I woke up at 6 am on Saturday, to a very endearing “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” being chirped in a little voice from a crib. You can’t really be unhappy about an early morning wake-up call when someone is so excited to see you, and to start the day. So I made waffles, little peanut glued to my hip, as he almost always is while I’m cooking. (Please focus on the cutie and ignore my crazy-pants bouffant-y hair in that photo, thanks hubby.)

He dumps the contents of measuring spoons into the bowl, and takes a turn whisking, like a proper little helper – and of course, he always tastes along the way and is very upset if something is under-seasoned.

Just kidding about the last part.

Although if he doesn’t like something, he does spit it out with impressive drama, à la Gordon Ramsay in Masterchef.

I’m not sure what triggers that reaction – I mean, kid eats laundry soap and silica packets (and I have poison control on speed dial – ps. I am a good mother, I swear), but spits out my delightfully spiced carrot fritters with herbed yogurt with passion and an expression of deepest insult on his face.

Ok, now I feel like I have to explain: The laundry soap was left by a friend who visited, and I didn’t realize it was even in our home – it was a pump-top bottle with no lid that had been underneath a cabinet for a year (I’m divulging this because I’d rather you judge me for poor housekeeping than poor parenting) and when he found it, he immediately stuck the top in his mouth while I shouted “Noooooooo” and descended on him in slow motion.

I’m not proud of what happened next, but I feel like I have to finish the story – in panic, I grabbed the bottle from him, put the top in my own mouth and had a little suck, just because I NEEDED TO KNOW if he was able to get some out! Yep, he could. So then I got to experience a not-at-all embarrassing phone call to poison control that started with, “Hi, my son and I just drank laundry soap”.

I swear, I have a decent IQ.

And the silica packet appeared from the deep recesses of a closet, from pre-baby high-heel buying that didn’t require me to immediately rid shoe boxes of scary DO NOT EAT-labelled desiccants. He had only just put a corner of the packet in his mouth to try out the tearing capabilities of his brand new teeth, and I don’t think he got any beads out, but regardless – good news! Poison control informed me that silica is completely non-toxic and they put terrifying labels on them just for sh*ts and giggles, or in case someone thought free sugar packets were included with their loafers. (Ok, they only said the first bit.)

Ok, sorry. WAFFLES, Jenn – FOCUS.

Now that I’ve tired myself blabbering on and on about my failings as a parent, I will leave you with just a few recipe-related musings and release you from my wildly-digressing blog post.

I give you golden, chewy waffles with a lovely tang and buttery flavour. They have quite a few eggs, which I like because it means a decent amount of protein per serving. The instructions are written for a stove-top waffle iron, like this one, that I have and love, but of course you can make them in an electric waffle maker. It makes 20 waffle squares (my iron makes 4 squares per big waffle) which is great for freezing leftovers – just pop ’em in the toaster!

OK, since I just can’t shut up today, I have to share one more thing: I decided to try out the dictate function on my phone so that I could just talk while cooking and have the recipe typed into google drive, and this was the hilarious result:

“Preheat waffle iron over medium high heat then breasts generously with vegetable oil focusing on the pockets scoop about 1 cup of the data into the middle of the waffle iron and then headed out to the edge of the amount you used to pound on your waffle iron . As soon as you go to the edge of the water and immediately flip it over so that the battery was thinking to the pocket on the other side . You know what time does with the waffle when you can start to see gordon on the underside you can you report to let me pay the waffle way from the wifi and see in peak i have a gas stove so i have to actually i rotate my wife lying around over the flame to make sure the brown tivoli how do i delete branch warren one side…” and so on. It made me laugh out loud. Maybe google doesn’t speak Canadian, eh?

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 3 cups buttermilk, room temperature
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 6 large eggs
• Vegetable oil, for waffle iron

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 200ºF. Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk buttermilk with melted butter and eggs.
2. Pour buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture, and use a spatula to gently incorporate – the batter will be lumpy, and that’s ok – don’t over-mix it.
3. Preheat waffle iron for about 3 minutes over medium-high heat, then brush generously with vegetable oil focusing on the pockets. Scoop about 1 cup of the batter into the middle of the waffle iron and then spread it out to the edges (the exact amount will depend on your iron). Immediately flip the waffle iron over so that the batter sinks into the pockets on the other side.
4. After a couple of minutes, use a fork to have a peek at the underside of the waffle – when it’s golden brown, it’s time to flip the iron again. You might need to move it around over the flame/element for even heat distribution. When the other side is golden, too, gently remove the waffle using a fork and transfer directly to the oven rack to keep warm (or you can put a cooling rack on top of a baking sheet and place waffles on that instead). It takes about 5 minutes total per waffle. Repeat with remaining batter, re-oiling the iron between waffles.