Sunday, February 5, 2012.
New-Age Waffles. Late Tree. Early Mexican Food.
Made waffles this morning. My breakfast repertoire for most of the past year was dominated by a slice of multi-grain toast spread with blackberry jam, with the eternal orange juice and café au lait. One day a week, I allow myself a buttermilk biscuit with a lot of butter instead of the toast. Before the kids left home, I used to make a dozen or so waffles every few weeks and freeze all that weren't consumed immediately. My resuscitation method is to microwave the waffle for twenty-two seconds, then put it into the toaster at about 60 percent dark. Meanwhile, I'd warm up the pure maple syrup. What comes out of this is a waffle that's about 85 percent as good as one right off the waffle iron.
Today's waffles were different from the standard. Instead of self-rising flour, I used whole wheat flour and baking powder. A dash of cinnamon. And something new: a quarter-cup of crushed almonds. Those were the contents of the dry-ingredient bowl.
The wet ingredients included buttermilk, beaten egg yolks, melted butter, and--instead of sugar--honey. Vanilla. The dry ingredients went into the wet ones (that minimizes lumps). I beat the egg whites into a fine foam, and folded it in after the batter had a chance to rise a bit.
This batter was heavy, and so were the waffles that came out. I think I need fresh baking powder, and maybe a little baking soda, too. One of the waffles is plenty for a breakfast. The flavor is rustic--a little bitter from the graham flour and the almonds. Next time, I will add a little lemon juice to the batter, which will also have the effect of lightening it.
But now I can have a waffle once a week until well into summer. It's my small version of a time machine.
After all that, Mary Leigh--who spent the night at home with us after yesterday's Carbfest--announced that she needed to get back to Tulane to do some work. She would deign to have lunch with the old folks, but only if lunch could be at elevenish. At La Carreta.
Mary Ann cut a deal with her. We'd eat queso and tacos at eleven, but only if Mary Leigh would assist in dismantling the Christmas tree. Yes, the Christmas tree was still standing on February 5--three days past Candlemas, officially the very last gasp of the ecclesiastical Christmas season. About 88 percent of the tree's needles were on the floor by the time the ceremonial first/last ornament (a hideous, corroded thing that has lived with me since the 1950s) was removed. We carried it out to a spot in the woods where all twenty-one previous trees were laid to rest. You can still see nine of them.
We were among the first customers at La Carreta, and certainly the first fools who wanted to dine outside on this nippy morning. (Well, I didn't want to, but I do what the girls tell me to do.) The tub of queso looked bigger than usual. We went through four bowls of the thin, good tortilla chips with that, followed by another one when MA was taken by a need to try the spinach-artichoke queso. (Spinach-artichoke dip, now found in every kind of restaurant across America, is close behind the hamburger in the race to be Most Common Dish In Chain Restaurants.)
Two visits ago I had shrimp diabla--grilled shrimp with a very zippy chipotle pepper sauce. I liked that so much that I asked to have the same dish done today with chicken. What a great flavor! All that La Carreta needs now is molé poblano on its menu, and it will leap into first place among Tex-Mex restaurants in these parts.
Tomorrow, I must get my driver's license renewed. Which means that I have to get tomorrow morning's work done today. I worked through the Super Bowl, and saw only a few isolated plays. Even Mary Ann was uninterested in the game, although she had it on the tube while she worked on her book and cleaned up the detritus left by the deceased Christmas tree. It did have an effect on my life, however. Traffic on the website was way down today, as it has been for the past month every day a big game is on. Big Football is like short circuit on the power grid. It makes everybody's lights dim.
La Carreta. Mandeville: 1200 W Causeway Approach. 985-624-2990.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
