Food for Body and Mind

Mike over at 10,000 birds is apparently and thankfully an addict to blog carnivals. Not only is he the father of the famous "I and the Bird" which will be hosted right here in the near future, nope, he will also be hosting the Carnival of the Recipes soon - so soon indeed that I hope this blog entry is not too late.

Basically Mike has therefore recently nourished me in two ways:

I am receiving many emails each day now with great blog posts to be incorporated in the forthcoming edition of "I and the Bird" here at Bell Tower Birding.
This is so great!

Thanks to all who have sent in their links up to now, to those who haven't: only a handful of days to go so go for it, and to those who haven't considered it yet:

I NEED YOUR INPUT!

NOW !!

But then of course Mike has also provided me with a new recipe to try out, and while I am trying to return his - and all the other's - favour with my edition of "I and the Bird" soon, I'll also write down one of my vegetarian birder's recipes.

The Filled Pancake

First, the pancake.
This is quite a random process now during which I usually mix two to three eggs (according to hunger) with an equal amount of milk and a bit of salt in a bowl and mix this gradually with flour until it is still really liquid but starting to thicken, a bit less liquid than cream.
Then I put a bit of butter in a small pan, with the heat on medium-high (not high!) and fry the pancakes, no need to describe this. I usually have a bunch of paper towels ready and quickly wipe the pan after each pancake with it, I find this tends to keep the following pancake nicer, but that might just be one of my obsessions...


Then, the filling:
- Take an onion and chop it into little bits and pieces. Do the same with a fresh tomato (of course you may peel it if you are a perfectionist).
- Quickly fry both onions and - a bit later - the tomatoes in a frying pan.
- Add some spinach, preferably whole leaves that you have cut into little bits and pieces, but you may of course also add the cut spinach you can get in the deep freeze section of your supermarket.
- Add a tiny bit (a spoonful or two) of fresh cream.
- Add some feta cheese that you have cut into little cubes and immediately turn the heat off so the feta doesn't really melt but only gets slightly soft on the outside.
- Add salt and pepper only after you've added the feta to make sure it doesn't get too salty (feta by itself is quite salty already).

At last, bring them together:

- Place the spinach mixture onto a pancake and roll it so it looks like a hotdog.
- Repeat until you run out of pancakes or spinach mixture.
- Place all your filled pancakes on an oven-proof plate and cover in cheese, in the US this will probably be cheddar but any other cheese will do as long as you like it.
- Place in oven (full blast, we only need it to melt the cheese and keep the inside warm) until the cheese is melted and slightly brown and has a nice crust.

And then eat while it's hot!