Auntie Em, Auntie Em!

Waffles
The Joy of Cooking Copyright 1931, 1936, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1946, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1975

Sift together:
1 ¾ cups cake flour
2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar

Beat well:
3 egg yolks

Add:
2 to 7 tablespoons melted butter or vegetable oil I used about 4 T of melted butter
1 ½ cups milk

Make a whole in the center of the dry ingredients. Pour in the liquid ingredients and combine.

Beat until stiff but not dry:
3 egg whites

Fold them into the batter until they are barely blended. Cook waffles according to your waffle iron’s manufacturer’s instructions.
_____________________________

Our town was hit by a tornado Friday. Everyone is quite shocked- this isn't Kansas afterall. I had just driven through the area it hit. A woman was killed by a tree while she was sitting at a red light that I had driven through only minutes earlier. I didn't even know anything had happened until I turned on the news later. We had no phone service and my husband was stuck on the other side of the damage, aware that someone had been killed, but unable to call home. When I heard the news, I got out my cell phone but even that wouldn't go through the first few times I tried. Eventually I got through and my husband was sufficiently relieved to hear my voice so I thought he deserved some waffles this weekend. I didn't make them for him the last two weeks, just because I was busy with other things.

The Joy of Cooking really bores me for some reason but these were really good waffles - very light and airy. I paraphrased the recipe, which I don't normally do but if you've seen Joy of Cooking, you know they throw a lot of extra suggestions into the text of the recipe. I know this is a very good cookbook, very in-depth and a veritable bible of cooking to many people but like I said, it just bores me and I rarely look at it.

Blast From The Past: Hamburger Special from June 2006. Rebel just made these and I remembered how much I enjoyed them. And, this is almost unbelievable, ground beef was on sale for 69 cents a pound last week. It was 75%, so much fattier than I usually buy but for 69 cents a pound, I couldn't resist. Fattier ground beef makes better hamburgers and in recipes that call for browning the ground beef, it can be rinsed in hot water after it's browned, before you proceed with the rest of the recipe. Since you only eat a bit of the sauce with Hamburger special, the fat wasn't too much of a problem but for something like meatballs in pasta sauce, I wouldn't use the fattier beef because the grease ends up in the sauce.

By the way, I originally got this Hamburger Special recipe from a small VFW pamphlet cookbook but I recently found the same recipe in an old Southern Living Annual, word for word.

Question of the Day: Do you own The Joy of Cooking?