As long as I’m on the subject, I might as well tell about the absolute most heinous food Mother cooked: flapjacks! When I smelled the acrid smell of Mother’s flapjacks nearing incineration, I literally hoped for The Rapture before I got the call to breakfast. Mother ascribed to the theory that a person HAD to eat breakfast. If she’d had nothing to offer but a bowl of sticks and rocks, so be it. Though she was generally mild-tempered, on this subject, she wouldn’t budge. Breakfast would be eaten.

Mother’s flapjacks could never have been confused with lovely, golden brown pancakes topped with butter and dripping with maple syrup. We usually saw her dread flapjacks on Thursday morning, grocery day. The cupboard was often nearly bare by then with nothing left but self-rising flour, a little leftover grease, and possibly a little sugar.

That’s when we’d get flapjacks, a glorified, deep fried dough ball. They were most often no more than self-rising flour, likely made without benefit of milk or eggs. The flour was often just mixed with water. Should we be out of syrup, preserves, or jam, Mother would boil us up a bit of sugar syrup, an equal mixture of sugar and water boiled together. The only taste was sweet.

Mother’s flapjack technique was crude. She’d put the skillet of grease on to heat while mixing up a thick mess of tasteless dough. Once the grease was smoking and near to conflagration, she’d dump big gobs of dough into the near-blazing grease. The flapjack quickly plumped up about an inch thick on contact with the skillet. As often as not, smoke poured from the skillet. Just before they ignited, she’d flip them. The bottoms were burned black. As I’ve mentioned before, Mother was easily distracted by the madness always in progress with five kids. Distressed by the burned side, she usually managed to get the fat, black dough balls out of the pan before the bottoms burned.

Mother had a poor opinion of our intelligence. Despite the cloud of smoke circling our heads and the smell of the charred flapjacks, she optimistically took the trouble to plate them burned side down, sure we’d never suspect they were black on the bottom again.

Topped with sugar syrup and probably no butter, it was payday morning after all, we’d dig in. Invariably, due to the thickness of the dough and the inferno under the skillet, thick, white, maggotty-looking dough would ooze out when pierced with a fork. It was a nauseating addendum to a lost cause. I could never choke it down. Fortunately, we were always running late, so those of us with weak stomachs could escape to the bus after scooting them around a little.

The good news was, there were always plenty left on the stove for after-school snacks, should we be ravenous enough to chance another try.