I took this picture one morning when I made pancakes. I quadrupled the recipe–typically I triple it, but we’re too big for that now–now I’m making batches four times as large as the original recipe I memorized about six years ago. I don’t know how many pancakes it makes. I’ve never counted, actually. “A lot” is probably an accurate assessment.

This is making pancakes for two adults and seven children. (Eight if you count Flannery, in utero, just visible in the above photograph.) I had three cast irons for the pancakes, one for some sausage, and a pot to warm the syrup. Two twelve-inch pans and two fourteen-inch pans. And the pot. I don’t know how big the pot is. It’s bigger than my smallest pot and smaller than my biggest pot. There you go.

We do have a griddle on the stove top, but it doesn’t quite work properly, so I’ve never used it. I think I can cook the pancakes more quickly on the pans, though, but of course this is only speculation.

It takes a bit of time to get through cooking this many pancakes. I make them small because our kids are still small, but also because in my mind I can make more pancakes more quickly if more fit on the pan. (I realize that’s not quite how it works.) I also think a large stack of small pancakes is more satisfying mentally than one large pancake on your plate.

When they’re finished cooking, the pancakes are transferred to a warm oven to wait until everything is ready. This works great for pancakes, but is terrible for waffles, by the way. Unless you’re fond of soggy waffles. They get soft, sitting together like that in the oven. We like crispy waffles. I haven’t figured out how to make waffles that we can all sit down and eat together without investing in ten more waffle makers. I am open to suggestions.

And I do highly recommend all sitting and eating together. I am not keen on the idea of everyone sitting at the table while mom stands by the oven, makes things to order, and gulps down her own food only when everyone else is done. I don’t think that presents a good example. It is possible to all eat together. It takes some planning, though. I remember when Jeremy and I were in Paris, and the mom of the family we stayed with presented us all (three teenaged kids, her husband, and we two guests) with a several-course dinner every night. And she always sat and ate each course with us. I can’t quite figure out how she did it (I have never tried multiple courses as it seems too daunting) but I have an intense admiration for her skill. I wonder if she would have a solution for serving large amounts of waffles simultaneously while still managing to keep them crispy.

I used to have a lot of trouble with pancakes going cold. I would go through all the trouble to cook them and keep them warm and then once they were on the table, it seemed they all went cold almost immediately. This has been remedied by the pot of warming syrup. It was the syrup that made the pancakes go cold the minute you got them on your plate. Now served in small pitchers around the table, the warmed syrup doesn’t assault the pancakes like the cold syrup did. You live, you learn.