I'm inordinately proud of myself this morning. Sage (my four-year old daughter, for anyone not in the know) is here for the weekend, and for the first time in my life, I have successfully used a waffle iron.
I'm not usually much of a chef. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Sloppy Joes, Hamburger Helper, and the occasional tajita night (a combination of tacos and fajitas that I like to think I made up by myself, but that I'm pretty sure someone, somewhere, is making money off of) are about the limit of my culinary expertise. If it can be cooked by boiling water, I can cook it. When Sage is here, our breakfasts are usually confined to frozen waffles, Pop-Tarts, or cereal. When she's not here I generally don't eat breakfast at all. However, today I decided to be bold and experiment.
I inherited my mom's waffle iron (which is an ancestor of this one) when she and dad broke up housekeeping to start their gypsy life. It's been in my cabinet for two years. Sage and I were at the grocery store yesterday and on a whim I bought a box of Bisquick. If I'm going to make waffles for the first time, I'm certainly not going to make them from scratch. I don't need to be inviting that much potential for disaster.
I made up the mix this morning with little incident. I plugged in the waffle iron to get it preheated. My mom (and the instructions for the waffle iron itself, actually) had advised me to spray Pam® on the plates before I put in batter in. Of course, that's what I forgot to do. When I opened the iron, the waffle ripped in half, with half stuck to the top plate, the rest stuck to the bottom. Of course, Sage was all excited about getting to eat homemade waffles, so she was standing right there. It was pretty embarrassing. I unplugged the iron and cleaned off the plates, sprayed the Pam®, and tried again.
A waffle! In one piece, even! Success! Whoo hoo!
Three successfully cooked waffles later, Sage and I each ate a waffle and a half for breakfast. Sage declared them good, and me a pretty good waffle maker. I'm not too embarrassed to say that this was one of the proudest moments of my life. Fatherhood will lead you to proclamations like that one. Maybe next time I'll try French toast or pancakes. May as well strike while the (waffle) iron's hot, wot? Waffle House, here I come!
October 2, 2005
A career move in the making?
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3 comments:
See, the difference between you and me (to bring the contest to your own blog so we don't spam up Megan's blog) is that I can actually cook now, and you can actually still NOT cook. You've had my pork chops, oven roasted rosemary chicken, world famous Temko's Mashed Potatoes, beer-boiled brats-on-the-grill... you've never even had my chicken and leeks, pork and broccoli, or any other of a number of dishes I can now cook successfully. I was, of course, trained by an excellent chef...
Speaking of excellent chefs, we've gotten our hands on some bannana pudding which is reminiscent of (though still inferior to) your mom's. How I miss it!
You know what else you miss, even though you might not even realize it? Chocolate gravy. Which gives me an idea: if we're going to give each other writing assignments like you and Megan do, I move that our first assignment be to write in the spirit of Megan's spicy rubbed chicken recipe--of one kitchen specialty from our childhood that will always remind us of Home. Recipe not required; just stories of love and family and halcyon days. What do you say?
All this talk about food is making me hungry and seeing how it is the WEE hours of the morning, chops, chicken and brauts sound REALLY good.
Sam, I think you need to learn to cook, lol. Walter can cook, Benjamin can cook, your getting out of the loop.
Just an observation. :)
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