Waffling About Strawberries

While walking through Costco the other day, I was suddenly engulfed by the aroma of ripe strawberries.  I probably looked a bit like a scent hound hunting them down by smell, but they were like 20 feet away.  When strawberries, or fruits of almost any kind, are that fragrant, you simply have to buy them.  I did mention I was in Costco, right?  Assuming you’ve been in a warehouse store like that, you’ll know that they don’t sell anything in normal quantities.  Well, strawberries are no exception. But like I said, I had to buy them… even if Otto and I are the only ones who will eat them.  The problem is, even a strawberry nut like me can only eat so many fresh strawberries.  So what’s a girl to do with 4 pounds of strawberries?  I went with a childhood favorite.  Strawberry waffles!  In my house, that wasn’t waffles with strawberries in them, but waffles with strawberries on them, along with whipped cream of course. 

Ordinarily, there’d be an ingredients picture here, but the strawberries have to get started the night before because they have to be macerated.  No, I said macerated.  Fine, chuckle all you want.  It really isn’t as dirty as it sounds, though.  Just slice about a pound of strawberries, and sprinkle them with 1 Tablespoon of sugar.  Then stir so they’re evenly coated, cover them, and pop them into the fridge overnight. 

In the morning, here’s what you’ll need:

2 eggs
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons oil
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon semolina or fine cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
Macerated strawberries
Whipped cream

The first thing you need to do is separate your eggs.  Go ahead and drop the yolks into the buttermilk.

Next, whip the egg whites until you get stiff peaks. 

Put all your dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Obviously they can’t be used like this, so whisk them together and set them aside. 

Add the vanilla and oil to the buttermilk and whisk thoroughly. 

Pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and stir just until combined. 

Now back to the egg whites.  Add half of them to the batter and fold them in. 

Then add the other half.

Now, at this point, I have to be a bit vague.  Basically you just have to cook the waffles however it works for your particular waffle iron.  If you’re making waffles for a group, you can place them between towels in a 200° oven so everyone can eat at the same time.  If you have leftover batter, you can make extra waffles and freeze them.  Then just reheat them in the toaster or oven, or even pop them back into a hot waffle iron.  Anyway, so you have your waffle.  Look at the poor naked thing. 

Well, we can fix that.  First, butter it liberally.  Butter is a requirement for waffles, regardless of what else might be going on top.  Then, remember those strawberries you put in the fridge?  Look how juicy they’ve become. 

Drizzle some of that juice on the waffle, then top with strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream.  I’ll be honest, after I snapped this picture, I added even more strawberries and whipped cream because, well… in this case, more is better. 

So, what’s your favorite thing to do with strawberries?

Extreme DIY

I'm not cooking.

Well, I am. Last night we grilled crooknecks, reduced some wine, added butter, and tossed it all with pasta, chicken breast, basil, and cheese. Tonight, pork filling for tacos. I do like pork in tacos.

I also made date muffins again (turns out the recipe actually works and wasn't a total fluke), and sauteed chard to go into biscuit pastry for lunchy spanikopita-type things.

But I didn't take a single picture.

But I did take pics of food. It's just that it's food in a somewhat less familiar format.

The garden.

Yes, food comes from dirt.

And while Taneasha and I are fans of DIY cooking, Recipe Guy has gone one step further and is DIYing his own food.

I've had gardens in the past, but right now I'm trapped in my student apartment without even a balcony on which to grill things. Man, I love food cooked on fire.

So, as I said, we grilled crooknecks last night. But first we had to harvest them. Squashes are fuzzy, and the fuzz is sharp and sticks in your fingers like fibreglass.

Tasty things always have ways of protecting themselves. Note that the broccoli has no thorns, no fuzz, no dangerous parts to navigate around. That's because it's not edible. Contrary to what his housemates seem to think.

Behind the broccoli is the remnants of the iceburg lettuces. There was romaine too. There's red leaf on the way. There's also chard.

A lot of chard. I'd already taken 2-4 leaves off each of those plants. That got me about 4 grocery store sized bundles of chard. Sautee that shit in bacon fat with a bit of browned onion... goes perfectly with fried chicken. Holy yum.

I need to make fried chicken.

Some would recommend frying these little green tomatoes,

but I think I'll wait until the sun turns them red (better them than me) and then eat them warm off the vine.

TIP: As soon as your tomato plant starts fruiting, defoliate it. Pervert, it means take the leaves off. If you remove the leaves around the fruits, the sun will ripen them faster and the plant will put more energy into fruiting since it no longer has leaves to feed.

And, if you let your cilantro go to seed, you'll attract all kinds of flying insects that will help pollinate the rest of the garden,

and those little green burrs in the bottom left are actually corriander seed, a component of garum masala. Let them dry, harvest them by putting a paper bag over the seed head, turn it upside down and shake; all the seeds fall into the bag. This works for dill seed too.

If you're lucky, you'll have a neighbour with honey bees

(can you see the bee butt in the flower?) who shares the hibiscus scented honey that results from his bees spending all their time in your bushes.

Of course, if you have a garden you need a compost heap.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Zz-GRPAzA

(still don't know how to embed vids)

Now, you may not end up with a blues-singing, advice-giving heap, but what you might get are a few volunteers. I don't think I've ever seen a compost heap that didn't have things growing in it.

We're pretty sure this is a butternut squash.

There are onions just to the left out of the frame too. Which is good because Mowing Man keeps mowing down the wild onions in the horse pature.

Speaking of wild things, remember the wild beans that appeared last year during the drought? Well, if you let wild beans go to seed in your garden, they will happily come back and demand trellises the next year.

How does your garden grow?