Dutch Apple Puff

Sunday dinner. Roast beef or roast pork. Baked ham, the layer of fat scored and pricked with clove. Fried chicken some times and mashed potatoes, always. Pickles from the cellar. A vegetable or two, mostly lapping in mushroom soup and topped with cracker crumbs. In summer, sliced tomatoes and fresh lima beans or sweet corn. Do families still gather round big tables after Sunday church, three generations at least, so many aunts and cousins that it’s nearly as certain the meal will end with birthday cake as it will start with grace? Growing up, some weeks Mom cooked Sunday dinner. Mostly though, it’s Sunday suppers that I remember. If it were just the four of us, or five including Gramma who lived in town, Mom would send my sister or me to the basement for the waffle iron. In minutes, we’d sit down to plates of steaming waffles, sugar-crisp on the outside, soft in the middle and topped with fat scoops of vanilla ice cream and a few drops of precious maple syrup. It must be