The not so short cut

So I went to B&Ms on Sunday after church, with the sole purpose of buying washing up liquid. - Good for me, there it was on offer even before I had entered the store- so you'd think I would have picked it up and walked on, right? Well actually in deciding that I wanted to compare the price with the "others" , it was on my way to these others that I knew in my heart I would not buy- I walked past a shelf with pancake mix, and lo and behold I wanted pancakes for breakfast. Now the thing is, normally, I would not touch any of these ready mixes with a barge pole, but right there on a whim, I thought yes, considering the time etc that it would be a good idea yes?  Well fast forward to this morning ( the reason I did not have them yesterday is long and arduous ) and I decide to follow the instructions - shake and bake it said- all I had to do it said, was to add milk up to the arrows and shake.  And here is where the short cut morphed into the long cut, firstly it took an age to find the arrows, then after shaking  for the prescribed time I could see around the edges that despite my vigorous shaking it was not fully mixed.  That added time and what about when it came actually making the pancakes, consider this: I believe myself to be considerably capable in the pancake department, so imagine my shock and horror when I fried the first one and it came out all gooey. It did not set properly and I could not turn it over, ( good job I am not into flipping them then) and the second one was not much better. In the end having cooked bacon that was getting drier by the minute, I ended up abandoning the mixture and making my own from scratch!!! Ha ha ha laugh on me, it was quick, easy and it behaved as I would have expected. To be fair, I can see the attraction of the so called quick mixes, but this is what I know for sure: I will not be trying them again anytime soon.