Pancakes

There are several foods that are automatically associated with the United States. Hamburgers are one of them, sandwiches are another (sliced bread always has "American Sandwich" written on the package). Cupcakes and doughnuts are very American and sold in Starbucks in order to assert its "American-ness." And pancakes.
Which is why my family asked me to make them, because apparently they are in pretty much every film in existence. I have made pancakes a million times before (Elaina loves them) so I told them I would, just that I would go to the store with them tomorrow to buy a few things.

LES MOTS DU JOUR:
levure- baking powder. I looked this up and promptly forgot it 4 times within the 10 minutes before I left for the store before I finally just wrote it on my palm.
sirup eirab- maple syrup- story on this one in just a second.

So Malika, Redouane, Rayanne, Ayoub and I all got into the car and drove to the store. Too many groceries to carry home unfortunately as that was probably the third time I have been in a car since I got to France and have not missed the sensation at all.
Carrefour, the equivalent of Randalls or HEB here, is in le centre comercial, Part Dieu, aka the mall. Don't ask why. While it is true there is a different shop (there is even a store for all the frozen food, like those two isles taken out of the grocery store to be its own store) for pretty much every aspect of a meal, for the most part, boulangeries are only for baguettes, and each of the others is the same- traditional french food only. For milk (which is weird, and I don't believe it is really milk and plan on never drinking it again), yogurt (desert- not a breakfast food), American sandwich bread, cooking ingredients like flour, candy, ect. are all bought exclusively at Carefour. Being as space in a mall in downtown lyon is limited I guess, the store is 2 stories tall. It has enormous elevators to the parking garage below that you can push your overloaded grocery basket into and still fit a dozen people. When you enter to shop you have to put a Euro into the basket in order to insure you will return it after you are finished shopping, and when you need to travel between the floors there is a giant moving sidewalk style escalator and when you roll the cart onto it the wheels cling to the belt so that it does not roll backwards on its way up. We wandered through the store as we did our shopping- math practice as they always calculate the best deal for each item they have to buy (I am only exaggerating a little bit). I had gotten everything I needed except the syrup. I looked everywhere. It was not with the carmel and chocolate syrups used in baking and on ice cream. Nor with the enormous assortment of jellies and jams (apricot is my new favorite, does that even exist in the US?) nor with baking supplies, the extensive collection of olive oils (really? how different can they be?), the honey, or the bread. They even have a section of one row, top to bottom and 3 or 4 feet across filled with Nutella (really, I don't know what the French would do without it. Worse than America's addiction to peanut butter). At the house I had looked up for the word for syrup on the internet, just in case. So I asked one of the employees. "Excusez-moi, mais ou est le sirup?" "Quoi?" "le sirup! Pour les pancakes?" "Ohhh le sirup eirab! En face de le cafe" "Ah... merci." (Excuse me, but where is the syrup? What? They Syrup! For pancakes? Oh... syrup. Across from the coffee. Thank you.) Except eirab sounds like arab (the way the french say it). Which really shouldn't be too surprising- there is a large Arabic population here, and used a bit like Chinese or Mexican is in food names back home. "But really, it comes from Canada! Why would they call it Arab syrup?" Was what I was thinking as I hurried back to the coffee isle. "Across from the coffee... ok... he had no idea what he was talking about. Tea is across from coffee.." I looked more. Finally, behind a post was syrup. Pretty easy to miss. In the US syrup is like nutella, or olive oil or something here. Lots of different brands, different sizes, low fat, sugar free, ect. Nope. There is one kind of syrup here. It comes in a small glass container, with a Canadian flag on the label. It is about 3xs more expensive than in the US, and, as I have already mentioned, smaller. But it was the only one, and as pancakes are pretty much useless without syrup... we bought the stupid thing.
During the week Malika is always the first one up. I am always second. By several hours. Turns out, normal teenagers sleep till noon here too. Too bad I simply can't, but it is nice because that is the only time it is remotely quiet around here. Which is nice, occasionally. Malika had already eaten by the time I got up, and by the time I had finished my now-ritual morning tea the first few kids that she takes care of had already arrived, but she was happy to help me get out bowls and the one and only measuring cup in the house (I have never once seen her measure with something other than her hands... I am not that good). So I set about making pancakes. Unfortunately, the recipe I was using was an American recipe. And I don't have a measuring cup here... liters and grams. So there went 15 minutes converting all that. Also, it is impossible to measure less than 100 grams of something... so I just kinda randomly pored sugar in. And the baking soda. And the salt. So it wasn't really my fault that the pancakes did not turn out nearly as fluffy as I would have liked.
I told my family that typically they are eaten with maple syrup which I pronounced as "sirup arab" and then wen on to say that the name makes no sense because the syrup comes from maple trees in Canada and the northern United States and so really it isn't arab at all. Redouane laughed. "C'est eirab, pas arab."
Oh. Right. I turned back to making my pancakes and shut up after that.
The recipe says it makes 8 servings. I guess that means for girls, or little kids or something, because there are seven of us and I ate one very small pancake and by the time Ilyess finally woke up there were no pancakes left. He was very disappointed. And called Sara a pig. So I promised I would make them again.
The next morning, Malika had left and it was just Reduoane and I in the morning. With nothing else to do I decided to make pancakes again, as I had told Ilyess I would. I found all the supplies myself this morning, and aside from needing help with the stove (I can not, for the life of me, work a lighter for a gas stove) it went fine. Still not as fluffy as I would like, but I left them all on a plate and went back to doing my own thing. By the time I cleared the table from breakfast with Sara around noon they were all gone.
That night at dinner Sara asked Ilyess if he had liked the pancakes.
He stared at her for a minute then burst out. "PUTAIN!!" (cuss word- you can look it up yourself but it is, as far as I can tell, one of the most important words in the french language along with the verbs avoir and etre, and as natural to them as the word maman).
Apparently he had not realized there were pancakes, and didn't get any for the second day in a row. He was, to say the least, very annoyed and did not shut up about it for the rest of dinner, cussing under his breath. I promised him that pancakes are very easy for me to make and I would gladly do it again soon.
Normally, he gets up sometime between 11 and noon, but the next morning he came stumbling into the kitchen around 10. I couldn't decipher his sleepy muttering, but apparently he had woken up just for pancakes- which I had not made. So I did. I will have you know that I am much much faster at it now, and don't even have to look up the recipe anymore. By adding more flower they were a bit fluffier, as I like. I think Ilyess ate half and Ayoub ate another third, Sara ate the rest.
Either way, next time I swear I will remember to double the recipe.
Bisous!