Griddle me this: how do I properly grill these things?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/05/2018 (2963 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You know who I feel sorry for? I’ll tell you who I feel sorry for. I feel sorry for surgeons.

It’s not because they spend so much time elbow-deep in the medically sensitive inner workings of other human beings.

No, it’s because, before they can muck around with our messy bits, they have to squeeze into a pair of those super-stretchy surgical gloves.

You know how hard those gloves are to put on? I will tell you how hard those gloves are to put on. Those gloves are really (very bad word) hard to put on.

I made this surprising sartorial discovery over the weekend when I waddled through a steady drizzle in Assiniboine Park to report for my volunteer shift at the 32nd annual Teddy Bears’ Picnic in support of the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba.

For the second straight year, the wonderful organizers at the Rotary Club Food Tent parked me in a remote corner over one of three blast-furnace-style griddles and turned me into a “celebrity pancake maker,” churning out flapjacks for a steady stream of stuffed-animal-toting children and their mildly waterlogged parents.

Before flipping flapjacks, however, us celebrity cooks were ordered to squeeze into a pair of surgical rubber gloves in a sincere and humanitarian effort to protect the hygiene of the pancake-seeking public.

What with being roughly the size of a major kitchen appliance, I am not known for my digital dexterity, so I inadvertently shredded about three pairs of these incredibly thin gloves while attempting to stretch them over my fingers, which are the size and shape of bratwurst sausages.

Noting my difficulty, one of the other volunteers offered this helpful tip: “Hey, Doug, those are the extra-small gloves. Why don’t you try on a pair of the extra-large?”

Not being a surgeon, I had no idea the gloves came in varying sizes, but minutes later, there I was, fingers encased in skintight rubber, hunched over a griddle hotter than the sun, sweating like a butterball turkey on Thanksgiving and pounding out pancakes as fast as humanly possible.

And standing guard at the griddle beside me, smiling a toothy smile and, as far as I could tell, not perspiring in the least, was Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman, who, thanks to defective circuitry in my brain, I always insist on calling “Bruce.”

As we attempted to flip our first flotilla of flapjacks, a pint-sized kid wandered over to the mayor’s station and began staring at his pancakes with a look of grave concern.

“Mr. Bowman,” the little guy chirped.

“Yes,” the mayor replied, one eye on the kid, the other on his flipper.

“I think you’re burning those pancakes,” the kid warned, frowning.

Now, in that situation, I probably would have “accidentally” dumped a bucket of batter on the helpful kid’s head, but our mayor accepted the unsolicited advice graciously.

“Why thank you,” he said, beaming, at which point the little guy wandered away into the crowd.

“I like that kid,” the mayor laughed, then turned back to check on his batch of flapjacks, which were a lovely golden brown, whereas mine resembled blackened lumps of charcoal.

What with being regular guys, we started to treat this charitable activity as if it were the Stanley Cup of pancakes. Being a traditionalist, I stuck to the tried and true system of turning out circular flapjacks.

The mayor, however, added scraggly little tails on the bottom of his. “These are Patrik Laine pancakes,” Brian told us, referring to the Winnipeg Jets’ beloved superstar sniper, “and that bit at the bottom is his playoff beard.”

Everyone was extremely impressed with this culinary tribute to a local hero, at least until we looked over at the third griddle, where Ron Cantiveros of the Filipino Journal was casually dishing up teddy bear-shaped flapjacks with big round faces and cute little bear ears.

I became so distracted by the extreme cuteness of these cakes that I did not notice I had accidentally caused a small fire to erupt by scraping burnt batter and hot oil into the catch basin of the griddle.

A blaze erupted that had to be extinguished by the tent organizer bravely dousing it with baking soda.

Who was the better pancake maker? That’s what I asked our mayor, who politely replied: “Since you are writing the article, I’d say hands down you were superior. (Then whispering to a friend) But you know mine were better. And Ron Cantiveros was amazing. He got style points. There are different levels. There’s the quality of the pancakes, the style, the colour, the texture, there’s so many variables.”

After peeling off our sweaty gloves, I wiped my sweaty brow and congratulated the mayor for being the political equivalent of the hardest-working man in show business.

I know it sounds like I was buttering him up over pancakes, but it was sincere.

And you’d batter believe that.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca