I had not had waffles at home for breakfast in well over three years, probably longer. And I know it had been even longer since I had waffles not made from a mix, at home for breakfast. That is until this morning.
It all started about two weeks ago with a text from my mother asking if I had a waffle iron. I did not. So she said she was getting her a new one, would I like one too. Wow. I have not had waffles in a long time, yes.
Now I need to find a good waffle recipe because I do not really want to use a mix. The why’s of this are another story. Mom asks if I still have the old ‘Breads’ cookbook, which I do. She says the best waffle recipe is the one in that book, it is the ‘Sunday Supper Waffles’ recipe.
So this morning I had just that for breakfast, Sunday Supper Waffles. As I was making them I looked at the ingredients of one cup of melted butter and thought that was an awful lot of butter. We can argue the merits of butter another time. It was a lot. As I read it closer the recipe actually called for, butter, margarine or salad oil. I used salad oil, canola oil to be specific, instead.
After I finished making and eating my waffles I got to thinking about that term, ‘salad oil’. How many of today’s cooks would recognize that as vegetable oil? I did, and I am not a cooking aficionado. I grew up cooking and baking with my mother. We made cakes and cookies from flour and sugar and butter, not from a box. And my mother still uses recipes that call for Oleo, for those of you that know what that is.
It is so interesting how things like that change over time. I have several ‘old’ cookbooks and I have looked up some items in them. It is wild to read how you may have trouble finding a particular ingredient because, at the time, they were not always readily available at the grocery. Today so much is available at the regular grocery. And yet there are some things that we might be hard pressed to recognize from an old recipe.
I think it is great to have so much diversity food wise. I like that I can go into a grocery and find hot peppers for my salsa and ginger for the sushi all in one place. Some conveniences of modern life are great. However, I do not think they should get in the way of enjoying good old fashioned, made from scratch, Sunday Supper Waffles.