Waffled Carrot and Turnip Fritters

Shredded carrots and turnips, combined with a bit of spring onion, make an earthy and sweetly savory side dish or appetizer. Topped with some parmesan cheese and butter, it's a tasty way to enjoy the farm share. Use a waffle iron to make this fun snack.

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I find the start of each Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share season to be rife with promise. We'll have high expectations to eat ALL THE THINGS and then get bogged down in sheer volume of vegetables.


What helps me the most is to have a few 'go to' methods to deal with different types of produce. For example, when I'm overwhelmed with greens I know I can whip up a Fast Greens & Pasta dish to use up a large bunch in a way my family will enjoy.


I shared last week how I turn to my grill, in the summer, or to my roasting pan (in the Fall when I'm not worried about heating up my house too much) to turn root vegetables into building blocks for future meals.

Today I'd like to share another method--fritters.  I like to fritter away my time in the kitchen. It's much more productive than frittering away my time on Facebook, and the results are far tastier. I've shared several recipes for shredding vegetables to make vegetable pancakes or fritters. One summer standby (that you can make off season if you shred and freeze your summer squash) is my Zucchini Pancake recipe. I've shared a previous plain Turnip Fritter recipe here. I've even waffled up some St Patrick's Day leftovers in my Corned Beef Hash Brown Waffles.

Eggnog Sourdough Waffles

Tangy sweet waffles made with eggnog and sourdough starter. A fun way to enjoy eggnog during the holiday season--and marked down eggnog after the new year!

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I'm a sucker for magical markdown stickers. Where some people see 'oh it's about to go bad' I see opportunity. I picked up a half gallon of eggnog with no clear purpose. Buying food not on a previously thought out list is NOT a good way to Reduce Food Waste, however it is a source of inspiration to me so I'll keep on doing it. Within reason. Walking to the grocery store as I have been for the past 2 months when all I need is a gallon of milk has really cut down on impulse purchases.

I've used eggnog in waffles before--my Pumpkin Eggnog Waffles with Chocolate Chips made it onto the blog, but the Pumpkin Effnog waffles I never did find in my earlier photo searches, even though I was pretty sure I'd made some before. [Note to bloggers, when pulling photos off your camera, check the spelling as you add labels.] Eggnog in French toast? You bet I went there. What about oven pancakes? Yes, I've used eggnog in my Finnish Oven Pancake. Heck, I've even used eggnog in savory pizza dough with butternut squash. I do drink it, though it may not seem that way by all of these recipes.

I have to interrupt my flow with a behind the scenes photo--Robert Barker eyeing the bacon. Don't let the short legs fool ya. He swiped a piece of coconut cream pie off the counter last month. He's a dickens and I love him.

Chocolate Zucchini Waffles

I never set out to make zucchini waffles.  I'm such a fan of shredded zucchini pancakes/latkes, with butter and parmesan, that I think of zucchini nearly always as a savory, not a sweet. [Heed the words!  Pay no attention to this cake or these muffins!]

When I get overwhelmed with zucchini in the summer I reflexively grab the Food Processor, slap on the 'fine shred' disc, and shred those puppies up before freezing cups of shredded squash in bags.  I've noticed I get about 1/2 cup of squash back, when it's thawed and I've squeezed all the water out, so this summer I will be packing 2 cup bags, though right now all the garden volunteers are pie pumpkins, not zucchini, so I'm not overwhelmed.  Yet.  

Just another week in Squashzilla-land.

In the dead of winter (see photo below), when even my never-say-die Swiss chard has given up, these bags of green goodness cheer me and make me want to celebrate. With chocolate.  It's good to celebrate with chocolate, right?

Try these now, or shred and freeze some zucchini to have a mini summer celebration this winter.  Either way, you're in for a treat.

Sweet Corn and Blueberry Waffles

Sometimes it takes my subconscious a bit of time to catch up with the rest of my brain.

The other day I was looking at a recipe round up email digest when these cornmeal waffles with a blueberry compote caught my fancy.  I thought I'd throw some of my freezer stash of blueberries into the cornmeal waffles instead of a compote on top.  Then I thought I'd toss in some frozen sweet corn that I'd also put up, because for some reason sweet corn and blueberries sounded good.

What I didn't realize, until the day after I'd made these, was that I'd taken the flavor combo from this amazing corn, cucumber, and blueberry salad and stuck it in a waffle iron.  Without the cucumber--cucumber waffles do not sound appealing.

Corn and blueberries are amazing together.  The salad was delicious, as are these waffles.  I love fresh corn, and fresh blueberries, in the summer.  When you have them both fresh in your kitchen, I recommend making the salad.  I'm not much of a chunky waffle fan (and my son cannot stand oozing blueberries in his waffles) so I knew I wanted to chop up the frozen corn and blueberries from my freezer stash into smaller bits.  When you have both corn and blueberries frozen, I recommend making these waffles.  Besides, I tend to prefer summer salads and winter waffles.  And alliteration.  You do what you like.

Note:  these waffles are a bit softer straight out of the iron than other waffles that I've made.  Flip 'em over--they'll be sturdy enough for the buttery spread and real local maple syrup.  These freeze well and can be toasted for weekday breakfasts.  I tripled the recipe and made waffles for 7 hungry folks with 2 breakfasts worth of leftovers, but I'm sharing the recipe that serves 2-3 folks.

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.

Butternut Squash Waffles

Putting up packages of fruits and vegetables when they are ripe from the farm share means that I can pull them out in the middle of winter and feed my family from the farm share all year 'round.

Like the other morning.

I had buttermilk and was in a waffle mood.

A long time ago, while watching the Food Network, I'd written down Alton Brown's waffle recipe.  I love his Wet Team and Dry Team talk.  When I got to the "just walk away--walk away" part of the recipe (let the batter rest) I decided to take him literally.

We took the dog for a walk!

Tangerine Waffles (Fruit Fundraiser #1)

When you open up the fridge and see this, it's time to find recipes that put your Fruit Fundraiser produce to work for you.  I got an early start with the 'I've got a case of oranges what do I do?' phase when my young son's wheelchair basketball team did a fundraiser so they could buy equipment. (A basic pair of court shoes costs $50, a basketball chair costs $2K!).  Over the years I've gathered a few recipes for using citrus fruit and, now that I've got Band Fundraiser fruit filling up the fridge I am compelled to share them.

Let's start with breakfast, shall we?

This recipe takes its start from this waffle recipe, and its finish from this waffle recipe. The bright tangerine flavor really comes through but is not overpowering.  If you have a blender that crushes ice, don't knock yourself out seeding the tangerines, just pick out any obvious ones and the rest will get ground up.  I particularly liked this with pear butter, but the kids preferred maple syrup.  I think it'd be great with mini chocolate chips tossed into the batter too!