Frugal Recipe from My Grandmother

My grandmother has been dead for many years but there are recipes that we use all the time of hers. Waffles made from scratch is one of my favorite. In fact, until I came to college I didn't know that waffles could be made from a mix.

Syrup is another thing we made at home. Wait - I live in Virginia. My grandmother grew up in Kansas. These are not areas of the country known for making syrup but my grandmother, like many of our grandmothers, lived through the Depression and learned to improvise.

I've reintroduced this syrup into our family not only as a way to be frugal and save money but also as a way to continue to cut High Fructose Corn Syrup out of our diet. It's a fact of life - less expensive syrups are high in HFCS and there's not much we can do about it except not buy them.

My solution is this and it's a very simple recipe. In fact, it's Simple Syrup:

• One Cup Water
• One Cup Sugar
• One Cup Brown Sugar

Bring to a boil on the stove while stirring. Remove and let cool. As it cools determine what flavor you'd like it to have. Maple? Sure, put in a teaspoon of Maple Extract. Orange? Okay. It's your syrup. All I had on hand was vanilla last time so we had vanilla syrup.

Once it cools in the pan use a funnel to fill it back into a syrup bottle and stick it in the fridge. It won't get to be as thick as store bought syrup but it'll thicken up when it cools in the fridge. Side-by-side taste comparisons may be able to pick out which syrup is homemade and which has thickeners and HFCS but if you just pull the bottle out of the fridge and put it on the table I doubt anyone is going to complain. At least they don't at my table. Enjoy!