads with the pancake. Her prediction? Japanese custard pancakes. A variation on a theme, and this stack? It’s even taller.