Breakfast for dinner

There is a lovely thing I like to call breakfast for dinner. Hardly anybody sits down to more than a bowl of cereal or some toast for real breakfast, but there are so many tasty things that are qualified as "breakfast foods". So that leaves dinner.

One of my favorites, and very easy, I might add, is a concoction of eggs, bacon, potatoes, onions and cheese. This mixture is also fantastic stuck in a tortilla with some salsa. But if I have just one hand barely free because a certain baby I know is certain that I need to hold him every second, especially if he senses that I am starving, then a bowl and fork work just as well.

Calzones

Usually friday night is pizza night. But we were looking for something (slightly) different so we decided to give calzones a try. I made the same dough that I always make, but everything else was (slightly) different. After some quick internet searching, we determined that calzones should be cooked at a lower temperature for a longer time than pizza. And we found some hints. For instance, most recipes didn't call for the sauce to be on the inside, and that you should brush the top with olive oil and stab it with a fork .

Tricks in hand, and baby asleep, we got going. I decided to pre-cook onions, mushrooms, garlic and Italian seasoning in olive oil for just a couple of minutes. Then I rolled out my dough, put the cooked mixture, pepperoni, parmesan, feta and mozzarella over half, and folded it up. I decided to use the extra oil from cooking the vegges for the top of the calzone, to add more flavor.

K popped it in the oven, and (slightly) less than 30 minutes later, dinner! For dipping, I just cooked a can of tomato sauce with extra garlic and Italian seasoning until it was warm.

The result was better than we ever imagined! I thought we made pretty mean pizza, but these calzones would kick our pizza's ass!

Cinnamon rolls!!!

Oh lord. Cinnamon rolls are the best thing ever. I could eat the whole pan myself. Sometimes I get a bee in my bonnet and just have to make them! And my husband sure isn't going to complain if I do!

So the recipe I have calls for making the dough in the bread machine, and then going from there. In our house, it is K's job to make the bread, so I am not that great with the machine. A lot of times he will help with this part, but this particular day he was busy fixing cars. Anyway, excuses over. The point I am trying to get at is the dough wound up kinda weird. I wasn't able to roll it out as much as I was supposed to, which made for some wonky end rolls.

Once cooked, and with frosting of course, you couldn't tell. And obviously we taste tested the whole batch to make sure they were okay. They were.

Home fries

K and I love fries. But frozen ones are kinda gross. So we have tried tons and tons of times to make the perfect fry on our own. I think we finally have it. Crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Yum!

We dice the potatoes up, and find yukon golds work best. Then we microwave them for about 10 minutes or so, until they are 1/2-3/4 cooked. Once that is done, we pan fry them in olive oil, dump em out on paper towels, and toss with salt.
Now I know I should have taken a finished picture, but I didn't. So there.

Baby Food

Making my own baby food is going well. It is fun, to me, and easy. On the weekends, I make batches of a few different things so that the baby will have some variety during the week. Then, as I explained previously, I freeze them in ice cube trays. Once they are hard, I store in freezer bags, so that when I am packing the baby's lunch, I can just grab a few cubes of each and make a little baby feast. In the picture below, we have acorn squash, peas, and sweet potatoes. Yum!

Snow day

We had 2 snow days this past week, so I made soup, of course! This time was lentil soup with rosemary. In the dutch oven, I sauteed onions , then added carrots, celery, and tomatoes (one of my own cans!). I cooked all of that for just a few minutes, then added a bag of lentils, a bunch of rosemary, and a box of broth. I cooked it for maybe 45-60 minutes, till the lentils were cooked, and presto! It was good. and the rosemary cooked down so soft, it didn't matter if you ate it or not. The recipe called for fresh, but I used dried, and I forgot to crush it first. We have tons from a rosemary tree we had been growing, that died. Dead=dried for you!