My New Superpower

Our weekly pancakes aren’t going entirely to plan. We don’t have buttermilk on hand, and none of us feel like masking up and braving the No Frills to get it. Granny’s recipe is always better with buttermilk.  

“Can’t we just use regular milk?” asks Rissa.

“How about we sour the milk. It only takes…” I begin.

“GAH! It will take so long!” she responds.

“Five minutes,” I say, rolling my eyes. “We can wait the five minutes.” 

“Okay, but we’re going to end up with lime-y pancakes.”

“I LOVE lime-y pancakes!” David chimes in, ever the optimist.

In spite of our best efforts, this week’s pancakes are mostly crap. After mixing the grudgingly soured milk into our regular batter, we get distracted and the first batch is mostly Cajun. The second batch isn’t much better, and really? In spite of my Better-Homes-and-Gardens-substitution-mentality, soured milk doesn’t cut it anyway. The texture of soured milk pancakes is pretty much hit-and-miss, not like when you use buttermilk. It has to be buttermilk.

“You know what Super Power I’d like to have?” I ask.

“What?” Rissa and David respond simultaneously, as they soak their pancake failures in butter and syrup.

“I’d like to be able to snap my fingers, say ‘BUTTERMILK!’ and wherever I pointed, buttermilk would appear.”

Rissa and David blink.

“That would be your superpower?” asks Rissa.

David coughs to disguise an involuntary snort.

“Uh…. yeah…” I say. “Then we would never again suffer the buttermilk conundrum.”

“We have a buttermilk conundrum?” asks David.

“Almost every Sunday when we forget to purchase buttermilk,” I say, the DUH, very apparent in my tone.

Through her laughter, Rissa queries, “So you are saying, that your first wish, if say, a genie were granting you wishes, would be to have a power that would specifically give you buttermilk on whim?”

“Yes. Definitely.”

David gives me a Scooby Doo eyebrow before saying, “Nothing more broad than that? Like you have the ability to magic literally ANYTHING out of thin air and you are going to limit it to buttermilk?”

I think for a moment. “Maybe my second wish would be for coconut milk, because we seem to run out of that too.”

Rissa shoots me a look of such utter disbelief that I wonder if she might be having a stroke. I am about to ask her to smile so that I can check whether her face is drooping when she says, “Ummmmm… any other specifics that you might be hoping for?”

“I might want to be able to do it without having to say ‘BUTTERMILK!’ Like, just think it, and it appears.”

“Of course,” David says. “Completely understandable.” He is biting his lip. “You could be a new member of The Mystery Men.”

Rissa concurs. “Instead of being the Shoveler, you could be the… MILKER??” Through some miracle she does not expel juice through her nose. 

“Mostly,” I say – shooting dagger eyes at both my daughter and my husband (who is now almost crying). “I would be thrilled to SNAP! POINT! and then have the milk appear – with, or without, saying ‘BUTTERMILK!’ Although I’m second guessing the silent magicking now, what if I were to SNAP! POINT! and then buttermilk appeared, but those who see it, don’t know it was supposed to be buttermilk?”

“You feel like people seeing this miraculous buttermilk appearance would deny its authenticity if you don’t broadcast what it’s supposed to be, when you’re snapping and pointing?” David raises an eyebrow at me. 

“Wait!” Rissa says. “Wait, wait! What if, depending on which finger you pointed, it could be a different type of milk product?”

“Why limit it to fingers?” David asks. He generally indicates his own nipples. “Chocolate. Strawberry… Think about it.”

Rissa continues. “SNAP! POINT! GOAT MILK!! SNAP! POINT! ALMOND MILK!!!“

“Sure, go ahead and mock me,” I say.  “But with my new super powers I will be able to make unlimited baked goods and Thai food.”