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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (March 8, 2022)
Home Living B Tuesday, March 8, 2022 The Observer & Baker City Herald Don’t Waffle Waffle iron is more versatile than you might think Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS Waffl ed chocolate chip cookies, made in a waffl e maker. By DANIEL NEMAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch A merican cooking is heading in two different directions. Hillary Levin/St. Louis Post-Dispatch-TNS Waffl ed margherita pizza, made in a waffl e maker. Fancy restaurants are experimenting with noo- dles made from tofu skin and Mayan dips made from pumpkin seeds. But home cooks are just out to have fun with their food. Meringues are cooked to look like clouds. Cakes are made to look like unicorns. Toast is multicolored and spangled. And foods that aren’t meant to be cooked in waffl e irons are cooked in waffl e irons. Why not? Waffl e irons are just two griddles that heat food on both sides simultaneously. The indentations add to the surface area, so the food is crispier, and they also make anything cooked on them seem more festive. I’m always a little late to come to fads, but I fi nally decided to see what a waffl e iron can do. And that meant digging our old one out of its hiding place in the basement. When I say old, I mean it: It dates back to the 1970s or ‘80s and, based on painful personal experience, it appar- ently has no insulation at all. But as a cooking device, it worked fi ne. I started with Waffl ed Falafel, partly because the name makes me smile. Falafel is the Middle Eastern street food made from spices and ground garbanzo beans that is shaped into balls and fried. You can’t fry in a waffl e iron, so you might assume that waffl ed falafels are better for you. But they have a fair amount of oil mixed into them to keep them moist and hold them together while they are being cooked. So while they do taste wonderful, you are not saving any fat or calories. I served my waffl e falafels the traditional way, in pita (regular pita, not something silly like waffl e pita) with tomatoes, cucumbers and tahini. Sticking with the idea of crowd-pleasing foods, I made a pizza in the waffl e iron. Pizza is a fun food anyway, and waffl ing it only makes it seem like more of a celebration. It’s a three-part process, but it is all easy. First, you cook your favorite pizza dough on the waffl e iron. Then you spread the top of it with an easy pizza sauce (I kept mine straightforward because the recipe is all about being simple to make) and shredded cheese. And to melt the cheese, all I did was close the waffl e maker partway. The heat from the top side melted the cheese. I thought I would have to broil the pizza, but the radiated waffl e-iron heat nicely did the trick. For a breakfast treat, I made Waffl ed Eggs with Cheese Sauce. If you think of a waffl e iron as a griddle with a bunch of bumps in it, the con- cept makes sense. Because you cannot stir eggs in a waffl e iron, they do not develop the fl uff y curds of scrambled eggs. Rather, these eggs develop the soft, almost springy texture you get at a diner that makes omelets on a hot griddle. But because these eggs have been baked into the shape of a waffl e, you can’t fold them over like an omelet. I simply sautéed toppings — I used onions, mushrooms and red and green pep- pers — and placed them on top. That by itself made a delicious, unusual meal. But I upped the ante by whipping up a light, creamy cheese sauce that mimicked the eff ect of a hollandaise: It enriched the egg-eating experi- ence simply by adding a lot of calories. Perhaps the most unusual food I cooked in a waffl e iron was a mixture of seasoned rice and egg. This made an Asian-fl avored rice waffl e that I topped with stir-fried chicken. The result was a decidedly diff erent way to blend Eastern fl avors with a Western cooking technique. It was delicious. And you can use any stir-fry you want. Basically, if it tastes good on rice, it will taste even better on a seasoned rice waffl e. I saved dessert for last: Waffl ed Chocolate Chip Cookies. Yes, you can even make cookies on a waffl e iron. And because you are heating them with direct heat on both sides, they actually cook faster and are crispier than regular cookies you bake in the oven. They are easy to make and easy to clean up, and are decidedly diff erent. They are chocolate chip cookies, but more fun. See, Waffl es/Page B3 The history of the Bohnenkamp Building GINNY MAMMEN OUT AND ABOUT Crossing the street to the northwest corner of the 1300 block of Adams and Elm in downtown La Grande is the building known as the Bohnen- kamp Building. The original three-story brick building at 1301 Adams Ave. was constructed for William H. Bohnenkamp in 1900 to replace a small wood-frame building which had been his previous place of business. To tell the story of the building is to know the story of the man who constructed it and made it a La Grande estab- lishment/institution for many decades. William H. Bohnenkamp was born at Dyersville, Iowa, in 1867 to German immigrants William J. Bohnenkamp, a farmer, and his wife Josephine. Young Wil- liam was not quite 20 years old when in 1869 he married Gene- vieve Mountford, age 18, in Car- roll, Iowa. Shortly after their marriage, William and Genevieve came west by train to begin their married life in La Grande. For an Observer news article many years later they told of their fi rst impressions of La Grande, then a town of about 1,800 people. “Instead of the paradise they had pictured Oregon, they found everything drab and gray. Day after day it rained. Mud fi lled the streets. Soggy clouds blotted out the mountains. It was a back- ground fi t for the sorriest case of homesickness. If we can just save enough money to get back home to Iowa we’ll go home and never come back,” they said of their thoughts at the time. For nine years William worked for the O. W. Railroad, holding many positions, from machin- ist’s apprentice to foreman. In the 1893 City Directory William was listed as a machinist. By the time the young couple did make their trip back home to Iowa situations had changed and they returned to La Grande. In 1896 William learned that the La Grande Hardware com- pany was moving to Boise. He bought out some of their goods and started his ven- ture into the hardware business which he located in the Hun- tington Building across Adams Avenue. He was there for about four months when a small frame building at the northwest corner of Adams and Elm became avail- able. The owner, Bohnenkamp’s competitor, T. N. Murphy, was moving to his new location at 1201 Adams, a block up the street. William bought the little building and the lot and he and Genevieve moved their business to this new location. The fi rst year was quite successful. They made $21,612.25, which would be equivalent to $728,324 today. This new location was suffi - cient for a short period of time, but as business began to grow over the next four years William needed more space. He couldn’t shut down his store so in 1900 he moved the little building into the street to operate his busi- ness there while he constructed a three-story brick building. For the next 13 years everything went along smoothly and then, in September of 1913, fi re broke out and the two top stories were severely damaged. The building was rebuilt, adding a fourth story. Prior to the fi re, the upper fl oors off ered offi ce space to a variety of professional offi ces. The store kept growing and by 1920 the need to extend the busi- ness display space was being felt. The ground fl oor of the Masonic Building next door had at the time one space vacant and the other housed the Christy Variety Store, which was ready to deal. William and Andrews Variety Store went together to purchase the entire stock and fi xtures from Christy. Then W.H. Bohnenkamp expanded into the two spaces, making it the largest store outside of Portland. The store utilized this extra space for a number of years. This former expan- sion currently houses JaxDog Cafe and Books, and Find Your Why Travel. W.H. Bohnenkamp died in 1937 after a life of service to his community as both a busi- nessman, builder and civic leader. He was serving on the La Grande City Council when in 1904 a new City Hall was to be constructed and in 1910 when various streets including Adams Avenue were being paved. Genevieve and W.H. raised Fred Hill Collection The Bohnenkamp Building was constructed in 1900 at Adams and Elm. three sons, Chase, Lynn and Hal, in their Second Street home known as “The Castle.” All three boys came into the business over the years selling furniture, hard- ware and appliances. Hal became a graduate of a Chicago school of undertaking and opened his own undertaking business at Fifth and Spring. The caskets were on display and sold at the Bohnenkamp store. The store. also known as Hometown Hardware, providing goods and services to genera- tions of the community, closed in the late 1970s and the last of the Bohnenkamp brothers died in 1986. The Bohnenkamp fami- lies and the store played an active part in the La Grande community for many years. Keep looking up! Enjoy! Correction for Feb. 8, 2022, article: The grocery business at 1204 Spring, which originated as Chris’ Foods, was sold to Art Komma, operator of Hub City Lockers, in 1963 and the name was changed to Hub City Food. The building was sold by the Christiansen family to the Presbyterian Church in the early 1990s to house the Presbyterian Friendship Center. The Book “Charge it Please” was compiled by Robert Bull and other members of the community involved with the Union County Historical Society. ——— Ginny Mammen has lived in La Grande for more than 50 years and enjoys sharing her interest in the history of people, places and buildings.