Peanut Butter French Toast

Haven't tried this yet, but it sounds delicious! Great way to sneak in that extra protein at breakfast, too! Compliments of allrecipes.com


Ingredients

* 1/2 cup milk
* 3 eggs
* 1/4 cup peanut butter
* 2 tablespoons white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or butter, depending on your taste
* 4 slices bread

Directions
1. Melt peanut butter in microwave for about 30-40 seconds. Add milk, stir, and nuke again for about 15-20 seconds. (Time may vary depending on your microwave). Then add eggs, sugar, vanilla extract, and cinnamon in a large bowl.

2. Heat the oil (or butter) in a griddle or frying pan over medium heat.

3. Dunk each slice of bread in egg mixture, soaking both sides. Place in pan, and cook on both sides until golden, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. Serve hot.

Add maple syrup or not, depending on your taste, and top with banana slices or fresh sliced strawberries. Yum!

Easy Pizza

How many ways can I make pizza? This one is a sure-fire super-easy no mess pizza that has a very thin crust, which accounts for a fraction of the carbs & calories of the traditional bread dough and takes all of 3 minutes to prepare & 10 minutes to bake. Hooray! Good for those "what in the world can I make with these leftover contents of my fridge, and certainly don't feel like cooking" nights.

One Tomato Basil Tortilla (the big ones)
A Spoonful or so of Hunts No Sugar Added Spaghetti Sauce
6 Pepperoni slices (or whatever you want)
2 handfuls of cheese

Preheat oven to 35oº
Place tortilla on pizza pan
Spread spaghetti sauce over the tortilla, leaving about half an inch for the crust all around
Place pepperoni slices in a circle around tortilla
Cover with cheese, leaving about half an inch for the crust

Bakc for 10 minutes

Remove from pizza pan & slice immediately

Serve & eat. It's so easy, & the kiddos just love it. The crust comes out nice & crispy on the outside. Yummy!

oopsy

I'm SO FAR behind on this blog. Kindof busy these days, running a household & business during the holidays can be insane. So now that we have a Lenten break, I'm catching up.

Anyway, the other day at Target, Joe found this cookbook just laying out in the middle of the aisles and decided to open it up. I had some shopping to do, so I let them peruse the pages while I made some serious decisions about cereal choices. Oh my goodness, the book was SO GOOD, that it kept them occupied throughout our visit to the store, which is absolutely amazing these days. (Not really, I can actually shop again with them. I guess we don't go as much because tuition is breaking the bank, so maybe it's a treat??)

So, I was about to purchase the book, and looked on the back cover - $16.95 for "the Magic Kitchen Cookbook" by Disney. Drat! That's expensive for something I may never use! I put it down, went home, and found it on Amazon for $7.95. Hooray for Amazon.

In any case, they have the BEST recipes, and the neatest part about it is that the kids eat the food because "that's what the Disney character pictured next to the recipe eats." It's really working like a charm, and the recipes are pretty good. Healthy little stuff, too.

And, without further ado, here's one we tried tonight:

We used the popcorn popper from Uncle Jon for fresh "pops", and seasoned our treat with the following:

Parmesan Ranch Popcorn Seasoning:

1 Packet Dry Ranch Dressing Mix
1/4 Cup Shredded Parmesan (I used Parmesan & Romano - a staple at our house)
Salt, to taste (if you're popping corn old school)

Mix together & sprinkle on fresh popcorn.

I actually had a shaker of Parmesan & Romano that was almost empty, so I mixed it up in there. NO need to use the entire mix (in fact, don't - it will be too much), it will keep if sealed tightly for up to 6 months.

Kids gobbled it up because Mike from Monsters Inc. eats it.

Disney, don't sue me. And most of the Disney characters are featured in it, all the way up to Ratatouille. :) It's a nice cookbook, too. Really pretty little pictures & eye candy to boot.

Deceptively Delicious

I know there's a lot of differing opinions out there, but I really love that cookbook, and my kiddos are getting their daily 5 (but they eat fruit on their own - they love the stuff, especially since I got my cherry pitter!). I know that I'm a year behind the rest of the world (what else is new? It's a well-known fact that the South is about a year behind on fashion anyway.), but my grandmother gave me that cookbook last week. It's incredible. I've been sneaking all kinds of veggies into everything, and it really really works. I went through the book before my last grocery trip & bought a few minor ingredients, fingers crossed, breath held, etc. Works like a charm, and the stuff in the cookbook is really easy. I'm going to share one recipe with you, risking a lawsuit - but I'm totally giving her credit.

And get an immersion blender to puree your veggies - you can get a cheap one at Wal-Mart for about $10, and if you decide to continue this habit - go to Williams Sonoma and invest in a nice one. But the cheap one does the trick without all of the messy clean-up of a stand-alone blender or food processor.

Baked Egg Puffs (Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfield)

Nonstick cooking spra
2 large eggs
4 large egg whites
1/2 cup yellow squash or butternut squash puree (nuke about 1 sliced fresh squash for a few minutes in the microwave in a bowl with about 2 Tbs. of water until fork pierces veggie easily, then blend in your blender or food processer)
2 Tbs. shredded reduced-fat cheddar cheese (or whatever you have on hand. I used a little more)
2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 400˚F. Coat 4 (1/2 cup) ramekins or coffee cups wit cooking spray and set on baking sheet.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, egg whites, squash puree, cheese, flour, baking powder, and salt until combined. Divide the mixture among the ramekins or cups and bake until the tops are puffed up and the eggs are no longer runny in the center when pierced with the tip of a knife, 13 to 15 minutes (mine took about 20). Serve immediately.

The puffs should rise above the ramekins, but mine didn't rise above my coffee cups. So I went to World Market the next day & bought 4 ramekins. They were cheaper than Target. :) I'm doubling the recipe next time.

So I guess I have to go back to World Market tomorrow.

Candy Bar Sandwich

Not that Alec will eat this--not unless I sit on him and pry his mouth open and shove it in (then he enjoys it)--but it's delicious. It's a great way to have something sweet without feeling too guilty about it. And it tastes a lot like a snickers bar.

There are two ways to do it:

Get some Nutella spread and mix it up with some chopped up peanuts then spread it on some wholesome whole wheat bread and enjoy.

Or, spread some Nutella on one piece of bread and some chunky peanut butter on the other and slap 'em together.

It's like dessert for lunch. Mmmmmmm.....

Pizza

We make this just about every Friday, unless Zac opts out for Domino's. Mom used to make it, too - but I'm not sure of her recipe, can't be too far off from this, though. It's fun, and delicious! The kiddos love placing their toppings on it - we divvy them up into little bowls and they happily say "put one, eat one..." They're usually full by the time the pizza is ready.



1 Vented Pizza pan (haven't tried a pizza stone - if you do, let me know how it turns out)

1 Frozen Bread Loaf, thawed and risen - we get those packs of 3 or 5 from the freezer section in your local supermarket. Please feel free to be ambitious & make your own dough. I am not, however, that ambitious these days. :)

1 1/2 Tbs. Unsalted Butter

~1 Tbs. Italian seasoning - dried variety

~4 Leaves (more or less) freshly chopped basil

Handful of Shredded Parmesan

1/3 Can of Hunts No Salt Added Spaghetti Sauce - a must - it's no more than 89 cents.

3/4 bag of Italian 5 cheese blend cheese - can be generic, doesn't matter really - you can use Mozzarella if you so desire.

Various Pizza toppings - we use pepperoni, Canadian bacon, & mushrooms for the most part, but if we have Taco night on Thursdays, then I set aside a little browned ground meat before adding the Taco Seasoning. During Lent, we just use mushrooms or cheese. Knock yourself out on this one. I also like to add a little bit of artichoke or tomatoes marinated in Italian dressing if I remember.

Preheat oven to 375˚

Grease pizza pan.

(Make sure you cover your dough when you let it rise or else you'll get those nasty little dried out pieces of crusty bread.) After dough has risen, take out of container and "Atsa-mata pizza-pata" your dough into a nice, round, flat concoction that should resemble pizza dough. This technique has taken 2 years of Fridays to master. You're awesome if you can get it on the first try. Or maybe I just stink at it.

Place dough on top of pizza pan & flatten out as you go. Be careful not to make it too thin, but if you get a hole or two, it isn't the end of the world. Just mash it back together.

Melt your butter and Italian Seasonings in the microwave for about 25 - 30 seconds.

Brush butter mixture on top of dough with a pastry brush, all the way out to the crust. (The kids love this part - see holes in dough comment above)

Scatter sliced fresh basil leaves on top of that, making it as even as possible.

Sprinkle crust with a little Parmesan cheese if you have it. Use a bit of your Italian blend or Mozzarella if you don't.

Bake at 375˚ for about 10 minutes.

Take out of oven and spread your spaghetti sauce all around, leaving the crust bare.

Add toppings.

Add cheese. Don't skimp on cheese - too little is just not right.

Place back in oven & bake for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it for the last 3 - 4 minutes, all ovens act differently. Mine is gas, and we usually take it out at 19 - 20 minutes.

Slice immediately with pizza slicer & enjoy!

(You can also do the biscuit pizza alternative - just mash the dough a little more once you remove the biscuits from the tube. Very fun for kiddos - Mom used to do that with us all of the time, too.)

Painted Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I am hesitant to post this because the website is so pretty so far and our puny little sandwiches are not so pretty.  These sandwiches were really fun to make but we haven't quite perfected them yet.  You just melt butter and put a little food coloring in it and then paint them with a clean paintbrush.  Then you toast with cheese or whatever you would like.  We have to figure out a way to keep them from having a butter overload.  Some recipes call for colored milk instead of butter.  Simple and really fun for Claire.  One day we will be as good as the picture at the top.