I am on a mission to help stretch our budget and be more careful too, although I am pretty frugal anyways. We are trying to be very careful on many things that have a tendency during the month to get out of hand (gas, groceries, out to eat) and one of them is going out to eat. We were at a crossroads. I was about to go grocery shopping and there wasn't really anything appealing here, so my husband allowed us a trip to IHOP. Kids eat Free with every paying adult.

Right now they are having a pankcake specialty focus and we all got different ones. After eating there, I was thinking this could be easily not only done at home but cheaper. Their new pancakes were whole wheat and you had a choice of pumpkin, carrot cake and New York Cheesecake. You can use your favorite recipe and adapt. You can also adapt these to waffles.

Here is what I am going to do:

1. Carrot Cake: chopped apples, carrots, walnuts, raisins and cream cheese frosting (opt) spread on it.
2. Pumpkin-pumpkin, opt nuts with whipped cream on top
3. Cheesecake- Slices of cheescake on top of batter, with powdered sugar and strawberries on top

OF course here are a couple of my favorite recipes:

Whole wheat pancakes/waffles
3 c milled flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 c oil*
4 eggs
3-4 c buttermilk

*for waffles, increase oil to 1/2 c.
** IF you are using sweet milk instead of buttermilk, omit soda and increase powder to 4 tsp.

Pancakes/waffles
2 c milled flour
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 sugar (or honey)
2 eggs
1 1/4 c milk
1/4 c melted butter