#wwwednesday: a review of the new Waffle House Peach Waffle
Occasionally you will enter a diner and see a dessert case filled with all sorts of beautiful-looking items- huge cookies studded with M&Ms, triple-layers of chocolate cake, cinnamon rolls as large as a salad plate, frosted brownies, cream and fruit pies galore, and often a huge bowl of banana pudding. All luscious looking and full of bright colors the more to entice you to binge on confections made primarily of Crisco and high fructose corn syrup (or as the food mass-producers are now taking to calling it because they started getting a LOT of bad press about hfcs: sugar dissolved in water).
Now I'm not certain that sugar dissolved in water is actually hfcs but a while back the corn producers started trying to change the name of their product to CORN SUGAR. So call me skeptical about this whole new ingredient that seems to have cropped up on labels. But I digress...
In those aforementioned dessert cases there's ALWAYS the obligatory FRESH STRAWBERRY PIE. You know the one- it's full of strawberries grown on steroids surrounded by a bright red glaze the color of which does not, I assure you, occur in nature. And crowned with what is called, in a fit of advertising honesty, "whipped topping". Not whipped CREAM- THAT would spoil too quickly- but TOPPING. And that glaze, made of high fructose corn syrup (er, sugar dissolved in water), jello, Red Dye #something, and other ingredients that you couldn't spell much less pronounce, serves a very practical purpose. It bathes those strawberries with a gummy, gloppy and sticky coating all the more to preserve the whole thing for the long haul. Because it's only there for show. Nobody ever eats it- at least I don't think I've ever seen anyone eat it. If you'll notice- there's always just one slice missing.
So it was with more than a little alarm that I confronted what I expected to be the Waffle House equivalent of Shoney's (in)Famous Strawberry Pie- the new Peach Waffle.
I am happy to report that the new peach waffle is not…horrible. Here’s how they make it. After they fill the waffle iron with batter they reach into the freezer and pull out a bag of frozen peach pellets. What do I mean by “pellets”? You know that box of frozen store brand mixed vegetables somewhere in the back of your freezer? The one with all the carrots and not much else? Well, the frozen peach pellets look like those tiny, cubed carrots. Only smaller. And less artificially orange.
They shake a FEW of those pellets into the batter and then close the lid on the iron and finish cooking your waffle. When it’s done the cook then swirls a teaspoon or two of peach syrup…artificially flavored of course but also made with something approximating brown sugar… on top of your waffle…and that’s it. No gunky glaze…no tired, been in the can way too long peaches…and no whipped topping. Here it is:
Yes, that slightly discolored spot in the midst of where I cut into it is a piece of peach. I think.
So it’s not…horrible. I’m not sure it’s worth the extra $1.00 up charge for those few little peach pellets and little dab of flavored syrup but I never cared for the blueberry or strawberry syrup and flavored pancakes from “you know where” either. My culinary conclusion? The new peach waffle does NOT seem to a leading indicator of Waffle House going all Shoney’s on us...but I'm beginning to get concerned with this trend of "naming" everything on the menu. That's a subject for another post.
