What's for breakfast? How about a lesson?

I awoke this morning and remembered that I forgot to make hot cereal in the crockpot last night. (We do hot millet cereal because two of us - Natalie and mom - cannot have gluten). So I began the task of brainstorming something up for breakfast. I have been in a rut recently because of the gluten thing, and Natalie cannot have dairy either. Our possibilities seem to go way down, and we currently rotate between about 4 menus for breakfast.

Suddenly, an idea flashed into my head. When is Hannukkah? A trip to the computer told me that Hanukkah starts at sundown tomorrow the 15th, so I delved into my shelves of children's picture books, in search of "Grandma's Latkes," which I knew we had somewhere. Found it, and the recipe in the back! So we made these absolutely DELICIOUS latkes and read the story over breakfast. I know we were a day early, but my original search gave me the wrong date and I thought we were in day 7 (I had looked at 2004).

The Jews were angry because Antiochus wanted to force them to worship the Greek gods of the day. They hid in the hills and defeated Antiochus, who was much stronger than they were, but THEY did not have the strength of God that the Jews had. The victorious Jews returning to their temple to celebrate, only to find a day's worth of oil left in the menorah. The second miracle of Hanukkah was that the oil lasted 8 days. Hanukkah is also called the "Festival of Lights."

Here is the recipe if you would like to try them, from "Grandma's Latkes" by Malka Drucker:

3 large potatoes
1 small onion
2 beaten eggs
2 tablespoons flour (we used rice flour because of the gluten thing)
1 teaspoon salt
pinch of pepper
1/2 cup vegetable oil (we used coconut oil)

Wash the potatoes well, but don't peel them. Grate them coarsely into a bowl (food processors come in very handy!!). Grate in the onion. Add the beaten eggs, flour, salt, and pepper. Let the mixture sit for ten minutes to thicken. Pour off excess liquid. Heat the oil in a frying pan, then drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the pan. When the pancakes are brown around the edges, turn and fry them until the other sides are crispy. Drain on paper towls, and eat them with sour cream and applesauce.

(The sour cream and applesauce does not sound like the best combination with these, but I assure you that it was WONDERFUL! We were out of applesauce so Grant made some chunky style sauce in the food processor with apples, honey, and cinnamon).

I now have 5 breakfast menus in my rotation!!