
Cooking (from) the Books #2
Meme cooked and baked breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert fresh every day. I was raised by a full-time working mom so visiting Meme was a little like going to the zoo and watching a fascinating but foreign animal in their natural habitat. She spent most of her life in the kitchen at the stove and sink preparing meals for a family of seven, not including the dozens of extended family members that dropped by unexpectedly. This was a woman with permanently red-colored hands from scrubbing and scouring dishes and cookware; I knew that the kitchen and everything in it was her domain alone.
The cookbook I chose my recipe from, Delicious Waffles Recipes, opens with an advertisement from Narragansett Electric Company declaring “Mother, come out of the kitchen.” My Meme’s electric waffle maker allowed her that freedom from being tied to the stove, compulsively checking on everything as she cooked. That is the image I had while making these Tea Waffles; my Meme, Ella, relaxed and laughing while piling waffles high onto my plate. Since everyone was always too skinny for Meme, I turned these waffles into an ice cream sandwich in her honor. After all, this was a woman who let me devour saltine cracker towers held together by pats of full-fat butter to my heart’s content. The end result was not quite like my Memes’ but transportive enough to take me right back to her kitchen.
Tea Waffles
2 cups flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon of salt
3 eggs- separate yolks and whites
5 tablespoons butter
Mix and sift dry ingredients in a deep bowl. Into this stir beaten egg yolks, and when batter is nice and smooth, add butter. Then beat for 5 minutes. Fold in stiffly beaten whites of the eggs and bake about 2 and 1 half minutes.
~Ellary Wims Gamache, Administrative Assistant for the Robinson Research Center
Past entries for Cooking (from) the Books:
Cooking (from) the Books #1: Helen Washburn’s recipe collection & Nut Bread