It’s that time of the year again. I’ll be headed up to Ohiopyle to enjoy the Buckwheat dinner prepared by the Ohiopyle-Stewart Volunteer Fire Department. The Fall event is only on Friday and Saturday, October 9 and 10. I’ll be there on Saturday.

It takes a tough guy to make a tender pancake.

Al Smith is in charge of making the sour dough buckwheat cakes. He takes a lot of ribbing from the other guys but that’s just because the cakes are so good that they’re afraid it would go to his head if they were complimentary. All starts about a week ahead of time to start the sour dough cooking.

Imported from West virginia

Here's some of the starter bubbling away.

He uses real buckwheat that they now have to import from West Virginia since none of the local farmers still grow the crop. The starter bubbles and gurgles for a week to develop that distinctive aroma and tangy taste. (If you really don’t care for buckwheat, they have conventional pancakes as well.) The cakes are the stars but the supporting players are pretty impressive.

There are whole hog sausage patties, mountains of home fries, bowls of apple sauce, real maple syrup and even sweet pickle slices.

Everything is made from scratch.

Lots and lots of sausage.