Apple pie jaffles and some words about words

One of my favourite purchases during the Great Plague of 2020 till who knows when has been a jaffle maker. Jaffles are toasted sandwiches where the edges are squished together to keep the filling inside.

I bought mine from a camping store (Anaconda) and while I'm sure it'd work well over a campfire, I've always used it on my stove. Jaffles are usually made with bread (buttered on the outside) and fillings, but I've discovered you can also make quick and easy pies in a jaffle maker. Intra Café in Campbell has some delicious jaffles on its menu … maybe they're becoming fashionable? My parents had a jaffle maker, very similar to my newish one, more than fifty years ago, but my mum called jaffles 'toasty pies'. Maybe jaffle is an Australianism? Or a brand name?

Anyway, this got me thinking about my family's odd dialect. When I was growing up, my parents used various words that I didn't hear elsewhere. We were a fairly insular family so there wasn't much linguistic cross-pollination with outsiders, and sometimes I'd use a word (say, with school friends) and they'd look perplexed (or horrified). I have no idea where my parents' vocabulary sprang from. Maybe the words and phrases had been handed down from our various Welsh and Irish working-class ancestors. I moved from New Zealand to Australia more than thirty years ago so have tended to adopt local terms to fit in. Some examples …

What I say now (Australianism?)	Mum’s word or phrase	Dad’s word or phrase
(bath)robe	housecoat	dressing gown
face washer	face cloth	flannel
jaffle	toasty pie	?
laundry	wash house	?
lounge	sitting room	living room
sofa	settee	couch?
swimsuit (or swimmers)	bathing costume	togs

Anyway, to the recipe. An easy way to make stove-top apple pies:

1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry (defrosted)
1 apple, chopped
spice/s to taste (I'm a bit obsessed with cardamom, but you could use cinnamon or ginger or whatever)

Cut the pastry sheet into four squares. Arrange half a chopped apple on each of two squares, sprinkle with spice and/or sugar if desired, place the remaining squares on top of the apple-filled ones and pinch around the edges to seal. Place the pies into the jaffle maker and cook over a medium-heat stove element, rotating regularly, until the pies look crispy and brown. Enjoy!