Gold-green for Links.vbprj

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 its 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 moneys 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 thats where they got to be the most popular and it was in 1964 at the Worlds Fair in New York City that waffles were seriously introduced to the USA by the Belgians.

AND, WHAT'S MORE, "FRENCH FRIES" DID ORIGINATE IN BELGIUM!

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 himself "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. Another story goes that just-parachuted soldiers near the border were delighted to find a fritkot nearby and erroneously believing they were in France, called the delicious food "French Fries".<

"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.

UPDATED 11/02/2019