Egg in a Basket

A couple weeks ago I was making a meal where I'd normally have included grilled cheese sandwiches but we were low on cheese, but had plenty of eggs. So I thought of one of my favorite meals from Cracker Barrel. It's very simple, just take a piece of bread, use a cookie cutter to cut a round (or we use heart shaped ones, the girls think it's special & it was the first cookie cutters I happened upon in the cupboard that were the right size LOL) hole in the middle. Butter both sides of the bread, put it in the frying pan & break an egg into the hole. Fry on both sides until the bread is grilled & the egg is fried. That's all there is to it. It's become one of our favorite quick lunches (especially with soup of some sort).

Healthy Strawberry Milkshake

I found this recipe (& accidentally modified it) on heavenlyhomemakers my kids think they're getting dessert, but it's really healthy enough to count as breakfast. And easy too!

1 cup milk
1 cup frozen strawberries
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp maple syrup

(the original recipe also called for 1 cup cream, but I missed adding that & it was still good, though that would explain why we ate it w/ a spoon, not a straw LOL).

Put it all in a blender & blend it up, pour into a cup & enjoy!

Broccoli Bacon Quiche - Crustless

4 slices cooked bacon (or baco bits)
4 eggs
1 c half & half
1 c grated swiss cheese
2 c broccoli florets
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp lemon pepper
Preheat oven to 350. Beat eggs with cream and cheese. Stir in salt, garlic, lemon pepper & broccoli. Crumble bacon. Stir half into egg mixture. Pour into 9" pie pan. Bake at 350 for 30-35 min till knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean (I had to cook longer using frozen broccoli & cheese). Top with remaining bacon.

Southwest Roll-ups

I'm not sure where I found this recipe, it was printed out (from Word) in a stack of papers I was going through this weekend, so we're going to try it tonight & see what we think:

Update: The girls loved it!! (Mommy, can we have this EVERY night?) And dh agreed that it could be added to the regular rotation (which is about as much "praise" as I can get from him unless it's super unhealthy LOL). I got 5 or 6 tortillas, filled moderately full, in a 9x13 pan. Once I use up my canned beans & start making the beans from scratch I'll add more beans & salsa and make a 9x13 and a 9x9 pan. These would freeze easily as well.

Mix 2 Tbsp salsa, 1 can refried beans, and 1 c chicken - cooked & cubed (will use vegetarian equivalent).
Spoon onto tortillas, place seam side down in 9x13 pan. Baket at 350 for 20-30 minutes. Sprinkle with 1 c cheese.

Biscuits

I've been working on clearing out the freezer (or at least using up stuff that's been in there for eons) and the other night I found a bag with a few frozen biscuits left in it, so I threw them in the oven for supper. L fell in love (& they'd been in the freezer too long, they weren't awesome biscuits by any means). So, today for lunch I figured I'd whip up a batch of biscuits. I adapted a recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com

Quick Biscuits

2 c flour (I used half ww, will probably add a little more ww next time, since they weren't too "wheaty" at 50/50)
1 Tbs baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 c oil
a generous 3/4 c milk (or buttermilk, or yogurt)

Mix everything together into a stick dough, drop by spoonfuls onto a baking stone (recipe says greased baking sheet for those who don't use baking stones) Bake 10-15 min at 425. If you want non-drop biscuits you can use the original recipe I chose the drop biscuits for a number of reasons. 1) I'm lazy & dropping is easier than rolling & cutting (though the kids would've enjoyed the rolling & cutting) 2) the original recipe calls for shortening instead of oil and I don't have any, nor do I like to use it. I've substituted coconut oil (solid @ room temp) for shortening in other recipes with good results but I'm running low on it at the moment and order it online so trying tomake it last till my next order. 3) the board game we were playing took longer than anticipated and I didn't want to push lunch back longer while we let the dough rise. I think L's eaten 4 or 5 of these and A's had at least 3 . . . so they're a hit! In fact, when L asked for "another one" for the umpteenth time, A's worry was "we need to save some for breakfast!" I assured her we can make more for breakfast LOL. I've been trying various muffin recipes for breakfast use, especially on Sabbath morning when a "grab & go" breakfast would be much easier, but haven't managed to make any that the girls like, so perhaps biscuits is what I need to be doing instead, dh will like that idea better anyway LOL.

Hot Chocolate Mix

Not especially note worthy, more for my own information . . . here's the hot chocolate mix that I made today (since we were out & the girls think we must have hot chocolate when we come in from playing in the snow, and we're essentially out of (real) milk since today was also the day I was going to go get milk, but didn't because of the snow). If I use this recipe again I will reduce the salt. . . It has the advantage of using all ingredients that I had on hand & the most "processed" thing in it is the powdered milk (or perhaps the powdered sugar, both are pretty far from their natural form, but still not as totally processed as the coffee creamer that was called for in most of the recipes I saw):

From food network:

Hot Cocoa - courtesy of Alton Brown
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa (Dutch-process preferred)
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
Hot water

Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and incorporate evenly. In a small pot, heat 4 to 6 cups of water.

Fill your mug half full with the mixture and pour in hot water. Stir to combine. Seal the rest in an airtight container, keeps indefinitely in the pantry. This also works great with warm milk.

I made 1/4 a recipe & left out the cayenne pepper.

Laundry Soap - Powder

This is the recipe I use for making laundry soap:

Grate 1 bar of Dr. Bronners bar soap (I've also seen the recommendations to use Ivory soap or Fels Naptha soap, but I like Dr. Bronners, and as a bonus, it smells yummy when you use the peppermint LOL. Ivory would be the cheapest & easiest to find though). Now just mix equal parts of the grated soap, washing soda (this is not baking soda, but it's in a box that looks like a big baking soda box, the typical arm & hammer box, on the laundry aisle), and borax (also in the laundry aisle). Mix them all together, put them in a container w/ a lid, and use about 1/8 c per load of laundry.