I like waffles. I am a fan of Waffle House, less so a fan of Huddle House.

But at home, we lean toward pancakes, for practical purposes. It has always been thus.

I think my great-grandfather was the first one who got frustrated and chucked a waffle iron through the kitchen window.  This sounds extreme until you consider that the kitchen in that house was pretty small, and my grandmother routinely threw pans into the yard as an interim measure to make room on the counter for everything else she needed to do to get dinner on the table. She used the door, though. Then she’d go out and get them, wash them, and put them away.

The waffle iron stayed in the yard til my grandfather was instructed to throw it on the scrap heap as a useless piece of junk.

Several years later, my grandfather followed in his dad’s footsteps and chucked another one. My grandmother, who had fought with the waffle iron for years, was slightly gratified by this action since my grandfather had come into the project insisting that she was just doing it wrong.

My parents were not dummies. I don’t think they ever owned a waffle iron.

When I got married, I put one down on our registry list on a whim. A good friend of mine at the time bought it for us, opining that “every good marriage needs some room to waffle.”

To my surprise, that waffle iron worked very well. Maybe it was because it was a Belgian waffle iron, or maybe anti-stick technology had improved, but it was rare that we’d get half a waffle out and half stuck to the machine. More often, we would overfill it and watch batter pour out the sides while cooking, which made a devil of a mess to clean up, so we still preferred pancakes for prep work. But the iron itself was dandy until it fell off a counter and broke.

We didn’t bother to replace it for a long time. Then a Christmas or so ago, I got the hubs a new one. It did not go through the window, but I think that might have been because our kitchen doesn’t have windows. There was definitely a lot of grousing and huffing on the first few outings. But he says he’s figured out how to bend it to his will, so I think we are safe.

But we still don’t have them very often.

I’ve read about how you can utilize a waffle iron for other dishes—chicken, brownies, quesadillas. I’ve never tried any of that. One video I saw involved eggs and tater tots, which looked really good but I’m leery of trying to get egg unstuck, so I will probably never try it.

Anyone out there used their waffle iron in a new and unusual way? Maybe to fry their hair in the 1980s?