Gluten-Free Banana Oat Waffles

May, and Mother's Day approaches in the sealed house — the holiday that celebrates mothers arriving this year with the particular irony that mothers are the ones doing everything: the cooking, the caregiving, the homeschooling, the emotional management of a household that is afraid and confined and hungry three times a day. I do not want flowers. I do not want brunch. I want eight hours of sleep and a library that is open and a hug from Joy that is not through a window.

James gave me a letter — not a card, a letter, three pages handwritten, about what the kitchen means to him, about what watching me cook has taught him about love and persistence and the quiet heroism of showing up every day to feed people who need feeding. The letter made me cry in the bathroom again — the old crying room, faithful and available, the room with the running water. The letter said things I did not know he saw and felt things I did not know he felt and expressed them in sentences that were, I am compelled to note, beautifully written, because the boy can write, and the writing is the Morrison and the Faulkner and the Tocqueville and the dining table and the mother who put books in his hands before she put food in his mouth.

Carrie gave me a painting she had done — a watercolor of the kitchen, the view from the table: the stove, the counter, the window, the cast-iron skillet on the burner, the spice rack Robert built, the photograph of me and Mama on the wall. The painting was good — not Joy's wild abstraction but a precise, tender rendering of the room that has held this family together, and the rendering was the gift, because the rendering said: I see where you stand. I see what you do. I see the room where the love is made.

Mama did not know it was Mother's Day. She sat at the table and ate the brunch I made — eggs, biscuits, grits, bacon — and she ate with the appetite of a woman who is being fed by someone she trusts, and the trust was the Mother's Day, because the trust of a mother for her daughter who feeds her is the oldest relationship in the human story, older than language, older than cooking, as old as the first hand that reached for the first food and found it given.

I made everything. I made brunch and lunch and dinner and biscuits and cobbler and I did not stop cooking all day, because Mother's Day in a pandemic is not a day off. It is a day of more. And the more is the mothering.

The biscuits came out of the oven and the cobbler went in and somewhere in between I made waffles, because Carrie asked and when Carrie asks with that particular quietness she has, the answer is always yes. These Gluten-Free Banana Oat Waffles are the ones I reach for when I want something that feels like care made visible — no fuss, no special equipment, just the bananas going soft on the counter and the oats in the jar and the knowledge that the person eating them will taste that someone stood at the stove and chose to make them something warm. On a day when the cooking was the mothering, this was exactly the right recipe.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 20 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4 (about 8 waffles)

Ingredients

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (certified gluten-free)
2 medium ripe bananas, mashed (about 3/4 cup)
2 large eggs
1 cup milk (dairy or unsweetened non-dairy)
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon neutral oil or melted butter, plus more for the waffle iron

Instructions

Make the oat flour. Add the rolled oats to a blender or food processor and pulse until they reach a fine, flour-like consistency, about 30 to 45 seconds. Transfer to a large mixing bowl.
Mix dry ingredients. Whisk the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into the oat flour until evenly combined.
Mash and combine wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas until smooth. Add the eggs, milk, maple syrup, vanilla, and oil, and whisk together until fully incorporated.
Combine and rest the batter. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until just combined. Let the batter rest for 5 minutes — it will thicken slightly as the oats absorb the liquid.
Heat the waffle iron. Preheat your waffle iron to medium-high heat and brush lightly with oil or melted butter.
Cook the waffles. Pour about 1/2 cup of batter per waffle onto the iron, close the lid, and cook until the steam subsides and the waffles are golden brown and cooked through, 4 to 5 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter, re-oiling the iron as needed.
Serve warm. Serve immediately topped with fresh fruit, a drizzle of maple syrup, or a pat of butter. Leftover waffles keep well in the refrigerator for 3 days and freeze beautifully for up to 2 months — reheat in the toaster straight from frozen.

Nutrition (per serving, 2 waffles)

Gluten-Free Banana Oat Waffles — The Brunch I Made Because I Loved Them