The Saturday Pancake Robot

My husband is an engineer and spent four months building a machine that makes pancakes. It's made of an old printer, a hot plate, a squeeze bottle and a lot of wires. It can draw pancakes in any shape you program into it.

Our kids think it is the greatest invention in human history. Every Saturday morning, they program a shape. We've had pancake dinosaurs, pancake hearts, a pancake portrait of the dog and, once, a pancake map of Australia that was surprisingly accurate.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it squirts batter across the kitchen counter and onto the cat. My husband treats every failure as "valuable data."

Last week, our youngest asked for "a pancake of our family." The robot drew four lopsided stick figures holding hands. It was burnt on one side. We ate it anyway, very slowly, laughing about who got to eat Dad's head.