The Joys of the Unitasker

I have made it a practice in my life to prefer the multitasker to the unitasker. If a product was going to impress me it had to do at least two different things. I should have known that that point of view was beginning to crumble when I held onto the toastmaster pancake maker instead of donating it to Goodwill. It was a throw in with the mega-sized George Foreman grill. There was a toaster too and the whole thing was on sale for a shockingly low price. The toaster is long gone. The George Foreman is well-used. The pancake maker has become one of my favorite appliances. The pancakes cook on both sides at once--no flipping, and they are all lovely, little, uniform circles--no arguing about who got the biggest, strangest, etc... pancake. It also cleans up so easily it doesn't even feel like work. For the first time I was a devotee of a single purpose appliance.
In my defense I made the pancakes out of Bisquick which is the ultimate multi-tasker. You can make almost any bread out of Bisquick. It has gotten me out of numerous jams and like my mother before me I always have it on hand. Bisquick makes adequate pancakes. I've been eating them all my life. They aren't particularly sweet, in fact I've always secretely found them a little salty for a pancake. But they were easy and always on hand.
I've mentioned in the past that we are Sam's Club shoppers, and at Sam's they stock the Bisquick right next to Krusteaz Pancake Mix. Pancake mix is a unitasker. Allright, they do tell you how to make up waffle batter with it, but that's it. Pancakes is all they do. But week after week, Bisquick box after Bisquick box, I remained intrigued by the Krusteaz. This Saturday I gave in. The perfect pancake machine deserved better than Bisquick, no offense my long-loved brand. I bought that gigantic bag of pancake mix and brought it home to a skeptical husband. "That's a lot of pancake mix" he said. "I know" was the best I could do in reply. He left to attend a wedding and the kids and I broke out the pancake maker. The neat thing about not having recipes for wonder pie and cofee cake is that all that back matter can be devoted to new and delightful versions of pancake recipes. This is Michigan and the apples are at their peak, so we made Apple Spice pancakes. God forgive me I ate four myself and I do not regret it. They were sweet, no extraneous leavenings or salt. The apples and cinnamon elevated this humble dinner to cuisine. We made them again today. Well, Kurt had try it. Anybody want to come over for pancakes. It really is a big bag, and we ought to use it up. Just drop in. It only takes a few minutes to whip up a batch.