Healthy Hearing Recipes: Banana Pancakes

Last year one of our most popular blog posts was You Hear What You Eat: 5 Foods to Prevent Hearing Loss…and Hearing Aids. Since at the start of the New Year everyone tends to be a bit more health conscious, this month we’ll be taking those five foods and bring you healthy hearing recipes every Thursday. We’ve already brought you recipes for salmon and broccoli, and this week we’re going bananas! Bananas are rich in magnesium, which has been shown to help protect against noise induced hearing loss. This healthy hearing nutrient is also found in potatoes, artichokes, and broccoli. Bananas are delicious eaten on their own, but there are plenty of ways to incorporate them into recipes – especially if you are not a fan of their texture. Sunday is “Pancake Day” in my house – and these healthy fritters are always a hit! Multigrain Banana Pancakes Serves 8 What you’ll need:

•       1 cup all purpose flour
•       1/3 cup cornmeal
•       1/3 cup whole wheat flour
•       1/3 cup rolled oats
•       4 teaspoons sugar
•       ½ teaspoon salt
•       1 teaspoon baking powder
•       ½ teaspoon baking soda
•       1 ½ cups buttermilk
•       ½ cup low fat milk
•       2 large eggs
•       2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
•       1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•       2 bananas, thinly sliced

What to do:

1.     In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients: all purpose flour, cornmeal, whole wheat flour, oats, sugar, salt, baking powder and baking soda
2.     In a medium sized bowl, combine the wet ingredients: buttermilk, low fat milk, eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla
3.     Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk until combined. Be careful not to over-whisk! This will make your pancakes flat.
4.     Heat a griddle pan (or any non-stick pan) with a bit of oil
5.     When the pan is hot, pour on pancake batter ¼ cup at a time
6.     Place 3-4 banana slices on each pancake
7.     Cook 2-3 minutes on each side, and serve hot with your choice of topping!

I hope you give these pancakes a try this weekend! If you don’t like whole wheat (or cornmeal or oats), or simply don’t have it on hand, you can easily swap it out for regular flour. Cornmeal and oats have a 1-to-1 ratio with all purpose flour, and whole wheat flour has a 2-to-1 ratio (i.e. use twice as much all purpose flour). If you’re cooking for kids (or anyone with a sweet tooth), try mixing some chocolate chips into the batter. What’s your favorite way to make pancakes? Are there any other healthy hearing recipes you want to learn? Let us know in the comments below! This recipe was adapted from Pam Anderson’s recipe in the Runner’s World Cookbook. by Alice Stejskal