Eat Voraciously: Happy anniversary to us! 🎂 ~ INFO IMAGES

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Here's what's for dinner tonight.

By G. Daniela Galarza

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Happy anniversary to us!

Summon the trumpets, brandish your streamers and confetti — as of this week, we're celebrating a full year of eating voraciously!

I have to admit that when I started this project, I feared no one would read it. There are so many wonderful sources for recipes and food writing — did the world need another one? But it turns out that many, many people read the Eat Voraciously newsletter, and even cook from it, too. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Here, I must give explicit thanks to the team of people who make this project happen: Joe Yonan, Ann Maloney, Matt Brooks, Jim Webster and Olga Massov for gracious editing and continued guidance. Jennifer Beeson Gregory for sharp photo editing and direction. Rey Lopez for the wonderful, fun and appetizing photos of my new Thursday recipes, and Lisa Cherkasky for styling the food so it sparkles. Christine Ashack keeps an eye on the visual aesthetic of the whole shebang. Kari Sonde helps with social media promotion and is always available to bounce around new recipe ideas. Many thanks, too, to my colleagues Aaron Hutcherson, Becky Krystal, Emily Heil, Tim Carman and Tom Sietsema for your incredible knowledge and insight. Kelly Poe keeps the newsletter engine running smoothly. Thanks to Marty Baron, Tracy Grant and Liz Seymour for hiring me more than a year ago, when the future was very uncertain, but we all knew we'd still need to eat.

I feel so lucky that I get to write about cooking, something I think is an essential skill — and a particularly fun lens through which to view the world.

I'm also grateful that I get to do the work of developing new recipes each week. I worked on this one, for oatmeal griddle cakes, with a few goals in mind:

I was missing the ease with which I used to dine in restaurants — maybe you are, too? — and wanted to sort of re-create a pancake I ate at a restaurant called Salt's Cure in Los Angeles many years ago.

But I also wondered if I could create a pancake recipe that was hearty and could be adapted to a couple of different dietary needs: vegan and/or gluten-free.

Finally, I wanted to expand on the notion of eating voraciously. To me, it means approaching your cooking and eating life with vigor, enthusiasm and curiosity. It means trying new techniques and ingredients, and using every meal as an opportunity to learn and maybe embrace something new.

Though this newsletter/column is meant to provide you with dinner recipes that take under an hour to make, the concept of eating voraciously is — for me, and maybe for you, too? — a year-round, lifelong goal. So, these pancakes could be dinner tonight. But they also could be breakfast tomorrow or brunch on Saturday or lunch on Monday.

May we all eat voraciously at every meal.

Today's recipe

Photos by Rey Lopez for The Washington Post; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky for The Washington Post

Oatmeal Griddle Cakes

I've included instructions on how to make this recipe vegan or gluten-free, below. Here are more ways to play, plus a few serving suggestions:

If you can't have oats >> use rice flour instead.
No honey or maple syrup? >> Try sugar, agave syrup, applesauce, grated apple or, for a savory pancake, skip it.
Out of baking powder? >> Use 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar, lemon juice or vinegar.

These griddle cakes are great with salted butter and any kind of syrup or honey. Slices of crisp bacon might be nice with them, too. For a savory alternative, consider serving them with stewed white beans and shaved parmesan, or a fried egg and frizzled herbs.

NOTES: To make this recipe vegan, omit the egg and milk. Use 3/4 cup light coconut milk, from a can, plus 2 teaspoons white or cider vinegar. If using quick-cooking or one-minute rolled oats, as recommended, you have the option of stirring the batter together in a bowl, but the pancakes will be chewier. The quick-cooking oats ensure the pancake's interiors will cook quickly and be tender. If using old-fashioned rolled oats, you must use a blender to mix the oats and milk very well before adding the other ingredients.

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Servings: 4
Total time: 20 mins

Ingredients

3/4 cup (64 grams) rolled oats, preferably quick-cooking (see NOTES)
1/2 cup (120 milliliters) whole milk or buttermilk (see NOTES), plus more as needed
1/4 cup (31 grams) all-purpose flour or a gluten-free flour blend
1 large egg (see NOTES)
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup, plus more for serving
1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
Ghee, coconut oil or vegetable oil, for frying
Butter, for serving
Fresh or cooked fruit, for serving

Steps

1. In the pitcher of a blender, combine the oats and milk or buttermilk. Blend on high until the oats appear finely ground and milk thickens, about 1 minute. Add the flour, egg, honey or maple syrup, and baking powder and blend on high until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. (Do not overmix, or the pancakes may be tough.) Scrape the bottom and sides of the blender to ensure there are no unmixed pockets of batter.

2. Place a 12-inch cast-iron or heavy-bottomed skillet over high heat, and add 1 to 3 tablespoons of ghee or oil, evenly spreading it across the bottom of the pan. As soon as it begins to smoke lightly, pour 3 to 4 small, roughly 3-inch-diameter puddles of batter into the pan. Lower the heat to medium and cook until the pancake edges look dry and the tops are pocked with bubbles, 2 to 3 minutes. Flip, and continue cooking until the pancakes bounce back when lightly poked in the center, another 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Repeat with the additional fat and the remaining batter. Serve the pancakes hot, with butter, syrup or honey, and/or fresh or cooked fruit.

Tested by Kara Elder.

Nutrition information per serving: Calories: 291; Total Fat: 7 g; Saturated Fat: 3 g; Cholesterol: 99 mg; Sodium: 373 mg; Carbohydrates: 49 g; Dietary Fiber: 4 g; Sugars: 11 g; Protein: 13 g.

Week in Review:

Monday: Mushroom Reubens

Tuesday: Pasta Fagioli

Wednesday: Weeknight Chili

The Eat Voraciously newsletter recipe archives