Culinary Adventure: Crepes

First of all, I apologize for the lack of posts... again. I've been having a bit of writer's block. I've still got a handful of posts that need to be written, but I'm missing something for each one... A picture on someone else's camera that I'm hoping she'll email to me or pictures that I still need to take or creative, witty writing. I seriously don't know how the "pros" can write a new post, sometimes multiple posts, every day! Anyway. I digress.

Tonight was a cooking first for me. I made crepes. All day long I hadn't thought much about dinner because I knew we had a ton of yummy leftover spaghetti {with homemade sauce... Remind me to share the recipe some time. It's loaded with tons of fresh veggies and my Ethan gobbles it right up!} and I figured I'd just whip up a salad to go with it. Imagine my dismay when Sean tells me he had it for lunch! Dang it all! So I looked over my dinner ideas list and what we had on hand and was uninspired. So, I decided to try something completely new. Crepes.

First order of business: a phone call to my mom {aka the Crepe Queen}! I had to get the facts... Which recipe she uses. How much she makes. How she cooks them. And any advice and tips she had for a newbie. Can you believe after almost 6 years of marriage I had never once made crepes?! Lame, I know. And it's not like I was afraid of attempting them. For whatever reason, in my 25+ years of existence I had never, not even once, made a crepe.

So I got to work and whipped up the batter, heated my pans, added a little butter and poured the batter for my first one. It. was. a. dud. A big-fat-pile-of-crepe-batter DUD. Ugh. I put it on the plate and tried again.... I lost. Zero for two and my confidence was quickly fading. So I turned to the internet {I almost called mom again, but didn't want to resort to that just yet} and went straight to Our Best Bites because I knew there had been a crepe tutorial not too long ago {ok, so it was last June, but I swear it was "just the other day"!}. Now, I didn't use their recipe, but I may next time. My best advice for crepe newbies is to understand that by the time you are ready to flip the crepe, it's already pretty much cooked through and shouldn't be runny at all. You are basically just browning the other side. Wish I would've realized this for my first two attempts! With renewed confidence I made attempt #3 and it was... a success!! After a couple more, I got both pans going and in no time had a nice, hot stack of crepes just waiting to be gobbled up by my hungry family. {Ethan had already told me numerous times that he was "staaaaarving"! I worry this kid is gonna eat us out of house and home when he gets older!}

Oh, and what became of my first two failed attempts? Well, I destroyed the evidence, of course! Just because they were unsitely does not mean they weren't tasty!

I called my boys to dinner and after a little coaxing, Ethan decided he liked his best plain, rolled up and dipped in powdered sugar. We had a variety of other fillers, though: homemade strawberry freezer jam, blueberry syrup from Pike Place Market and whipped cream. Sean even tried it with maple syrup, but I prefer the jam and powdered sugar route. {And no, the tulip stems on the right side of the picture were not part of the topping/filling selection!}