Sweet or Savory Yeasted Waffle Sandwiches

“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley.” 

― Robert Burns, The Works of Robert Burns

The cover story in yesterday's Parade magazine was all about the winner of the 2013 Armed Forces Chef of the year competition, Senior Chief Derrick Davenport.  As a side bar, there was a "By The Numbers" section that showed what the US Armed Forces consumed in 2012.  Guess what was glaringly missing from that list of milk, bacon, ground beef, and soy sauce?  Eggs!  Fresh eggs aren't commonly found in a war zone.  I knew that already, thanks to my spouse and my brother.

One night my spouse said to me "could we have eggs for breakfast?"  Of course I'm indulging the guy--he's going to be eating powdered eggs, if he's lucky, for a long stretch so I'm happy to fix over easy eggs for him while I can.  But what to serve with the eggs?  If you've checked the breakfast section of the recipe index up there ---------------->  to your right, you'll know I am a waffle fan.  I like how I can easily make up the batter at my convenience and then take Simon for a walk.  When I'm back, I fire up the waffle iron, keep the first few rounds of waffles warm in the oven, and then sit down to eat with my family.

The quote above, and the reason for this post, came about because I ran out of baking powder.  I can handle running out of all purpose flour (I've got whole wheat, bread, and cake flours as well), running out of pumpkin (I've also roasted and put up butternut, acorn or mystery winter squash in the freezer), running out of honey (what about molasses, maple syrup, or sugar?), or running out of spinach (kale, swiss chard, turnip or mustard greens?).  But not baking powder.  I NEED that stuff!

Without baking powder, I needed to use something else to give that "lift", so I grabbed my jar of yeast and fired up the computer.  I found a recipe at the King Arthur flour website.  Since you only need to let it sit an hour, it fits in with my usual waffle M.O. and I went for it.

But sometimes your plan goes awry, or agley, and your end result is not as expected.  Which is where my creativity kicked in.  The waffles turned out kinda flat.  Instead of despairing over a failed fluffy waffle recipe*, because life is too short to despair over still perfectly edible food, I seized the opportunity to make some waffle sandwiches.  Enter the well-stocked pantry:  I grabbed some cheeses, some put up peach preserves, some 'too runny for sandwiches' blueberry jam, and some leftover chopped meat and veg from a pizza you'll be seeing soon.
Here's what we ate:

Homemade peach preserves and goat cheese

Blueberry jam and goat cheese 

Pepperoni, Italian sausage, corn, red pepper, red onion and cheddar

If you routinely make flat waffles (I once had a waffle iron that really sucked and never made fluffy waffles no matter what batter I put in it) or have the occasional failure, consider turning them into waffle sandwiches.  The sweet/tangy/creamy combination of jam and goat cheese is really delicious--a definite keeper.  The savory combination of cooked meats, chopped vegetables, and cheese was also delicious.  If you have leftover meat or roasted vegetables and cheese, try it.  This unexpected breakfast was tasty.

Are you wondering what happened to my spouse's request for eggs?  Don't worry!  I fixed him a pair of eggs first thing, then later once the kids were up we all sat down to waffle sandwiches.

This post has joined the other clever chicks at the Clever Chicks Blog Hop, the Wednesday Fresh Foods Link Up, What's Cookin' Wednesday, Foodie Friends Friday, What's In The Box at In Her Chucks, Food on Friday, and the From The Farm Blog Hop.

*I think the recipe is a good one, if you're out of baking powder and buttermilk, and I'm positive my yeast was fine since I use it for pizza dough.  The next time I made it, I let the batter sit overnight like the recipe suggests and the result was a fluffier waffle, but I guess I'm just used to more flavorful waffles, since the taste was . . . well, let's call it a delicious blank canvas for waffle sandwiches!