Blueberry Pancakes and Three Hummingbirds!

Last night a ten-year-old friend came for a sleepover. After we got rid of his mom and her partner, we made two great pizzas (will post on pizza another time) and salad for dinner. This morning we got up, played video games and lazily headed down for breakfast, famished. H requested pancakes, but we were out of maple syrup. We did have a pint of fresh New Jersey blueberries, though. Personally, I find blueberry pancakes a bit disappointing: the pancake is a little soggy right around the blueberries, and the berries are liquified and have no texture (they also stick to the griddle). With this recipe I solved that problem and the lack of syrup as well.

Pancakes (makes 4 servings)

• 1 2/3 c unbleached white flour
• 1/3 c buckwheat flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 2 T sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 2 c milk (2% this time) add another 1-2 T if you like them flatter
• 1/4 c rapeseed oil or mix of oil and melted butter
• 2 whole eggs

Syrup

• 1 pint blueberries
• 2 t lemon or to taste

Heat griddle to 350°F.

Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Whisk together wet ingredients in smaller bowl and add all at once to dry ingredients. Mix, but don't overbeat -- it will have small lumps (I use a heatproof softly cupped spatula).

Spread a small amount of butter or oil on the griddle, wait a minute for it to get hot, then add batter with a ladle. Turn when the bubbles stop filling in (this recipe makes them pretty thick, you may not get many bubbles. Check the bottoms).

Wash the blueberries. In a small saucepan on med-low, add about 1/3 of them with a small amount of water, just to keep them from burning. Add lemon juice. You can also add a little honey or jam. Just before serving, add the rest of the blueberries,. They will warm up a little but keep their shape, taste and consistency. Turn off burner.

While we were eating on the back porch, we had the usual morning display of birds fighting for turns at the nyger seed feeder -- baby house sparrows, goldfinches and downy woodpeckers. Jeanne cleaned out the birdbath (a new addition: large shallow bowl on 2' stump, with a large rock inside) and the catbirds came to it immediately. Then we got a surprise: three hummingbirds at once in our small (20' by 20') yard. One got into a tiff with another and drove it off. It happened too fast to see if any were male (We had a male in early summer but at this time of year we normally have only females and juveniles). This is the first time we've been sure that there were three different hummers. Since I first planted native monarda (red bee balm) in the late '90s, it's been spreading throughout the mostly shady back part of the yard and has made it a magnet for hummingbirds. In my first ten years here I almost never saw hummingbirds; now it's pretty much guaranteed if you wait five or ten minutes. J's theory is that our yard is a territorial borderline. Or possibly, the third just strayed or is getting ready to migrate? We'll keep an eye out to see if there's a male around. Sorry girls, they're just so much prettier with that ruby red throat.