at long last: waffles

I'm pretty sure you've seen waffles before, so I doubt there's anything in the photos below that will explode your brain. But these are keto waffles, i.e., they're made from almond flour—twice the calories of wheat flour, but a third of the carbs. Keep in mind that any almond products are so-called "keto" only when eaten in moderation. If I were to eat twenty almond pancakes in a single sitting, I wouldn't be doing myself any favors.

Below is my little waffle iron, ordered from the US, which means it has a US plug and needs to be hooked up to my "down" transformer (converts from 220V to 110V). The blue light on top was broken when I got the product, but the waffle iron makes an audible clicking noise, a bit like a clothes iron, to let you know it's hot enough to use. After that, it's up to you to control the timing. Pancake batter serves perfectly well as waffle batter; just be sure not to pour too much batter in the iron, or you'll have a spill on your hands as the batter puffs up from the heat. When laying down the batter, don't pour all the way to the edge: let gravity do the work of filling out the iron. I find that anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes is enough cooking time. The waffles never come out crispy, I've noticed, but they do stiffen up once they cool down. For true crispiness, you have to run them through a toaster. Like Eggos.

not the top brand of individual waffle irons

With the recipe I had, I made six waffles. Here they are, just out of the freezer.

And here's what my breakfast-for-lunch looked like today at the office:

That's scrambled egg with melted American cheese in the middle.

I made my own keto maple "syrup" out of maple extract, erythritol, water, and a teeny bit of xanthan gum. The xanthan gum gave everything the consistency of snot, so if I ever need a gooey movie prop, I know how to make it. The butter on the waffles is bubbling because the plate just came out of the microwave. The "syrup" is nice and glossy because the sausages were still very hot when the shot was taken. Except for this past Tuesday, when I fed galbi to the troops, I've had an American breakfast every day this week, and it's been awesome. I've occasionally backslid and had regular blueberry jam on my pancakes, but the jam didn't seem to affect my blood-sugar numbers as long as I ate nothing for the rest of the day.

Better late than never, I hope—the pics of my waffles, I mean. They're nothing special, right? Aside from a different flour and sweetener (monk fruit), the rest of the keto waffle-batter ingredients are similar to regular pancake-batter ingredients: eggs, oil/butter, baking powder, salt. So the keto batter puffs right up inside the waffle iron. I just wish I had a better iron that allowed me to make several waffles at a time: the one-by-one method is rather slow.