Happy birthday to me!

I didn't plan anything in particular for my birthday, but had a pleasant day of doing what I wanted (shoe horned in around work, of course).

I started off the day with breakfast at IHOP, or International House of Pancakes, as I like to call it.  I had a coupon for a free stack of pancakes, but invited David to come along and he treated me to the hot chocolate, even offering me to order the Lumberjack Special and forget the birthday pancakes.  The pancakes were great and the hot chocolate was nicely piled with whipped cream and the waiter brought me a second one as a birthday bonus.

 

 

I had three books to return to the library, so that was next.  Yes, I'm a geek; I like to read Consumer Reports, so I always read it in the library.  I read the whole September issue, then checked out a couple of books for Conor.

 

 

The library is in the same complex as a Goodwill thrift store, so I stopped in for a quick look in my favorite departments (housewares, linens, children's clothing) and spent a grand total of $1.79 for a new canning jar and a pair of shorts for my grandson.

Does your pet make you breakfast?

You can find that saying on T-shirts and such with the implication that chickens lay eggs for you, so they "make you breakfast."  Today I decided to let my pets and my solar protection make my breakfast.

 That beautiful purple egg is actually light brown.  Doesn't it look pretty in purple though?

The grapefruit tree was probably planted when the house was new over forty years ago.  It shades most of the bedrooms from the hot southern sun--our passive solar protector.

Our favorite lunch lady

This summer the park near our home hosted breakfasts and lunches for children.  Just show up and take one.  My children enjoyed them and made good friends with the very friendly supervisor, Miss Maria.

Now I have to get back to thinking up new and exciting meals after a good rest this summer.

Nice Saturday breakfast

I woke up early this morning with a hankering for cinnamon rolls.  By the way, we make cinnamon rolls and seldom buy them.  I got a pan of them rising and went to clean the church building, leaving Bill with instructions to bake them when they looked risen enough.  I know, that was risky, wasn't it?  But he popped them in at the perfect time and made a batch of cream cheese icing to boot.

[Yes, I know I need to work on my photography skills . . . .] 

Muesli for breakfast

A trip to Costco yielded most of the ingredients of my current favorite cereal, muesli.

Into a bowl place:

1/4 to 1/2 cup dry rolled oats  (I prefer the regular kind, not quick.)
fruit
nuts
anything else you would like, such as dark chocolate chips :-)

Cut up the fruit.

Mix it all together.

Pour on some milk.  I prefer it relatively non-soggy, but it's also good when it has softened and is a little more like cooked oatmeal.  You can also mix it with yogurt if you like a thick cereal.

You can use any kind of fruit, either fresh or dried, and if you like things a little sweeter, drizzle on some honey. 

Quick and delicious breakfast--on my diet, too!

Our large grapefruit tree still has dozens and dozens of sweet, tasty grapefruits on it, although there are many more small green ones on it getting ready for next year.  I picked one this morning, sectioned it, chose a Nutrisystem breakfast entree, and got a Kroger CarbMaster "cultured low fat dairy blend" out of the fridge.

Easy, filling, and delicious!

Tomorrow's birthday breakfast

Tomorrow my sweet Sophia turns 8.  Eight!  Tonight as I was frosting the 26 cupcakes she's taking to school tomorrow, I asked her what she wants for breakfast tomorrow.

"Anything I want?"

"Within reason."

"Ice cream?"

"Sure."

"Okay then, I want ice cream, pancakes, and chocolate milk."

"Okay, sounds good to me."

I got out as much as I could tonight to speed things along in the morning.  Everyone's going to enjoy breakfast!

Muffins from Australia

Okay, just the recipe. I mixed the wet and dry ingredients separately before I went to bed. I used dry milk and mixed it into the dry ingredients. In the morning I broke an egg into the wets, mixed it up and combined the halves. I had fresh muffins out of the oven 25 minutes from my starting time. Who needs a boxed mix?

Marshmallow muffins
10 oz plain flour
6 tbsp cocoa
3 tsp baking pdr
3oz castor sugar
1 egg beaten
10 oz milk
2 1/2 oz melted butter
3 1/3 oz choc chips
2 oz mini marshmallows

preheat oven to 375F
sift together flour,cocoa,and baking pder.stir in sugar
beat together egg,milk and butter in bowl.
make a well in dry ingredients pour in liquid mix
Add choc chips and marshmallows
stir gently.

spoon into muffin tins
bake for 20-25 mins

That is the recipe as I received it. Castor sugar is finely granulated sugar, but I used regular. The quantities were a little hard for me to decide as I think my friend changed them from metrics for me and some may have referred to weight and others volume. I know, I know, I don't want to hear from anyone how crazy our American measurement system is because I dearly love it. I added the marshmallows by eye, since I knew 2 oz by volume wasn't much. I used oil instead of butter/margarine just to make it a little healthier. When I make them again, I'll add 1/2 tsp. salt. The batter seemed thin at first, but thickened right up. I used 10 oz. flour by volume (1 1/4 cups), and if I had done it by weight it would have been a little more. A variation for next time too. Some chopped walnuts would have been nice too, making it more of a rocky road muffin, but my littles wouldn't have appreciated that as much as I. As it was they loved these muffins. The recipe made 16 muffins.

My Mediterranean breakfast

I've been threatening to post this for awhile, but was having problems getting the picture off the camera. Not that I can remember this particular incident, but years ago (about 32 . . . ) I got my friend Wayne to try some yogurt. Apparently I was unwise and gave him some plain yogurt. I don't even like that stuff normally, so I don't know why I would have done that, but word has it I did.

Unfortunately that put him into a yogurt funk and it was about 25 years before he tried it again. Happily, his wife or some other wonderful person gave him some of the stuff loaded with sugar and fruit and he rightly found it to be quite a treat.

Lately I've fallen in love with Greek-style yogurt. It is super thick and creamy, with a nice protein and calcium content since all it really is is strained regular yogurt.

I tried this slow cooker yogurt recipe because I can make half a gallon of yogurt at once. With that quantity I don't mind draining out some of the liquid because I still have a number of servings even once a lot of the whey is gone.

To strain it, I put a thin tea towel in a colander and just dumped in the finished half gallon of yogurt. I let it stand for 3 or 4 hours, then scraped it into a container and refridgerated it. Delicious and cheaper than buying it in the store!


The day I took this picture I was feeling especially Mediterranean with my figs and honey drizzled over my Greek-style yogurt. It was one of my favorite breakfasts of the past month or two.

What's actually in that juice?

This morning the girls and I had bowls of cold cereal, milk, and juice for breakfast. I'm trying to finish everything in my freezer so I made up this can (well, "plastic cylinder") of juice, then got to looking at the container. By looking at the package, exactly what kind of juice do you think it is? Cranberry?

Now take a look at the actual ingredients. Yes, it's 100% juice as the front states: apple juice, grape juice, oh, yes, cranberry juice, and plum juice. If you look at the front, in tiny letters it does say, "Flavored Juice Blend With Added Ingredients." Seems a bit dishonest to me anyway.

More baking

This seems to be turning into a food blog lately just because I've been on a bit of a roll in the kitchen. I noticed the pictures are all rather brownish, but that's probably because most things have whole wheat in them and, well, they're BAKED.

This morning I had five apple halves that needed to be used up so I looked for an apple coffee cake recipe. The only one I found in the cookbook used Bisquick which I don't generally keep on hand so I had to get creative.

Here is the recipe I used this morning along with what I actually used:

Sour Cream Coffee Cake (Betty Crocker Cookbook 2001 edition)

3 cups all-purpose or whole wheat flour (half white, half whole wheat)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar (1 cup)
3/4 cup butter or stick margarine, softened (1/2 cup canola oil)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sour cream (didn't have any sour cream so I used 3/4 cup plain nonfat yogurt and 3/4 cup vinegar-clabbered milk)

Brown sugar filling:
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup finely chopped nuts (medium chopped walnuts from KLM Farms--Butte City, California)
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Added to the layers: a total of 2 1/2 sliced apples fanned out around the ring

Beat sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Beat about one-fourth of the flour mixture and sour cream at a time alternately into sugar mixture on low speed until blended.

For Bundt cake pan, spread 1/3 of the batter in pan, spread 1/3 of the filling; repeat twice.

Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees. Cool 10 minutes in pan on wire rack. Remove from pan to wire rack. Cool 20 minutes.

I can get used to this!

I had breakfast delivered to my office this morning! Luckily my office is only about nine steps from the kitchen. ;-) C told me last night she was going to make breakfast for me again and this is the delicious breakfast she delivered:

• Peanut butter toast
• Dried apricots
• Hot orange-chocolate

The apricots made me laugh because we don't usually have them for breakfast, but she knows when I'm looking for something "extra" to add to their school bag lunches, I often reach into the supply of dried fruit. I assume she thought the plate looked a little bare so she did what I do--added the apricots. It was all delicious.

Sweet breakfast made by a six year old

Last night C told me she was going to make breakfast for me but I thought she'd forget. She didn't. I was finishing up some business in the office this morning and she kept popping it to ask me breakfast-related questions. Finally she came in grinning from ear to ear and told me my breakfast was ready. This is what was waiting for me. Sweet, isn't it?