Cottage Cheese Waffles

The book is writing itself. Not literally — I'm writing it, every night after shifts, at the kitchen table, the stove light on — but the writing has found its rhythm, the way adobo finds its simmer, the steady, sustained, low-heat production of words that is the book's metabolism now. I'm in the middle chapters — the recovery chapters, the chapters about returning to the ER, about the blog's beginning, about the first time a reader said "your adobo recipe saved me" and the saving was not the recipe but the knowing, the knowing that someone else cooks at midnight because the alternative is the floor.

The writing is therapy. The writing has always been therapy — the blog, the journal, the words that convert experience into something external, something you can look at from outside instead of carrying inside. But the book-writing is a different kind of therapy: the retrospective kind, the kind where you stand at the table and look back at the floor and describe the distance. The distance is the book. The floor is the beginning. The table is the end. The adobo is the middle.

I made salmon sinigang — Reynaldo's recipe, the Alaska-Philippines hybrid. I wrote the sinigang chapter while the sinigang cooked, the recipe and the writing happening simultaneously, the words and the broth developing in parallel, the chapter about Reynaldo forming in the steam of his invention. The writing smelled like tamarind. The sinigang tasted like legacy. The chapter is Reynaldo's chapter. The chapter is mine.

The sinigang chapter got written that night, and Reynaldo’s recipe is in the book now—tamarind and legacy and all of it. But the recipe I keep coming back to in the quiet mornings after the late-night writing sessions is this one: cottage cheese waffles, high in protein, low in effort, the kind of food that holds you together when the retrospective work has emptied you out. The distance is the book, yes—but you still have to eat breakfast before you go back to the table. This is what I make.

Prep Time: 5 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 cup cottage cheese (full-fat or low-fat)
2 large eggs
3/4 cup rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon honey or maple syrup
Pinch of salt
Cooking spray or butter, for the waffle iron

Instructions

Blend the batter. Add the cottage cheese, eggs, rolled oats, vanilla extract, baking powder, honey, and salt to a blender. Blend on high for 30–45 seconds until smooth and no oat pieces remain.
Rest the batter. Let the batter sit for 2–3 minutes while you preheat your waffle iron to medium-high heat. This allows the oats to hydrate and the batter to thicken slightly.
Grease the iron. Lightly coat the waffle iron with cooking spray or a small amount of butter. This prevents sticking and gives the waffles a lightly crisp exterior.
Cook the waffles. Pour approximately 1/3 to 1/2 cup of batter onto the center of the waffle iron, spreading gently if needed. Close the lid and cook for 3–5 minutes, until the waffle is golden and releases cleanly from the iron without sticking.
Repeat. Transfer the cooked waffle to a wire rack or warm oven (200°F) to keep warm. Repeat with remaining batter, re-greasing the iron as needed between waffles.
Serve. Serve warm with fresh fruit, a drizzle of maple syrup, or plain alongside a strong cup of coffee. These also keep well—refrigerate for up to 3 days and reheat in the toaster.

Nutrition (per serving)

Cottage Cheese Waffles — The Recipe That Held Me While the Chapter Wrote Itself