Rainbow Waffles = Nom

Near-ish lunchtime the other day, the girlies seemed hungry for a big lunch and an elaborate project--you know, that sort of wandering, opening and closing the refrigerator, declaring that they want something to eat but all suggestions are deemed unacceptable, wanting me to do "something" with them but they don't know what, kind of behavior.

Inspired by these rainbow pancakes from my Our Favorite Family Foods pinboard, but personally finding standing at the stove and cooking pancake after pancake to be the worst form of torture, I re-translated the recipe into rainbow waffles (because I find standing in front of a waffle iron and cooking waffle after waffle to be a very slightly milder form of torture).

The girls had a gorgeous time dyeing the divided waffle batter:

I know, Sydney looks totally beat up in that above photo. We'd gone to a pumpkin patch the day before (Freeman Family Farms, I'm looking at YOU!), where they'd set up a little barnyard petting zoo, in which there was a miniature Shetland pony, who bit my child ON. THE. FACE.

Yeah, we'll be visiting a different pumpkin patch next year. Anywho...

Since I loathe using the waffle iron, and I happen to have, if I do say so myself, two quite competent children, I set the waffle iron up on the living room table instead of the kitchen counter, demonstrated its use to the little people, and let them have at it. There were a couple of burned fingers, sure, but the kiddos? They  LOVED it:

They did themselves a pretty darn good job, too:

Since my other thing about waffles is that I refuse to believe that they contain enough nutrition or protein or filling power to sustain a meal, I used my break from the waffle iron to cook up the remaining parts of a big ole' breakfast:

We've got yogurt, and bananas, and bacon, and eggs (cooked with a little bacon grease, obviously), and waffles with maple syrup. When I showed the girls how to use up the dregs of each bowl of colored batter to make a few last super-rainbow waffles, you could tell that they totally wished that they'd thought of doing that for every single waffle they'd made.

That's a giant breakfast on my plate there, right?

Well, if you think that's giant, you should see my five-year-old's breakfast:

Well, it was breakfast, and then morning snack, and then lunch, and then afternoon snack, but you get the idea.

And that's the story of how I no longer have to be the one who works the waffle iron!