French Toast

French Toast can be an easy to make breakfast. You can make it plain, or add fresh fruits or other sugary toppings like caramel or powdered sugar. I’ve been making french toast for several years, and I find that adding sugar, cinnamon and vanilla extract bring a whole new level of flavor to this bread based breakfast. Today I used Homemade syrup for our french toast since we were out of our usual Mrs. Buttersworth. Homemade Syrup is a treat for us since we don’t have much of it, since it’s been gifted to us by my In-laws who make it from trees on their property. I top my toast with a pad of butter, because who can have too much butter? I have also never tried this recipe with any other bread than standard white sandwich bread. If you try with something else, let me know if it works!

Heat a large frying pan over Medium heat. In a wide mouthed dish, whisk together 1 egg, 1/4 cup milk, 2 tsp vanilla extract, 2 tsp ground cinnamon, and 2 Tbsp sugar.
Melt 1 Tbsp of butter into pan. Dip white sandwich bread and flip in wide mouthed dish before transferring to frying pan. Cook 2 minutes per side, or until you see color. This should make 4 slices of french toast.

February 16, 2020 0

Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes

Meatloaf was always a favorite in my house growing up. My father would make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for my mom every Valentine’s day, and so to me, meatloaf will always be a Valentine’s day dinner. This is a classic Meatloaf that many make. I also made the mashed potatoes following the recipe I posted this thanksgiving, I just halved it. I also made a packet of instant gravy.

Wash, peel, and cube about 6 medium potatoes (about 5 cups). Preheat oven to 400 F.
Place potatoes into a pot and rinse 1-2 times, then fill pot with warm water and place over medium-high heat.
Toast 2 slices of bread. Place 1 lb of ground beef into a small casserole dish. Add to it, the two pieces of toast shredded (or about 1/2 cup of bread crumbs), 1/4 cup diced onion (1/2 a small onion), 1 egg, 3 Tbsp A1, and 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce. Mix with your hands until homogeneous then form into an loaf. In a small bowl, mix together 3 Tbsp A1 and Ketchep, then spread over meatloaf. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until an internal temp of at least 160F.
Once the potatoes are boiling or the water starts to get starchy, it should take about 20 minutes. The potatoes are done when you can stab a large piece with a fork, and the potato splits and falls off the fork. If you want less chunky mashed potatoes cook for an additional 3 minutes.
Strain your potatoes then put in a large bowl to beat with a hand mixer, or put in the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.
Start pulsing low speed and add 1/4 a cup of milk and 1/2 stick of butter (1/4 cup).
Once most of the big chunks are broken up, turn your speed to medium-low and slowly add more milk until you reach your desired consistency. Add salt to taste.
Place your potatoes into a casserole dish and heat in oven uncovered to keep warm while meatloaf finishes.

February 13, 2020 1

Tuna Salad

Tuna salad is one of those classic recipes that everyone should know, but not everyone makes it the same way. My grandmother and great-grandmother used to make tuna salad the way they did because of the great depression and being so poor. Both had many children they had to feed, and tuna salad was one of the easiest ways to feed a family of 5-7 with very little money. They often made homemade chicken noodle soup to go with it, and it could easy fill their stomachs. I also know I make my tuna salad with more mayo than most, but that is just the easiest way my ancestors had to stretch it to feed such a large family. If you leave some juice with the tuna, it will have a bit more of a fishy flavor, and will make the tuna salad wetter. We also used to strain the tuna and give the juice to our cats when I was growing up; we’ve given some to Newman, but we’ve learned not to do that again!

Open a can of tuna and strain the juice. Transfer into a serving bowl and smash apart with fork. Add 1 tsp of salt and 1 1/2 cup of mayo. Stir until consistent.
Dice 1/3 an onion and/or 1 stalk of celery (1/2 cup each), and add to sandwiches or mix into tuna salad. (Optional)
Spread onto bread or toast and serve as a sandwich, or serve on a salad. Add additional salt to taste.

February 5, 2020 1

Apple, Apple, Apple Marathon! 2 Apple Breads and Apple Cake!

Thurday I did something new and decided to bake up a storm. I made 2 types of apple bread and an apple cake. Not only did I have apples I wanted to get rid of, but I thought it would be fun to try and re-create others’ recipes and to see how they go. Warning! I made many mistakes, and I’m not very good at baking. I much prefer cooking of the two!

Caramel Apple Bread

You can find the recipe here!

I didn’t have caramel sauce to make the caramel icing, nor do I keep powdered sugar on hand, so I didn’t make any icing for this bread. This recipe also took about 80 minutes to bake. The bread is a sweet loaf, but it would be every good either with the icing or with the honey butter found with the cake recipe below. This is also a very dense bread, and doesn’t crumble apart as easily as the next loaf.

Cinnamon Apple Pie Bread

You can find the recipe here!

This was an incredibly delicious recipe. The bread did take over 70 minutes to bake in my oven though. Also not very structurally sound and very crumbly, however it is a very tasty bread with lots of flavor and textures.

Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cake

You can find the recipe here!

By this point, I was pretty tired of peeling, coring, and dicing apples. I also read this simple recipe wrong and forgot to add the topping before baking, so my bad on that one! Otherwise, this recipe was straight forward and simple. I really like to format that she did for writing out the steps. Also, this was the only recipe that took as long to cook as it said it would! It was a delicious moist cake that reminded me a bit of banana/pumpkin bread while eating it. It wasn’t overly sweet, however her honey butter topping was also delicious.

January 5, 2020 0

Christmas Leftovers: Ham Salad

Ham salad has been one of the foods that my mom has had since she was a little girl. This was the recipe her mom and grandmother used during the great depression to make ham last a few extra meals. For this recipe, they would use their own recipe for Thousand Island pickles, however, you can also use sweet relish or sweet pickles to accomplish the same task, however I canned some Thousand Island pickles this summer, so I’ll be using those. You will also see that I am using toast. I always freeze my bread since it’s just me and my husband and we don’t want to waste food, and toasting tends to work really well in cooking/heating up the bread again.

Cut ham into cubes. Approx. 4 slices cut into 1″ x 1″ cubes (1 1/2 cup)
Place these into a chopper, blender, or meat grinder. For chopper/blender, pulse until all of the ham takes on the small pebbly texture, or until you’ve chopped all of the cubes.
Take sweet pickles (1/2 cup) and process into a relish.
Finally, Mix Ham (1 1/2 cup), Relish (1/2 cup), and Mayo (1 cup). Chill or serve immediately on bread or toast.

December 30, 2019 1

Tag: bread

French Toast

Meatloaf with Mashed Potatoes

Tuna Salad