Thieves are getting younger and younger.  It’s not just adults
stealing recipes these days. Now it’s the kids.  Or better yet, 
they’re not just stealing, they’re also creating.

A couple of weeks ago, our older daughter Reilly came home
from work and asked our younger daughter Skyler to make her
something for dinner.  Skyler loves to cook, and create, and
reads this “Meals We Steal” blog, so she tinkers around
with ingredients to create new dishes.

There wasn’t much laying around the house, so Skyler started
with a bag of noodles and found a leftover container of some
Alfredo sauce in the frig.  That got her thinking about what
would go good with those two items.  She found some cherry
tomatoes and sliced them in two. 
 
“Hmmm, noodles, tomatoes, Alfredo, what would mix well
with that?”  She rummaged around the cupboard and pulled
out some basil, chopped onion and garlic, mixing them all
together in a sauce

She boiled the noodles in basil-flavored olive oil.   Draining the
noodles, she spread the sauce on it, and the sliced tomatoes. 
Done.  It was so good, we had her make it again the next week.
It’s easy and simple; you’re finished in minutes.  And she found a new way
to make her big sister happy. 
That’s always a good thing.

Pancakes with a twist can spice up breakfast.  The typical pancake has
flavor for one reason, right?  Because you put something on it
like blueberry sauce, maple syrup or butter. Then you gobble it
up.

If you didn’t add any of those toppings, what would you be left with?  
Nothing but bland flour.  Yecch. So it’s what you put on them
that make them taste good.

Putting something INSIDE the batter is another way to go.  Banana,
strawberry and blueberry pancakes are all dishes you see at IHOP
and other breakfast joints around the globe.

One you don’t see though (at least with not as much regularity
as you see the berry pancakes) is apple cinnamon
pancakes. This is one of my favorites and I built it
by using my dad’s motto of putting new things into the
batter.  He liked to intimidate us into eating asparagus,
green beans and Brussels sprouts when we were kids by
saying he’d put them in our pancakes the next day if we didn’t
finish our veggies at dinner.

While that never pertained to apple and cinnamon, when
I watched our mom make apple pie, I noticed the addition of
cinnamon, and naturally included that in my pancake batter
one morning when I wanted to explore how apples would
taste.  The combination is like a warm, juicy apple pie.

Mix some cinnamon in your pancake batter, heat the griddle,
slice some apples, put the batter in the heated pan, then toss
in 4-5 apple slices.  Flip when the 

batter bubbles.  Add the butter and
syrup.  It’s like apple pie with
syrup and butter for breakfast. 
You can’t beat that.