The Joy of Waffles

Most of my friends have heard me sing the praises of Yam Waffles for a very long time. Erin and I bought some Garnet Yams at the Sunflower Farmer's Market the other day in anticipation of having these waffles for supper sometime this week. I discovered the recipe for Yam Waffles in the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer about nine years ago and have been a happy waffle maker ever since.

These are made with regular flour as opposed to cake flour which most from scratch waffle recipes seem to call for. Since I had no cake flour when I decided to make waffles that day, I went to my go to cookbook, the Joy. Since I always have regular flour of some form to hand and rarely, if never, have cake flour, I was delighted to find this recipe. We like these waffles so much that I now own three waffle makers and have at least two going at once so everyone can eat at the same time. Clever Mum that I yam...

This recipe has been made with acorn squash, canned and fresh pumpkin, sweet potatoes as well as the yams, both canned and fresh. I have also made this recipe with whole wheat flour as well as a mix of unbleached and whole wheat flours. I have added, at times, chopped candied ginger, toasted pecans, mini chocolate chips and/or crumbled bacon to the batter as well. We happen to prefer the yam or squash kinda chunky, but pureed yam and squash works just as well. This is a great way to use up that leftover sweet potato casserole on the morning after Turkey Day, by the way. Usually these are served with butter and REAL maple syrup from Vermont, but I happen to have wild blueberry sauce to the ready this evening for mine. Yum!

I can't sing the praises enough of the Joy of Cooking. Everyone should have a copy in their cookbook collection as it will get you through just about anything. It is also a great resource for the substitution of missing ingredients. I also find new ways to prepare just about anything.

My sister's copy of the Joy is called the Treasure. It has no covers and falls open to the pages of the family favorites (the pages are also spattered with brownie, pancake, and various other batters from baking with the children). Mine is starting to look like the Treasure as I use it at least once a week, if not more often. As a matter of fact, the cover has been taped back on at least twice now. I am also in search of a copy of the same copyright date to give to Erin and Guy as a wedding gift. It was a request, as Erin is not so fond of the newer editions (nor am I for that matter). I mean why waste space that could hold a good recipe to tell us how to make our own tofu? Every grocery store carries tofu these days and it's SO much easier to pick up a container of it then to go through the process of making it. That's how great this book is, depending on the copyright version, the how-tos are/can be fascinating.

Purple Creamer Potato Salad

The daughter and I went to Sunflower Farmer's Market yesterday to pick up a few things for the week. Whilst there, I picked up a bag of the purple creamer potatoes for potato salad. I do realize these are primarily for smashed taters but I thought I'd try them for salad. One of the only things I did different from my regular potato salad was to slightly undercooked them so that they wouldn't fall apart in the salad. I also added some steamed edamame (soy beans) to the salad for a slight difference in texture as well. I used the rest of the ingredients from my regular recipe of mayo, hard boiled eggs, chives, fresh ground pepper, chopped celery and a splash of lemon juice. It sure is pretty and as always yummier the next day.

Oven Roasted Stew - Creamer Potatoes

My daughter asked me to write down the receipt that I used to make the supper last night. She was the genesis of the idea as she brought home a bag of red, white and purple creamer potatoes from the New Sunflower Farmer's Market the other day. WE REALLY LOVE these potatoes. They are like "buttah".

I had also gotten a package of Super Cherry Tomatoes and Baby Carrots as freebies when I went to the opening of the market on Wednesday, so an idea was born.



When I realize that we needed something fairly soon for supper yesterday and I looked at the taters and I thought, Hmmmm?

So, I proceeded to wash and quartered the red potatoes as they are rather small in size. I am saving the purple and white ones for smashed taters later on. I then washed and quartered baby carrots, Super cherry tomatoes, sliced up some celery and added some little beef filets that I cut into bite size pieces to the mix.

I placed all these ingredients in a cast iron skillet and then added a couple of grinds of black pepper, a bay leaf, a tablespoon of dried garlic chips, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of Kitchen Bouquet and a half cup of water. I put the skillet in a 350 degree oven and we went off to Big Lots in search of P.O.T.s (plastic organizer thingies).


The stew was nearly ready when we returned from the store. I boiled a pot of water for spinach fettuccine and wallah, supper was done.

Oven Roasted Stew

Oven at 350 degrees

6-8 red creamer potatoes, washed and quartered
10-12 baby carrots, quartered
6 small tomatoes, quartered
2 stalks of celery, sliced
1/2 to 3/4 pound beef, cut bite sized
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 to 3/4 cup water (depending on the amount of gravy you want)
1 tablespoon Kitchen Bouquet
ground pepper to taste (salt too, if you use it)
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon dried garlic chips

Place all ingredients in the cast iron skillet, give a good stir to coat the ingredients and roast for about an hour or until done to your liking.

Serve over spinach fettuccine or other pasta of choice.

Enjoy! I do wish that I had taken a picture of the finished and plated stew as the colours were as lovely as a Braque painting when assembled...

YAY, a New Market - Sunflower Farmer's Market Opens

Today was this first morning that it wasn't cloudy or threatening to rain in 5 days. Which was all to the good, as I went to stand in line with 300 plus of my neighbors for the opening of the new Sunflower Farmer's Market.

Huzzah, we now have a Sunflower Farmer's Market here. The first 200 people in line this morning got a free bag of groceries. So, I got up with the DD and drove her to work so I could get in line. When we drove by the store at 5:35 am, we saw that there were people in line already waiting for the 7:00 am official open! Though the grand opening is today, the store was actually open yesterday and Erin stopped in on her way home. She did a little comparison of prices with Whole Foods Market, while she walked about. She determined that some are better, some are comparable and some are higher on the things we regularly buy. That is the to be expected in any retail situation, however. It was nice to shop a brand new store, though I didn't spend much time there as it was PACKED, of course. Since I don't do crowds all that well, I wanted to get in and get my free bag of groceries and get out. I will go back after the frenzy dies down and really scope it out.


Erin and I talked about it and we wondered if I would get to be one of the 200 people to get a free bag of groceries. I proceeded to drop Erin off at work and went back to the store. Somehow, I got a parking spot RIGHT in front and my queue number was 107, WOOT.

I had a book and knitting and a quilt to finish binding and a chair. However, but for the knitting, they all stayed in the car. I did stand in line with all the other early risers and briefly worked on the knitted block for Megan's baby afghan. The woman in line behind me also had her knitting, so we compared notes on knitting, Ravelry, LYSs and the libraries.



What I got in the bag of free groceries and also purchased.



Michele from Ravelry (with her knitting, which is a small bag done with Magic Loop).

Again, more to be revealed. It looked good though and I can actually walk to this one if I want to put a good foot under..

7:45 pm - ETA: I forgot to mention that the store staff couldn't have been friendlier or more knowledgeable about where things were (a serious pet peeve of mine, staff not knowing where things are) and they were really good at getting the moil thru the store, the checkout and out the door and one even followed me to the car to help stow the groceries and retrieve my cart (I am sure that is not a regular part of the service, they had already run out of carts). I was in and out of the store and back at the house within 14 minutes of the opening of the doors. None so bad, eh?



Oh and this was the view from the parking lot..