Chocolate Chip Pancakes for Dinner

 When my Firefighter and I were just married and had no children yet I usually did not cook dinner when he was on shift at the fire station.  Since it was just me at home I would just eat leftovers, have a sandwich, have some cereal, get take-out or go over to my parent's house.  Once we had the boys and they started to eat regular food I started to cook dinners on shift days again.  I eventually got a little more organized and I made sure that we had leftovers to eat on the shift days because by dinnertime I was tired!  Sometimes I would pack up the kids and we would head to my parent's house for dinner where I would also give the boys their baths, put them in their pajamas and put them to bed when we got home.  I love my parents!!

One day I was talking to my best friend and she told me how sometimes they would eat breakfast for dinner.  That was always fine for me but I had never thought to do that with the boys.  I am always trying to make sure that they eat healthy meals and for dinner I always made them dinner food.  Since she said that her kids always liked when she did that I decided to try it one day for something different.  If it was good enough for breakfast then why couldn't we eat it for dinner?  My boys thought that it was great so now on some of our Firefighter's shift days we do breakfast for dinner.  Their favorite is chocolate chip pancakes.

M is happy to have a few of the chocolate chips and give the pancake batter a stir or two while I am cooking the pancakes and then he likes to go and play with one of his toys while I finish up.  G has to be involved in the entire process!

 

As soon as I told G that we were going to have chocolate chip pancakes for dinner he started to get what we needed out of the cupboard so that he could help me.  I measure everything and then he pours it in the bowl and mixes it up.  I always check to make sure that it is mixed thoroughly but he has gotten very good at it and I hardly have to mix it at all.  Then I cook the pancakes while G tries to sneak more chocolate chips into the batter that is left in the bowl!

 When I got to the end of the batter I made one large pancake and it actually turned out.  G was very excited and he wanted to eat that one.

G was also excited that we were making a second batch of pancakes.  We had been to a farm market/ice cream shop earlier that day and they had a whole wheat pancake mix so I bought a bag to try it.  I have been trying to eat more healthy so I decided to try the whole wheat pancakes.  I was very good and only put a few chocolate chips in each one!

They seemed to take a little bit longer to cook and the batter was a bit thicker than the regular pancake mix that we use but they ended up tasting great!

I made a bunch of little ones and then one big one with the last of the batter.  I am actually starting to get pretty good at making pancakes that are not folded over anymore.

The boys were very happy with their dinner pancakes.  As you can tell by the picture, that is another thing that we do when our Firefighter is on shift...sometimes we take the little table into the family room and eat in front of the television!  I always swore that I would not let my kids do that but, oh well, once in awhile we do it when our Firefighter is on shift.  When he is home it is nice to have family meals at the table but when he is on shift, sometimes mommy bends the rules a bit.  All in all it was an enjoyable dinner with my boys!  Tomorrow I think that we will have homemade stuffed peppers in the crockpot.