WAFFLES BY CANDLELIGHT

These are no ordinary waffles.  They begin with starter, which sounds like a messy bit of redundancy but is in fact a sloppy concoction with yeast-like properties, passed down from my grandmother, who used it to make this celebrated brand of waffles once a week.  The starter is mixed up into the batter but each time a small portion is saved back to be used in a future batch, at which point the starter will be mixed up again and a small portion set aside, and so on into the depths of the foreseeable future. 

It is a responsibility to have a jar bearing the magical stuff in one’s refrigerator, because to maintain its usefulness the starter must be used to make batter at regular intervals.  If the chosen caretaker is faithful, it will last forever.

Or so the legend goes.  The story that was once handed down was that the starter had to be used (recycled, as it were) once every week, but Grandma once left hers for six months, and it still produced waffles in the regular way once it was properly mixed up, dependable as ever.  I hadn’t used the contents of my own closely guarded jar in five weeks, but I don’t call it magic for nothing.  The waffles were delicious.

The ritual for making the waffles is firmly set.  The lighting of candles during the eating was a personal touch.

For those curious souls, my husband prefers his waffles with raspberry-blackberry syrup and crushed walnuts on top.