Peanut Butter Pancakes (for one)

I have to admit that towards the end of summer we got a little lazy going to the grocery every week. We took several weekend trips (Vancouver & Olympic National Park) and have been planning lots of nights (like weekly pub trivia) with our friends where we end up eating out.

I don't plan too many of my lunches during the day. I usually end up snacking on protein bars, fruit, whole wheat bread with peanut butter, and whatever I've been baking that week. But one day toward the end of a non-grocery store shopping week, I was completely out of most of my go-to lunch items. I didn't even have bread to make my peanut butter sandwich.

Instead of going out to get a smoothie or something, I decided to do a pantry sweep and make something on the fly with a few of the non-perishble items I had lying around. What I got was healthy (and delicious) peanut butter pancakes!

First I softened one tablespoon of peanut butter in the microwave, then mixed in 1/4 cup of whole wheat pastry flour, 1 teaspoon of baking powder (for ultra fluffy pancakes), two teaspoons of brown sugar, and a pinch of salt with 1/4 cup of almond milk, an ingredient I like to buy in bulk and store so that we always have a breakfast drink even if we don't make it to the store.

Spray a griddle or non-stick pan with cooking spray and heat. Ladle the batter onto the cooking surface to create three pancakes. At this point I remembered I noticed I had sliced almonds and almond butter, which would have also made some awesome pancakes. I decided to add some of the sliced almonds along a very light dusting of powdered sugar and sugar-free syrup to the top of the pancakes after the pancakes were fluffy and a nice golden brown on each side.