Tag Archives: Waffles

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In which I pretend to keep my dignity

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Culvers’ battered cod offerings. Credit: culvers.com

The tale of my weekend and Monday is not a cheery one, but I can’t think of another topic. I’ll try to keep it PG rated.

My two-day Waffle Festival was all I hoped it would be. I do a pretty fair Bisquick waffle, if I do say so myself. No doubt there are ways to improve my waffles, but these will do. Sunday, the Great Preparatory Fast, could have been worse. The preparation process that evening… the less said about that the better. It’s over; I’ll say that much. The old friend who served as my driver on Monday is very cheerful and patient, which was necessary because the procedure got delayed a full hour. When it was all over, I bought him lunch. Oh, the joys of solid food! Have you ever had the batter-fried cod dinner at Culvers’? Why does a hamburger place have the best cod in town? That’s one of the great cosmic mysteries. Or paradoxes, or something.

During the Sunday Fast, I searched for the movie “Sunburn” on YouTube, and discovered that it was available there. I was thinking of it, because I’d reviewed The Bind, the book it was based on, the other day. The studio, in its genius, took a hard-boiled, tragic yarn and tried to make it a light action comedy. I remember enjoying it when it came out, but that must have been mostly because of my massive crush on Farrah Fawcett. The movie follows the story’s plot more closely than I expected (though they moved the action from Miami Beach to Acapulco), merely changing the tone of things. But the dark ending had to go, so they substituted a conventional, improbable Hollywood gambit and ended the story on a (very false) light note. One of the worst final sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Watching Farrah, the picture of youthful health and beauty, I couldn’t help thinking of her early death some years ago, the victim of a cancer which (I expect) could have been prevented by the very procedure I was just then dreading.

My great comfort, as I now contemplate the completed ordeal (the results were acceptable), is that at my age I’m unlikely to have to endure many more of these once-every-five-year procedures.

And the moral of the story is – waffles are good, and so is Culvers’ batter-fried cod. I wonder if cod is any good with waffles, the way people now rave about chicken and waffles. Someone should try it. Authentic Norwegian cuisine.

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A tribute to the waffle

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Photo credit: Jodie Morgan twoluckyspoons Unsplash license

I have installed a photograph of waffles at the peak of this post, because waffles are much on my mind of late. I shall explain…

Tomorrow I embark on an ordeal that falls to my lot once every five years. This ordeal involves a procedure whose name I’ve always refused to use in this space. Suffice it to say that it’s a humiliating medical procedure, an examination, which demands certain dietary changes as one prepares. Two days of a low-fiber diet, followed by one day (that would be Sunday) of no solid food at all, and then, on Monday, truth will be sought in my inward parts.

I know that the procedure itself is likely to be okay. As a man who’s never indulged in recreational drugs (I sailed through the swinging sixties and the sexy seventies like Mr. Magoo through a construction site, quite oblivious) I can’t deny looking forward to the relaxants I’ll be getting in preparation. I think the last time I relaxed naturally was around 1957.

But be that as it may, I was not looking forward to two days of low-fiber pablum (is pablum low fiber? I’ve never tried it). But as I studied the list of acceptable foods, I was delighted to discover that waffles (as well as butter and syrup) are kosher.

And that, as the poet said, has made all the difference. For a man who’s always trying to limit his caloric intake, the wonderful waffle has to be a rare treat. They are high in calories, and everything  you’re likely to garnish them with is pretty lofty as well.

But tomorrow and Saturday will be waffle days for this patient. And any day with waffles is okay by me, gastronomically speaking. This reduces the worst of my ordeal to the Sunday fast, which I must endure, even as my going hence.

According to Wikipedia, the word “waffle” derives from a Frankish word “wafla,” meaning honeycomb or cake.

Waffles seem to be the consequence of the convergence of two culinary traditions. The ancient Greeks cooked flat cakes the called “obelios” between hot plates. Europeans, in the middle ages, cooked cakes between hot irons called “fer à hostiesʺ  or ʺhostieijzers” (communion wafer irons) and moule à oublies (wafer irons) in the 9th-10th Centuries (Vikings, conceivably, could have gotten a taste). Around the 16th Century, the Belgians invented the Belgian waffle (which is somewhat different from what we Americans call Belgian waffles – and that should surprise nobody). Personally, I favor the conventional, plebeian American waffle, the kind you get by following the instructions on the Bisquick box.

Back in Scandinavia, waffles are usually a little sweeter than our American ones, and are baked on irons formed like converging heart shapes and eaten as a sweet with the midday meal or supper, often topped by strawberries and whipped cream. Also very nice, but the American variety is one of my comfort foods.

And I shall be requiring some comfort.