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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.