How to make healthy pancakes

Disclaimer: This blog post contains absolutely no recipes for, or information about, healthy pancakes.

Step 1: Go shopping in your usual manner. Actually, we would normally walk to the Co-op, which is healthy, but today we drove, which is not, because we needed more shopping than I thought I could carry. When we get there, little man generally takes charge of one of those basket-on-wheels thingies while I get a normal basket too. He has a tendency to ram into old ladies. Who mostly coo in proper old lady fashion, but not always. Once you get to the queue, you have to get the small one to help unload the baskets onto the conveyor belt. This is a purely diversionary tactic to stop them running round and round the booze aisle with arms flailing dangerously close to the bottles. Near the checkout will be some of those plastic lemon-shaped lemon juice squeezy thingies. You will be required to purchase one.

Step 2: Make pancake batter in the usual manner. My recipe is in imperial: 4oz flour, one egg, half a pint of milk. Make a well in the flour, drop in the egg, start to draw in flour whilst slowly pouring in half the milk. Then bung in the rest of the milk and beat til bubbly. (Did I just tell you how to make pancake batter? I do apologise.) Important: You must be getting a bolognese sauce under way at the same time as you make the pancake batter. This allows the small one to spend plenty of time beating the batter while you juggle burning-hot pans full of scalding-hot fat from the mince. While you are pouring off the fat, the small one will knock over the bowl of batter. Approximately half of it will spill over the worktop and onto his jumper. Clear this up in a cheery, it's ok, it was an accident, manner. You have just saved approximately half the calories of a standard batch of pancakes.

Step 3: I forgot to mention the healthy carrots that made their way into the batter before it was spilt. The carrot circles you thought the small one might have liked to eat. But he/she will demand cucumber instead. Now is the time to fish out and bin (or rinse and compost) the carrot.

Step 4: Having resisted the urge to swig wine straight from the bottle at midday and transferred the bolognese to the slow cooker, fire up your frying pan. Make the first pancake and present it to the child. Sprinkle on a little sugar and allow the small one to squirt on some lemon juice. They will put on an excessive amount. Present the small one with knife and fork. They will declare at this point that they don't like pancakes.

Step 5: Eat the rest of the pancakes yourself while the child squirts lemon juice onto their plate and laps it up like a cat. They will eventually move on to squirting it directly into their mouth. When there is about one nano-gram left in the lemon juice container, they will declare they do not like it and pull a funny face. Oh good, you will reply, because it's all gone.

Step 6: Congratulate yourself on your child's vitamin C intake, give them something else for lunch and clear up the mess.