Panther Pancake Pow-wow
“Pancakes are love. Pancakes are life.”
For some, pancakes are nothing more than a Sunday morning breakfast food, but for senior Paul Schneider, they are the unifying force behind the Panther Pancake Pow-Wow (PPP) club. The club meets once a week on campus to cook and eat pancakes with friends.
The PPP was “inspired by a running joke of two years,” Schneider said. However, the idea of making a pancake club soon became a reality. Schneider became president of the club when he and his friends founded the PPP last year.
As of now, each meeting is attended by 8 to 15 members, most of whom were in the club last year. The PPP isn’t focused on opening their club up to new members at the moment because “expansion is in no way a priority, until (we) can finance more griddles,” Schneider said.
Although the PPP family is small, the members of the club have taken a liking to its size. Giselle Sadler, senior, has been a member of the PPP since it was founded last fall. “It’s a tight-knit community in PPP. We’re all really good friends,” Sadler said. “I believe all the members love the club. It’s simply pancakes and friends; there’s nothing to complain about.”
Pancakes are all fun and games, but after multiple weeks, they can get old. The PPP has begun discussing changing up their food of the week. The only requirements: it must begin with the letter “P”, of course.
“During one meeting at the beginning of this year, we bought a pizza instead of making pancakes,” Sadler said. “That day we joked around and said we were PPP: Panther Pizza Pow-Wow. Then other food items starting with the letter “P” were replacing what had originally been pancake, and ever since, the club has been discussing when to actually take these former jokes into effect and start mixing up our food of the week.”
Mrs. Wright, the advisor of the PPP, initially thought the club would be “a lot of work” because cooking pancakes can be “really messy.” However, she hasn’t had to worry because the club members “do a really good job cleaning up after themselves.”
Jokingly, Wright added, “they’re the only club (she has) had that is very, very focused every meeting on what they’re all about.” Being the advisor of the PPP definitely has its perks. “On the days they cook pancakes, it smells amazing,” Wright said.
For fundraising, the PPP is planning on doing another sale before or after school in December. “We stocked up on a bit too many paper plates and plastic utensils for club day, so we should be able to earn enough so that we won’t have to have membership dues this year and get another griddle or two,” Schneider said.
