Stacked Pancakes {Pure Maple Syrup}

When I was a child my mother loved the Little House on the Prairie books. She read to us in the evenings in the winter months. I don't know how many times we read through the series. We had our favorites for various reasons. Farmer Boy was about the food. We would try making what we read about. Mom even tried apples and onions once. That wasn't so great, but the bacon and pancakes and jellies... those were fun! It was thanks to Farmer Boy that we started sometimes dipping our bacon in flour before cooking it to give it a different crunch.

I've always wanted to try the amazing-sounding stacked pancakes that Almanzo's mother made on Sunday mornings. The fluffy pancakes slathered in butter then liberally sprinkled with maple sugar before being added to the stack were described in great detail including the way the sugar and butter melted together and ran down the sides of the pancakes. The only problem was, out in West Texas we didn't exactly have lots of maple sugar. So we never tried it.

This week Keith decided to add pure maple syrup, maple cream, and, you guessed it, maple sugar to our inventory at Ebenezer Groceries. As soon as I saw it I knew what we would be having for breakfast on Sunday morning.

And they were good. Really good.

And the butter and maple sugar melted together and dripped down the sides. It really did. It was everything I hoped for. It even had a little bit of crunch from the sugar that I wasn't expecting, but that added to it! And the pure maple flavor was simply amazing!

How else should I use the rest of my bag of maple sugar? How do y'all use it?

My next thing to try is going to be the maple cream. I'm pretty tempted to just open it and eat it straight out of the jar, but I'm guessing there are better ways to use it. Any suggestions?

On Buying A Grocery Store

This is all new to us, the whole buying a business thing, the whole getting ready to run a grocery store thing. I mean, who knew that so many vendors were involved? Who knew that getting the POS to communicate with the scales was a very important step in the printing of labels? Who knew that buying produce was one of the most time consuming things an owner/general manager needs to do?

Certainly not me, but I do now!

We are about a week and a half out from taking over. Thankfully the current owners will plan to stay on for a while to help us learn the ropes. I think that is what is keeping these days from seeming overwhelming. As it is we are just pretty excited! We know that the learning curve will steep, but we are counting the days!

Apparently we need 5 gallon buckets of pepper...

It is funny that at the beginning of this year as I was looking ahead I decided to not make this a year of trying to do big things or make big changes, but just to shore up and strengthen the things already in place.

The bulk food room.

So far this year:

• I went to Panama for a new treatment.
• Douglas got engaged!
• We are buying a grocery store!!
• The children are changing schools.

That is a lot of changes for a year of no changes! :) :) :)

In 1 Month...

The last time I was in Taiwan I got a text from Keith. Now remember, it is a 13 hour time difference this time of year, so it was sent in the daytime here meaning it arrived in the middle of the night. I tend to wake up more often during the night while there (thank you, jet lag!), so one of my awake times I glanced at my phone to check the time and saw these words:

"Do you mind if I buy a business?"

At that point I was just like, "Whatever, sure, do it."

We did speak more about it over the phone when I was actually awake and he was really excited. I was a little blown away. Before I even got home, and I was only gone a week, he had gone to see the business and had made our interest in buying it known.

A few days after I got home, while I was still a bit fuzzy-headed from travel, we had a conversation with the sellers and got a tour of the business. And I got excited too.

There are a lot of steps that come in next. The waiting to hear if we would be the ones they would decide to sell to was a little hard. But when the answer came it was a YES!

So here we are, working through all of the legal steps to having a family business! I'll give more details soon, and {hopefully} some cute pictures. For now, we are looking at a real change of pace in about 1 month when we actually take over the business.

For those who don't know, what type of business do you think it might be?

And for those who do, please don't say quite yet!