"...and in the mornin...I'm makin waffles!!!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8jzvh5Wb00&feature=kp

        Every time I think of making waffles....I think of three things.  First, I hear Donkey from Shrek in my head saying, "We can stay up late, swappin manly stories, and in the mornin...I'm makin waffles!"  Then, I am inevitably reminded of a good college friend who gave us our waffle maker as a wedding gift (because of her firm belief that all families should have a waffle maker) and I wonder how she is doing, and then I think about how we have been married for about 12 years now and have made waffles approximately two times....including this one.

        Now...to be fair, part of the reason that I have not made waffles before is that my husband, Jeremy, has been eating gluten free for about five years now (I have no idea if that is an accurate amount of time, just roll with it) and trying new gluten free breads and pastries of any sort can be very intimidating.  There is also the fact that when I think to myself "I want waffles for breakfast.  I should make waffles in the morning,"  I usually follow that thought with, "hmmmm...pancakes would sure be a faster way to get that peanut butter and syrup into my mouth."  Hence, the 12 year waffle drought.

       Until now!  You see these lovelies?  Believe it or not, they are gluten free and they were (in the words of my grandma) a delight!!!  The only bad thing about them was that I made them on a day when we were out of peanut butter and my husband was like a sad little boy for about 2 seconds until he covered them in an obscene amount of syrup and got over it.  We also tried them with some homemade raspberry simple syrup (1 part strained raspberry juice to 1 part sugar) that I had from making jelly last week and that was also delicious!

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       So now is the time to write down how I made these babies, quick, before I forget what I put in them!  Because I will forget.  And when a gluten free recipe works out well, you should always write it down and use it again later.  Trust me, I know from experience.  If I don't write it down, a few Saturdays from now I will say, "Hey, maybe we should make waffles again," but I won't remember how we did it so I will just make pancakes instead so that I don't waste our precious GF flour that costs half of our son's college education.

       So here it is....the moment we've all been waiting for....the culmination of all of my GF baking skills....drum roll please.........I used the Betty Crocker recipe for waffles and replaced the flour with GF flour.  I know.  Really genius.  Actually, I did have to add some flour at the end because the batter was way to thin, so I added about 1/2c of oat flour that I had on hand.  The first few turned out too crispy, so I decided to just watch the waffles and take them out when I thought they were done rather than wait for the light to shut off.  I'm a rebel like that.  Here is the full recipe...adapted from Betty Crocker's Waffles fast


GF Waffles
Prep: 5min.
Bake: 5min./waffle
Makes: six 7in. round waffles

2 cups GF all purpose flour (I used Bob's Red Mill)
1/2 cup GF oat flour (ground from Bob's GF Old Fashioned Oats)
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
2 large eggs
1 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbsp sugar

1. Lightly oil waffle iron and preheat.
2.  Mix first five dry ingredients together.
3. In a large bowl, beat together milk, vegetable oil, and sugar, then add the dry ingredients a little bit at a time and mix. (Add more oat flour as needed to make sure that your batter is not too runny.  It should be similar to pancake better or a bit more thin.)
4. Pour 1/2c to 2/3c batter into the center of the waffle iron until it nearly reaches the edges and close the lid.  Bake about 5 min. or follow the instructions for your waffle iron.
5. Enjoy your waffles that nobody will even know are GF unless you tell them!

Gratefulness

       Last week was a bit strange for us. On Monday night, there was a nasty storm that passed through Goshen in the middle of the night.  I had no idea that it was even supposed to storm, mostly because I don't pay very careful attention to the weather aside from looking out the window.  So an hour or two after I finally climbed in bed and fell asleep, both Jeremy and I recieved alerts on our phones from the national weather service saying there is a serious storm coming and that we should seek shelter immidiately.  Now that I have a child, storms have suddenly become much more frightening to me.  I guess I worry that if something were to happen, I might not be able to get to Josiah in time or that I might not be able to adequetly protect him.  I was thankful that Jeremy didn't think we should wait around upstairs and look outside to see what might be coming at us before heading downstairs.  He's from Kansas and tends to look at storms as a form of entertainment rather than something to be afraid of.  Of course, I don't want to be overly cautious, but when the weather alert went off right next to my head in the middle of the night telling me to take action I just wanted to take Josiah and run for cover.  So that is exactly what we did (although Jeremy did feel the need to look outside and watch out the windows to see the storm coming).  I on the other hand scooped up our sleeping toddler and tried to take him downstairs without waking him.  Interestingly, he actually did stay asleep until the storm was over and we went back upstairs.  Once the storm was over, however, he was wide awake and we were without power, leaving our house earily quiet and creeky.  After rocking and snuggling in Josiah's bed, I didn't end up back in my own bed until about 4:30 in the morning.  Needless to say...not my best night for sleep.  A few hours later when Jeremy got up to leave for work we discovered this in our front yard...

        It seems a little silly now, but when I saw this, I was SO frustrated!  Just two weeks before, Jeremy and I spent several hours trimming branches around the bottom of the tree on the left and removing a TON of some kind of crossbread between a weed and a tree which meant I removed most of them by digging them out with a shovel rather than just pulling them up.  I also knew that we were going to have to spend the time and money to remove the tree that was damaged and replace the bare area with either more landscaping or grass.  While my attitude was pretty crappy for the first few hours of the day, it quickly became apparent that things could be much worse.  Later that morning, we went to meet some friends at a local park for a walk and play date and as I drove through town, I realized that the damage to our tree was minimal compared to the damage that so many others had suffered.  While I didn't see a lot of damage to homes (thank God), there were trees and large branches down everywhere!  It really looked like a tornado had gone through town.  In fact, the first road that I tried to take to the park was blocked entirely by a tangle of trees and power lines laying across it.  As I drove to the park, I was moved to tears by the damage sustained by so many and by my initial petty reaction to one tree down on our property.  Just the night before, as I held Josiah during the storm, I prayed over and over that God would just keep us safe.  And yet, when I woke up (safe and sound mind you) all I could think about was the fact that the storm had caused some inconvenience for us.  I realized that I needed to be grateful for the little damage that was done and for our safety!  I was also inspired to help organize efforts to bring some people together from our church to try to help with some neighborhood clean-up.

       I wish that I could say that I am just totally over the whole broken tree thing, but I am still frustrated by the fact that we have half of a pine tree standing in our front yard.  I was reminded though, to try to focus on the things that I have to be grateful for, like our next door neighbor who came over with his chainsaw and helped us remove the part of the tree that was laying in the yard.  I was also reminded to be grateful for the modern conveniences that I enjoy every day when we were without power until Wednesday night.  Since we have well water, we were without water or power for a full 48hrs and it was getting pretty tricky to flush toilets, wash dishes, save food from the freezer, keep our bathroom from smelling like an outhouse, bathe, etc., etc., etc.  While there are some nice things about not having power, like feeling no pressure to be overly connected to the world via internet, I was certainly excited when the power finally came back on!