I don’t like breakfast.

I once ordered a club sandwich in a Denny’s at 7 a.m. That’s how much I don’t like breakfast food. Breakfast involves bland foods, me waking up earlier than my neighbor’s dog to make it and it gives me gas (or worse) all morning. Why do people get excited about that?

I do like hockey.

Right now, I am enjoying St. Louis Blues playoff hockey in particular. Playoff hockey brings with it two things: a dramatically overextended beer budget and weird start times. I’m usually against indoor sports during the day. The stadium feels like a strip club during lunch hour—low energy, everyone looks off and no one is bringing the A-game. But this Saturday’s noon Game 5 between the Blues and the Dallas Stars gave me a unique opportunity to make breakfast more palatable—by cutting it with the highs and lows of the search for the Stanley Cup, simultaneously showing support of the hometown team with St. Louis Blue(s)berry Pancakes (Page 150).

Unfortunately, by the time the pancakes were done, I’d be bluer than Louie the Polar Bear, the most boring mascot in the National Hockey League and, sadly, team mascot of the Blues. He’s a blue polar bear. My initial diagnosis suggests hypothermia, asphyxiation or too much Glacier Freeze Gatorade. One thing’s for sure, he’s no Wild Wing, the Anaheim Ducks certified bad-ass, or Youppi!, who once got kicked out of a Major League Baseball game for being too rowdy, but was eventually embraced by the Montreal Canadiens. On a side note, I probably know too much about mascots.

As far as the pancakes went, things started off great. Making dry pancake mix is ridiculously easy. Bisquik is probably making more money off white powder than Pablo Escobar was. Just combine flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix it until your prep table looks like Tony Montana’s desk.

Once I’d made enough pancake mix to power Wall Street for a week, it was on to the batter. Here, like the Blues in the final minute of every period this season, things became unhinged.

The first step in the wet batter is whisking the eggs until “stiff peaks form.” The Food Lab contains a pretty solid explanation of what stiff peaks are and why they matter but I couldn’t focus. I was laughing at the word stiff.

Whisking eggs into shape is more mentally and physically exhausting than taking the ACT with a hangover. I whisked the eggs like Humphrey Bogart whisked women off their feet. I spun them like Jam Master Jay spins records. I poked them like Jay-Z pokes women not named Beyoncé. When none of that worked I resorted to anger. A good hockey player controls his emotions. I’m more like Ryan Reaves.

After a bigger beat-down than F4ntastic Four at the box office, and more effort than I’ve put into any relationship I’ve ever had, the little bastards finally stood up straight.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a stiff peak. I would know. I’ve been to Disneyland. I’ve ridden the Matterhorn.

Next I “folded” all of the ingredients together, which is as easy as folding a fitted sheet. Like I do every laundry day, eventually I gave up and just started mashing everything together. Then, I added my dry mix to complete the pancake batter.

It’s been a while since I made pancakes, but I remember the batter being slightly more…gooey. This is more like cookie dough, or a ball of wood glue. My paste doesn’t exactly react well when it hits the hot pan.

I’m not sure I’ve made pancakes as much as I’ve made pan-pucks. If I was going to put this on Pinterest I’d frame it up as “fun hockey theming,” but I’m not a bored hockey-mom planning a birthday party. I added the blue(s)berries, because otherwise what’s the point?

I flipped the first batch and they were darker than Kari Lehtonen’s current mental state. This is why I don’t eat breakfast. Not only does it make me fart, it puts me in a terrible mood.

The second batch turned out incrementally better, and I decided to chalk this up as the best I could do, given the circumstances. The game has already started and I’ve got hockey to watch. Luckily, I’m not alone this morning. I’ve got a very special lady watching with me. My main squeeze Mrs. Butterworth is here, and she loves me and morning hockey.

The pancakes were burnt on the outside, and gooey on the inside. The bites where I was able to work around the black parts were not terrible. I need to take a look at the game film and figure out exactly where I went wrong, because I feel like a lot of user error went into this particular disaster.

I’m a failure. But there’s a hockey game on, so I can do what all good sports fans do—take out my frustrations with my own failures on professional athletes.

I may not be able to make pancakes, but these guys can’t even win a faceoff. Idiots.

Recipe: 4/12
Did I do the Dishes? No. Too busy complaining about the Blues.