Jack Nicholson, pancakes and kids

Sorenne and I make pancakes once or twice a week.

It’s a recipe I adopted from the N.Y .Times’ Jane Brody about 25 years ago, when I started making them for my eldest daughter, Madelynn.

1 cup buttermilk (but I just use milk with Tahitian limes because buttermilk is ridiculously expensive in Australia)

1 egg

vanilla

honey

baking powder

baking soda

buckwheat flour

lots of frozen berries

Canadian (eh) maple syrup.

And no licking of the batter; Australia has an egg problem.

At 75, Jack Nicholson mentioned pancakes as one of his life lessons.

“What I wish I knew at 18? Everything — from wishing I learned a foreign language to becoming a good chef. I was a short order cook for a while in New Jersey in between acting jobs. One day, a woman came in to ask for pancakes and my pancake came out about 3 inches thick. She said: ‘What the hell is this?’ I lost my temper, hit the pancake and said, ‘Make your own damn pancakes!’

“So you can add wishing I knew how to control my temper to that list.”

Nicholson also added, “I no longer have the energy to both work and fool around. So the last few movies I’ve done, I have hardly left the hotel at nights.”