CEIMB: Whole-Wheat Waffles with Strawberry Sauce

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was supposed to be Whole-Wheat Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce, chosen by Melissa of It's Melissa's Kitchen. However, since I've already made (and loved) these pancakes before, I thought it would be fun to transform the recipe into waffles this time! I wasn't sure it would work, but I assumed that the pancake batter would turn out equally as well in a waffle maker as it would on a stovetop griddle.

Guess what? The waffles were as good as the pancakes, if not better! In my opinion, they rank right up there with some of the best waffles we've ever made at home. I followed the recipe exactly, but I did throw in the zest of one small lemon. What a difference it made! The fragrant lemon zest could be detected both in the smell of the waffles cooking and in the tender, fluffy finished product. It worked great with the tart strawberry sauce as well.

Speaking of that sauce. In my version, I wanted no strawberry seeds, so I ran my strawberry puree through a fine mesh sieve before setting it on the stovetop to warm. It was just perfect. With the generous dusting of confectioners' sugar that we sprinkled on our waffles, there were great contrasts of flavor in this dish. We just loved it.

So it was yet another Ellie winner for us! Of course, I knew waffles would most likely be a hit here, but the fact that these were completely delicious, yet deceptively healthy, was just icing on the cake. Or waffle?

You can find Ellie's pancake recipe here. And be sure to check out the CEIMB blogroll to see the other members' versions.

CEIMB: Pesto Potato Salad

This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe comes to us from Liz over at The Not So Skinny Kitchen. We love all things pesto around these parts, so of course we were very excited to make this one. I have to confess, I didn't actually make it; my hubby did. We had this dish on my birthday, and it was one of Andy's gifts to me to make the entire dinner we ate that evening. Hey, I wasn't about to put up a fight, even though technically I felt like I should prepare the potato salad. After all, it's my assignment, not his. But I think it still counts for the group. I ate it, so I totally participated!

Funny story, though. The next morning, I went into the refrigerator to try and figure out what leftovers I had on hand to serve for that evening's dinner. I couldn't find the leftover pesto, so finally I asked Andy where he had put it. Well, as it turns out, there was no leftover pesto! That's right; he had used the entire batch of fresh pesto in the potato salad! I thought mine looked particularly green, but I just figured that's the way it was supposed to look.

It didn't matter to us, though, because we loved it just the way it was! I'd like to try it the right way in the future, but for this meal I thought it was great. I absolutely love pesto, so having extra on my salad surely wasn't a problem for me. I'm just sorry I don't have another pesto dish to look forward to now with the leftovers. Oh, well. It'll give me an excuse to make more, I guess!

With this potato salad, we ate some fried chicken and waffles. I have always wanted to try chicken and waffles together, and I'm so glad I finally did. I loved it! I can't say for certain that the pesto salad paired up perfectly with waffles, but I didn't care. I loved everything I ate that night. And it was my birthday, after all, so as long as it made me happy, that's all that matters. And even though my older son initially found the mashup of foods on his plate a little weird at first, he ended up loving it, too!

Thanks to Liz for the great pick. A winner around here, made incorrectly and all! The recipe for the potato salad can be found on Food Network's site, here. The recipe we used for the fried chicken can be found on Recipezaar, here. Finally, the recipe for the Brown Butter Waffles can be found on the Daydreamer Desserts blog, here. Sooo very good!