USEFUL LINKS FOR ROUND DANCERS

CALENDAR OF RD EVENTS (Petticoat Junction)

Question: Did Belgian waffles originate in Belgium? :-)

Answer: Naturally "Belgian waffles" originated in Belgium. But "waffles"? Not sure.

According to an old Betty Crocker cookbook, "a crusader wearing his armor accidentally sat in some freshly baked oat cakes, flattening them and leaving deep imprints of the steel links". And so it appears, one of the first waffles was created. Thank goodness it's not as much trouble to make golden, crisp waffles today.

The modern waffle has its origins in the late middle ages. Waffle irons consisted of two metal plates connected by a hinge, each plate was connected to a wooden arm. Some plates had imprinted designs such as a coat-of-arms or landscape, while some had the no-familiar honeycomb/gridiron pattern. The iron was placed over a fire and would need to be flipped manually to cook both sides of the waffle. These irons were used to produce a variety of different flat, unleavened cakes (usually from a mixture of barley and oats, not the white flour of today). Some were rolled into a horn or tube, others were left flat. In many cities waffles were sold off carts by street vendors. Judging from extant illustrations, these vendors gave people their money's worth, as the waffles in question were about the size of a small pizza."

Although no one seems sure that the waffle actually "originated" in Belgium, most agree that that's where they got to be the most popular and it was in 1964 at the World's Fair in New York City that waffles were seriously introduced to the USA by the Belgians.

Belgian historian Jo Gerard recounts that potatoes were already fried in 1680 in the Spanish Netherlands, in the area of "the Meuse valley between Dinant and Li�ge, Belgium. The poor inhabitants of this region had the custom of accompanying their meals with small fried fish, but when the river was frozen and they were unable to fish, they cut potatoes lengthwise and fried them in oil to accompany their meals."

The Dutch concur with a Southern Netherlandish or Belgian origin when referring to Vlaamse fritten ('Flemish fries'). In 1857, the newspaper Courrier de Verviers devotes an article to Fritz (assumed pun with 'frites'), a Belgian entrepreneur selling French fries at fairs, calling them "le roi des pommes de terre frites". In 1862, a stall selling French fried potatoes (frietkot) called "Max en Fritz" was established near Het Steen in Antwerp.

A Belgian legend claims that the term "French" was introduced when British or American soldiers arrived in Belgium during World War I, and consequently tasted Belgian fries. They supposedly called them "French", as it was the official language of the Belgian Army at that time.

"Frites" became the national Belgian snack and a substantial part of their national dishes � making the Belgians their largest per capita consumers in Europe, and their "symbolic" creators.

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