Mochi-fried porridge

My latest [greatest] undertaking comes with it a fair amount of irony. All my life, I've been a lover of food. Although I am admittedly a bit weird about dairy and creamy stuff, as a general rule I don't discriminate against most foods. People who talk about diets and are finicky about the foods that they eat have always somewhat irked me but also left me feeling quite sorry for them that they are missing out on so much. So it is not without a sense of humor that the universe has dealt me my latest hand: For the past three weeks, I have been on a frustratingly limited diet as part of an attempt to zero in on some foods that have been making me sick.

A food elimination diet as anyone who has done one is a serious pain. After three weeks of "Rice and Shine" warm cereal, intermittent with sides of potatoes and ham on the weekends, leaves the palette yearning for more. With the aide of several helpful souls, I've found some good recipes for gluten, soy, dairy, egg free recipes.

Today I decided to make pancakes. I was pretty sure I had enough substitute ingredients-- rice milk, egg replacer, rice flour, etc... but it turns out, you really need a little bit more than just rice flour and egg replacer to make pancakes. (Arrowroot or buckwheat or tapioca, or all three.) Well, I just couldn't stand to face another morning of rice cereal and didn't want to let my lack of ingredients stop me.



The result? A dense, chewy, slightly sweet, pancake that made me think of pan fried mochi we used to make for new years. Only not quite as fine and glutenous as mochi and reminiscent of cream of wheat cereal-- or the same rice porridge I've been eating for days...! Maybe you can make a decent pancake with the right substitute ingredients (the rice pancakes I've tried before have been OK but left me with the same sense of dissatisfaction. Plus, I think they used real eggs.) All in all, I just don't think you can make pancakes without eggs or wheat and possibly expect them to be as good as the real thing.