I mean, the waffle mix itself stays good for practically forever, obviously. Like flower and sugar and other things you can keep in a jar or something in a cabinet, not even refrigerated, the mix really isn't going anywhere. Oddly enough, as it happens, I do keep my flour and sugar and waffle mix in the fridge anyway, but I just tend to be over-precatious that way.

But what I'm wondering, is once you've actually taken the step of beginning to transform the powdery stuff into the griddle-baked goodness that is actual waffles, how long before the stuff will seperate out from itself? Or do some other gross thing that you really can't bring it back from?

I should mention here that I'm talking about the unnecessarily complicated kind of waffle mix that calls for the use of eggs. If it wasn't for the eggs, I'm sure I wouldn't worry about it at all. In fact, if not for the eggs I'd probably just throw out the old batter anyway and make more -- it's not like the mix is in short supply. For that matter, if not for the wholly superflous complications involved in making this batter, I doubt I would have bothered trying to save leftover batter anyway.

Ah, but I did. Now I have a bowl of week-old batter in my refrigerator, a vague hankering for some waffles, and a quandry on my hands. It's occurred to me, eggs certainly stay good for a week, so why wouldn't a batter made with eggs? But then, another part of me says that that's just crazy talk, and that cracking an eggs is essentially the same as breaking the freshness seal on less natural kinds of foods -- once you've opened it, eat it in a day or two or all bets are off.

Hm. Well, let this be a lesson to you. You might think, should you have a loved one who is big on breakfast foods, that a waffle maker just seems like an obvious choice for a nice gift. Little would you have imagined the turmoil you could introduce into their life.