Breakfast for a Crowd

I went grocery shopping after work on Friday, I really miss going during the week when no one is there! But anyway....I didn't take a real good look at what we already had in the house, so I ended up buying some duplicates. So what's a girl to do, when she has 3 dozen eggs in the house? Turn to the internet to find a breakfast dish, something different than what we usually have. I turned up with this Breakfast Casserole. It didn't take too long to make on a busy Saturday morning, and it was scrumptious! The recipe is from About.com, and though it says it serves 4-6 people, it was just me and Hubby yesterday. So we decided to see if it would make OK leftovers in the toaster oven, and it did! This recipe is pretty basic, you could always dress it up with a different kind of cheese, or use some spices, or even roast some veggies in place of all or some of the meat.

Breakfast Casserole

4 slices of bread, torn
12-16 oz cooked bacon or sausage, drained and crumbled
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
6 eggs, beaten
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon dry mustard

Grease the bottom of a 13x9 pan. Tear up the four slices of bread and place in the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle cooked, crumbled bacon or sausage over the bread pieces. Sprinkle cheddar cheese over the meat. Mix eggs, milk and dry mustard together, pour over casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Serve warm.

C'mon Autumn!

Autumn is my absolute FAVORITE season! I love the crisp air, the smell of leaves and anything pumpkin. I just got Rachael Ray's magazine in the mail the other day and I am salivating over this month's recipes!! There's a recipe for pasta with Pumpkin Cream Sauce in there that I want soooooo bad. And Apple Sticky buns, a whole bunch of burgers and three different kinds of fondue!

I enjoy summer and all of it's light, cool treats and seasonal produce. But now it's time for the chili, the beef stew, pumpkin bread, apple cider. But it's been so hot and humid in the past week, my brain is all confused! I'm craving chili, but my body's telling me grilled steak and corn on the cob. Hopefully it'll be here soon, only thing we can do is wait!

"Unwrapped"

Ever see "Unwrapped" on the Food Network? It's a great show, hosted by Marc Summers. (Remember Double Dare as a kid? I wanted to be on that show sooooo bad!) They choose a food and see the history of it, where it originated and usually tour wherever it's made. The other night though, there was an "Unwrapped" that was a behind-the-scenes of the Food Network. The cooks featured were Mario Batali, Emeril, Giada DeLaurentiis and Rachael Ray.

First of all, it was mind-boggling to see how many people are involved in "backstage" for each of these shows. Mario Batali and Rachael Ray share a right-hand woman that does all of their prep work for them, I hope she's really well-paid!

I've said before that I'm not an RR fan. I used to despise her TV show "30 Minute Meals" because, as friends have pointed out, there's nothing on there that mere mortals can cook in less than an hour! I've also disliked the sound of her voice too. But I realized that it's not really her I hate, but her TV persona. That bounciness and grating voice of hers is really just her TV persona, when she's talking like a normal person she actually comes off as likeable. Yeah.....I can't believe I said it either. I'm not sure when this episode of "Unwrapped" was filmed, but I found it entertaining to see Rach sipping a cup of Starbucks Coffee when we all know she has a contract with Dunkin'!

So anyway, that makes me feel a little less bad about liking her magazine and cookbook. Though I still think she's spread pretty thin in the media! She has a line of dogfood out. DOGFOOD!

Praise for Polenta

Last night I had thawed some chicken breasts in the fridge for dinner. I'm a little tired of chicken, rice, vegetable. So instead, I browned the chicken, and then baked it in the toaster oven with a little ground cumin and chunks of green pepper. I had a tube of basil and garlic polenta in the fridge, so I figured "Why not?"

Polenta is cornmeal, basically, so it's a good vegetarian side dish as well. You can get it pre-made in a tube in the refrigerator section, or you can make your own with cornmeal. If you make your own, it looks more like a "mashed potato" type dish, or corn mush. (Which is also delicious, with a little butter and maple syrup!)


It turned out to be a nice move! A tube of polenta is a quick-go to, and comes together rather quickly with a sharp knife and a frying pan. You just slice it into rounds and then brown them in a hot skillet. I threw some medium salsa and melted some shredded Monterey Jack cheese on top and voila! Instant delicious dinner. Plus I had the leftovers for lunch at work, and the ladies in the laundry room were saying "What smells so good????" while it was in the microwave! :)

Something we can All Agree On....

I got home from work today, and I didn't want to cook. I wanted to go to a restaurant. I wanted someone to bring me a nice tall iced tea while I perused a menu, trying to decide between burgers and chicken, appetizer or dessert. I was green with envy when my co-worker made plans to hit Ruby Tuesday's with her husband tonight before heading home. I whined that it had been a long day and I was "so tired." And so tired of cooking.

But I pulled it together, and made Will and I quesadillas. It's one of the few meals that I can make for all three of us. I'm trying to be better at not starting a habit of giving Will something different for dinner than what I've cooked for us all the time. It's a trap that I've fallen into that I really want to get out of! Will loved eating his cheese quesadilla though, and I made chicken and steak ones for me. (Steak was leftover from the other night) I broke out the gadgets (electric griddle, George Forman Grill) and though I dragged through it, it came together quite nicely. And now I have leftovers tomorrow instead of getting a sandwich or something. Yay me. :)

Evoking Memories

I was thinking of foods that I associate with memories. I thought I'd like to list a few....



Roast Beef: My grandfather was a master at a roast beef dinner. A roast in the oven always brings me back to Christmas at my grandparents. He even knew how to carve it right. Mmmm...



Strawberry Cooler: I still hate this flavor of Hi-C to this day, after getting sick one day. Artificial strawberry drink...ugh.



Tuna Casserole: my childhood. My mom used to make a tuna casserole with tuna, instant white rice, frozen peas, mushrooms and cream of mushroom soup. I got stuck on it for a while and wouldn't eat anything else. (Boy, having my own kid makes me understand that better now!) Mom called it "chinese food" to get me to eat it. I called it Sing Casserole. I don't think I'd like it today, but I sure loved it then!



Hot Sauces: Really really, REALLY hot sauce makes me remember the time that my dad, brother and I decided to sample some hot sauces that Dad had gotten for Christmas. It was a boxed set called "12 Angry Men." We made a plate of nachos and passed the bottles around. I don't remember which sauce did it, but sometimes a quart of milk is simply just not enough to fan out the flames!

Though there are more, those are it for today!

Books and The Power of Suggestion

In the movie"City of Angels" starring Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Cage plays an angel on earth that falls in love with Meg Ryan and becomes human. (It would've been a great movie had it not been for the ending....but I digress!) She first notices him in a library, and when he sees her he's reading a book about food. Being an angel, he has no need for food, or sleep or anything else. But he reads a paragraph alound, and with a pleased look upon his face, he closes the book and estatically says, "I love it when they write how things taste!"

That hit a chord with me, because I'm always getting romanticized by a description about a food item! In "Where the Heart Is," by Billie Letts, I totally got sucked in by the description of the birthday dinner that Forney prepared for a pregnant, Walmart-dwelling Novalee. I craved beef, gravy and puffy pastry like mad! In Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (My favorite childhood author) I got hooked on the idea of frying apples and onions together, and making ice cream! Also by L.I.W......in The Long Winter.....the feast that the Ingalls Family had after the impossible blizzard-filled winter when trains couldn't come through with supplies: After reading that I always have a hankering for a Thanksgiving feast!

My latest is one I don't think I'd ever would have considered on my own. But in "I Feel Bad about my Neck" by Nora Ephron, she writes an essay about vanishing food. You know, things that you love to go out and eat, and then one day you go and they're not there anymore. (like the Banana Rumba dessert at Chili's...forever a memory!) Well, in this particular case, Ms. Ephron laments the loss of.....cabbage strudel. Yes, you read that correctly. In this particular case, it's not the cabbage strudel that disappears, but the Hungarian bakery that made the coveted treat. She searched high and low, collected recipes....all to no avail. Then one day, a friend calls her to tell her that there's a place nearby that serves it and it's culinary bliss. Strudel to me should be a sweet breakfast treat, like cherry or apple, sugary and served with coffee. Not with a vegetable! But by the time I finished reading her awesome description of the buttery, flaky savoriness of it, I found myself wondering if the city nearby has a Hungarian bakery!! :)