Everything on a Waffle - Polly Horvath

How did I miss this one?

I don't understand how I've managed to convince myself for the last three years that I had already read Everything on a Waffle. While shelving books on Saturday morning (I was a work, guys. I'm not that nerdy.) I read the inside flap, and realized--WOO HOO!--there's a Polly Horvath book that I haven't read yet! I'm going to have to buy it, because I can picture reading and re-reading this one. Mostly I just wish that there really was a resturaunt called The Girl on the Red Swing, where everything was served on a waffle.

This is one of those books with recipes. But good ones, like Caramel Apples:

This is perhaps the easiest recipe of all. Buy a bag of caramels and melt them slowly in a double boiler--that is, in a saucepan that is over a saucepan of boiling water. When the caramels have melted, take apples that you have stuck Popsicle sticks through and dip them in the caramel until they are coated. Let dry on waxed paper. Do not muck around with chocolate or nuts or anything else fancy that may tempt you. It will only gum up the works. Sometimes you get tempted to make something wonderful even better but in doing so you lose what was so wonderful to begin with.

I love Primrose. She was so matter-of-fact about everything, when it would be really easy to be snippy and sarcastic:

I got the feeling that Miss Honeycutt didn't even know what issues she was talking about--that she just liked using the word "issues" and would use it when ever she could slip it into conversation. Certain people do get attached to certain words this way. I kind of like "solarium" myself although it did not lend itself to such easy usage.

And with chapter titles like, "I am Almost Incarcerated", "I Lose a Toe", and "I Set Fire to a Guinea Pig", how can you go wrong?