Parent Care Sanity

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Sometimes figuring out mom’s breakfast was a guessing game. Not just because she was a picky eater, she was supposed to be on a special diet, but sometimes she wanted something but she doesn’t remember what its called. One of these things is a German Pancake. For some strange reason, she called them California Pancakes. I don’t know where she came up with that, it’s not even close to the real name. She loved them no matter what they are called. She first tried them when we were in Oregon visiting my sister. We had gone out for breakfast and after reading over the menu a few times Mom decided she really wanted to try something new. When it came to the table it was the biggest pancake I had seen in my life. Mom ate the whole thing and was as happy as could be. I knew that the version she was eating was covered in syrup and probably had a lot more sugar in it then I wanted her to have. I knew there was a way to make it with a better sweetener that we would both agree on.

Breakfast that you can feed your loved ones without feeling guilty

Finding something that she was willing to eat that I didn’t feel bad about giving her. I would have loved to feed her healthy food for all meals but that just wasn’t something that was plausible. If she didn’t like what you were feeding her she would either choose to not eat it or she would eat it and then puke it back up just to prove her point.  So it was always us compromising on what she wanted to eat and what I could make work with her dietary requirements. On days that we had to get her to Dialysis, we had to make sure that she ate well and that we could get out the door on time.

Now I am in no way a dietician or even know that much about it. What I do know is that for 10 years we had to try and keep her numbers in a certain range. When she would go to dialysis they would do a blood test and check her levels of protein, sodium, potassium, and then, of course, we had to manage her sugars. There were some other things that they wanted us to manage but those were the main things that we had to worry about. Protein and Sugar were our major concerns with trying to come up with meal ideas.

So how do you make something that tastes amazing, fills a person up but isn’t going to throw off all her numbers? Well, German pancakes I would feel less guilty about because it has so many eggs in it and I could use honey or monks fruit as the sweetness. Yes, it does have flour but I am sure that can be substituted with other flours I just never have because mom really liked it the way it was.

I also loved to make them because of the ease of making them. Yes, I could make pancakes but then you have to flip them and it can be time-consuming. When I do make pancakes I tend to make as many as I can to freeze them so we can easily have pancakes. We usually don’t have pancakes for breakfast but every Wednesday night my dad wants either pancakes or waffles. For busy mornings it was so much easier to make the German pancake while I was trying to get mom ready for the day. I could quickly throw the ingredients in the blender pour it into the pan and have a good 20 minutes to be doing something else that needed to get done. It also helps that the cleanup is fast and simple as well.