We’re deep in this ‘surviving a kitchen remodel with 3 young kids’ phase of life right now. It’s messy and chaotic and busy, but it’s been kind of a cool learning-to-live-with-less experience, too. The one thing we can’t do without: our barbecue. We’ve made everything from bbq pizza to bbq cobbler and while I’m sure we’ll get sick of bbq meals eventually, it hasn’t happened yet! Today I wanted to share our favorite bbq pancake recipe and a few tips for surviving a live-in kitchen remodel.

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Our Farmhouse garden // ivory charcoal bbq, all other sources here

Keeping Your Sanity During a Live-In Remodel

We’ve found that keeping your sanity during a live-in remodel is all about carving out one ‘dust-free’ location where you can relax after work ends. At the Farmhouse, that’s our garden. The renovation has spread into much of our main floor (the dining room and living room is housing most of our kitchen contents and the chaos has spread out from there), but the garden is unaffected. So we've basically been living in the garden when we’re not renovating. It’s where we hang out, eat, unwind, and cook.

Another tip for surviving a live-in kitchen remodel with your sanity in-tact: do it during the summer! Especially if you have young kids! I can’t imagine how much less pleasant this remodel would be if we couldn’t send the kids outside to play. Or if we couldn’t bbq and eat outside.

Another sanity-saver: hang on to a bit of your ‘normal’. For us, that’s breakfast. We like to sit down together as a family, and start out day off with a good meal. Garrett does much of the cooking and while he’s not a formally-trained chef or anything, he is a natural at recipe-free cooking (drives me crazy!). I did get him to write down his pancake recipe, though.

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the magic of a bbq

We live too-far out of town for pizza delivery. Nor is there Uber Eats or any other kind of food-delivery app in our small town. Our Farmhouse is 15 minutes from town and that’s made takeout or restaurant trips inefficient. So we’ve really survived this remodel with our bbq!

We use a Weber charcoal grill (the Master Touch in ivory), which they sent us for a collaboration we did on Instagram. And we’ve been using it A TON ever since. At some point, we’ll plumb in a gas bbq, but in the meantime, this one works great! Garrett and I ordered the grill pan and pizza stone attachment from Amazon to cook some less-traditional bbq fare, and today’s recipe uses the grill pan.

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BBQ Oat and Nut Pancakes

This is Garrett’s go-to pancake recipe. It’s hearty and fluffy and naturally sweetened (with apple). We use whatever nuts we have on hand and occasionally throw in flax or other seeds. This is a great recipe to customize to your fridge! And you don’t have to cook this on a bbq. Before we exclusively cooked outside, we cooked these on a griddle pan on our range.

Ingredients

1 cup white flour

1 cup wheat flour

1 cup oats, coarsely ground in a blender

3/4 cup nuts, coarsely ground in a blender (we used pecans)

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

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2 cups whole milk

2 eggs

4 tbsp melted butter, cooled

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp almond extract

1/2 apple, cored and blended (can substitute with 1/4 cup of sugar)

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Butter for pan

toppings: fresh raspberries, butter, maple syrup, thyme (for garnish), or whatever you have on hand

Prepare bbq. If using a charcoal bbq, start warming up your charcoals about 20-30 minutes before you plan to cook the pancakes. For cooking, the charcoal should be distributed in a thin layer around the lower grill. Set grill pan on top rack to warm.

For batter: In a large bowl mix flours, oats, nuts, cinnamon, baking powder and soda. Set aside. In a separate bowl or high-speed blender, mix milk, eggs, butter, vanilla, almond extract, and apple. If you don’t have access to a blander, substituting the sugar will make your life easier. Add wet mixture to dry, and mix until combined. Garrett likes to throw the wet and dry ingredients together in the blender and pulse it until combined. He thinks it makes the pancakes fluffier. But staring it together the old fashioned way, works well too. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

Set griddle pan in bbq to warm up. Put a bit of butter on pan and let melt. Pour batter on grill pan, using about 1/2 cup to create a 5-inch pancake. Watch pancakes carefully so as not to burn. Depending on the temp and your coals, cooking times can vary. But you should see small bubbles form on surface of the pancakes and when they pop the pancake is ready to be flipped. The second side cooks much quicker - just a minute or so. Remove from grill.

Top with butter, fresh fruit, maple syrup, or whatever you like.