Turtle Pancakes

To this day I do not know if Turtle pancakes were a mistake or a wonderful invention of my Grandmother's. My Grandma makes simply the best pancakes. Somewhere I have the recipe, and one day I will try to duplicate that piece of heaven from my childhood. I think a large part of the "secret" to her pancakes is that they were fried up in a cast iron skillet as I recall, and quite literally swimming in bacon drippings. Bacon was a staple for my Grandpa, or maybe a staple in Grandma's cooking, but in either case there was always a jar of bacon grease available to season the dish Du jour.

Pancakes were not an everyday occurrence, but I know that I had plenty of them at the Lazy Lodge. When you pour pancake batter into a hot skillet that has bacon drippings in it, the edges get crisp and crunchy, caramelized and absolutely tasty! They setup into the shape rather quickly, and if you just pour a pancake in the standard manner, you get a circle. If however, you pour the main pancake, then pour mini-pancakes right at the edge of the circle, just inside the main circle, well.. you can create art... or Turtles... Grandma had a talent with the technique and could create not only circles, but other shapes as well. A trained eye such as mine could see the well formed "head" of a box turtle in many of those pancakes. Pouring them is only half the battle as anyone knows that has made pancakes, turtle or otherwise. Flipping pancakes can be challenging, but Turtle pancakes, it takes a loving wrist to manage that! Now I know I was special, not only because my Grandma went to the effort of creating these Turtle pancakes for me, but Grandpa's were just round. I shared my special pancakes with him from time to time, and on occasion some of the turtles had "broken" legs. I can almost smell them now as my mind takes me on a trip back in time. I see myself sitting at the table in front of their bay window, watching the birds and the Chipmunks, and talking endlessly about Lord only knows what, but that is another story...