Waffles a la Jeanette!

A fun post, this Friday:

Jeanette is widely considered to not have been that great of a cook. Both men in her life have acknowledged that she would leave the kitchen in a huge mess after she was finished, and she said it would take her most of the day to prepare a “not too difficult” meal, but she always said she had a great eye for produce and choice cuts of meat.

………Choice cuts of meat:

Sorry, sorry, I’ll behave.

ANYWAY, okay, so there were a few dishes that were “specialties” of Jeanette’s: her baked beans, best when served with her hot Boston brown bread is sort of universally considered the best thing in her repertoire. Also of note, her homemade Philadelphia style peach ice cream. I’ve made all of the above and they’re all fabulous and I don’t even LIKE baked beans.

A MacDonald specialty that I had not tried until today, however, is her waffles. She used to make them on Sundays occasionally and have people over. Director Ernst Lubitsch used to eat FOUR (I was full after one).

So this morning, I figured it was time to try the waffles. Here is her recipe, in her own handwriting. ❤

PLEASE NOTE: that is a 1 for number of teaspoons of salt!!! The brown ring on the old paper obscures it and her quotation marks then become misleading. Do not put 4 teaspoons of salt in the batter!

This recipe makes batter for about 4 waffles, depending on the size of your waffle iron, I guess.

Shout-out to Hana, one of my riding students who brings me fresh eggs from her chickens all the time!!

Jeanette’s all like, “Add milk to make a thin batter.” That’s too vague for me, but it worked. Apparently she has a lot of faith in whoever is reading this recipe not to be Katie Gardner in the kitchen. Guys, Angela was cooking in my kitchen in September and she brought into my life the knowledge that my oven can broil things. It was big news to me.

LOOKIT!!!!!!!!! It could have been darker but that was the first one and my angina was real.

My brother and sister-in-law were subjected to MacWaffles and they survived, and what’s more, they liked it.

So, another A+ for the Mac. Make the waffles.

Oh! And my friend Mary Lynn owns Jeanette’s original cookbook (in which she cut up old address labels and used them as tape, bless her), and it has been reproduced gorgeously into a spiral-bound volume that can be purchased at this link. Well worth it!!