Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes

We first tried lemon-ricotta pancakes at The Hake in La Jolla earlier this year and knew immediately that we had to try to make them ourselves. When we ordered them, Philippe was skeptical of the flavor combination but quickly changed his mind after the first bite. Here's our version:

The ricotta cheese has little flavor but adds a great fluffy texture to your standard pancakes. Mix in some lemon zest, vanilla, and whipped egg whites and you get some of the best pancakes we've ever had. Make sure to serve them with real maple syrup. These were perfect for our Sunday morning brunch after a solid workout.

Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes Recipe

Mixed Berry Pancakes with Maple Cinnamon Yogurt

To kick off Philippe's visit to LA over Labor Day weekend, we started with a (relatively) healthy plate of pancakes. The recipe called for a greek yogurt/maple syrup/cinnamon sauce served over whole wheat pancakes and topped with fresh berries. Though not much more complicated than your standard pancake, this variation added a nice mixture of flavors and color, and adds protein while subtracting lots of sugar from syrup and pancakes alone. A win-win!

 

Homemade iced coffee rounded out this tasty weekend breakfast. This was made the night before in a French press and served over ice.

Here's the recipe:

Whole Wheat Mixed Berry Pancakes

Pumpkin Pancakes with Apple Compote

Philippe recently visited Julia out in California for the second time. During his trip, Julia signed up to run a marathon in Santa Monica to make up for having missed the canceled NYC Marathon. Since Julia would be running a full marathon on Sunday and Philippe would be running a half marathon, we decided to make some awesome pancakes on Saturday morning to carbo load. 

We found these pancakes on a blog called honey & jam. They are whole wheat pumpkin pancakes with an apple compote on top and we loved them! Here is the link to the recipe if you're interested: 

Link to recipe

We tweaked the recipe a little bit since we didn't have any buttermilk, so we used a small cup of plain greek yogurt and a little regular milk to substitute. This probably made the pancakes a little denser than the buttermilk would have but also a bit healthier too. We also used one cup of whole wheat flour and one cup all-purpose instead of the 2 cups white whole wheat since that's what we had on hand.

The final, amazing plate of pancakes. We ate a lot of these.

Later that day, we went for a short hike in the Pacific Pallisades. It was only about a 2 mile hike that wasn't very steep so Ginger could come too. This was taken at Inspiration Point overlooking Los Angeles in Will Rogers State Park. Ginger managed the whole hike by herself, even though it started to rain a little at the end!

 Marathon Day

Julia signed up to run the "Guts and Glory" marathon on the beach in Santa Monica. It was a very small race with only about 20 runners, but it was right on the beach. With Philippe's support through the second half, she finished in 4 hours and 5 minutes!

6 AM at the beach in Santa Monica

There were not 3,860 runners..... more like 20.

Looking strong after 8 miles!

YAY THE BEACH

A very tired but happy finisher :)