Sunday-Funday of Cooking, Meal 1: Vegan Four Grain Blueberry Pancakes

Sunday involved serious cooking for every meal of the day... utilization of all those Saturday farmer's market vegetables, since we realized that we're going to Pittsburgh on Tuesday for a week and everything will go bad. We started the day with pancakes! I hadn't had pancakes in a reallllly long time; when going out for brunch, I tend to lean towards savory rather than sweet breakfasty dishes (like Veggie Tofu Breakfast Burrito at Quiet Storm, YUM). This Vegan Four Grain Blueberry Pancakes recipe is delicious and healthy, its adapted from the Holy Cow! Vegan Recipes blog.

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup stone-ground cornmeal
1/4 cup quick-cooking rolled oats (I used Quaker quick oats)
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon, ground
1/4 tsp nutmeg, ground
1 1/2 cups soy milk (feel free to substitute with almond milk)
1/2 tsp vinegar
4 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup honey
6 tbsp flax powder whisked together with 6 tbsp water
1 cup frozen blueberries, cooked in microwave

Preparation

-Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl: whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, stone-ground cornmeal, quick oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg
-Whisk flax seed powder with water in a separate bowl
-Warm blueberries in microwave for 45 seconds or until juicy.
-Add and mix in the rest of the wet ingredients to the flax seed mixture: blueberries, soy milk, vinegar, olive oil, honey.
-Pour wet mixture into dry mixture bowl. Mix quickly and in as few strokes as possible, until the dry ingredients are just moistened. The batter should be lumpy and not smooth. Overmixing the batter promotes the formation of gluten which would make the pancakes heavy and chewy as opposed to light and fluffy. The batter will be very thick but spreadable.
-On a hot griddle or frying pan over medium heat, spread a thin film of olive oil.
-Spoon about 1/3 cup of batter into the center of the griddle and shape the batter into a circle with a wooden spoon. This can be hard because the batter is very thick and doughy.
-Wait until the sides start looking a little dry, then lift the edge carefully and check if the underside is golden-brown, if so then flip the pancake.
-Press the pancake with a flat spatula so that it sizzles, allowing any uncooked batter to squeeze out and cook as well.
-When both sides are golden brown (with shades of blue berry!), remove from griddle/pan and repeat with more batter.
-Enjoy the pancake by itself, or with your favorite spread, maple syrup, more blueberries...