Waste not, want not French Toast

I'm becoming a martinet about wasted food. Did you know that according to the USDA, Americans throw out about 20% of the food we buy? I know we throw out way too much food in my house. Part of it is that I simply have no sense of portion sizes and always put too much food on my son's plates in the hope that they'll eat it. I don't know why more is better in these obese times, but there you have it. The other part of it is that after 10+ years living in the suburbs, I still can't manage this once a week shopping efficiently. I always buy too much of one thing and run out of another. By the end of the week, for example, I have various heels of stale bread sitting in my bread drawer. Usually, I end up chucking them, but today I was on a mission to reduce food waste in this house. So, here's what I cobbled together from the internet and my head. We'll be enjoying this for pre-church breakfast tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it is!

Ingredients:

Enough cubed, stale bread to fill an 11 x 13 pan

1/4 cup butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar w/

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

2 cups milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

5 eggs

Method:

1. Pour butter into bottom of pan

2. Place half of the cubed bread in the pan, sprinkle with half of the brown sugar/spice mixture.

3. Place the rest of the bread on top.

4. Beat eggs, milk and vanilla together, pour over all the bread.

5. Cover with tin foil, let sit in refrigerator overnight.

6. In the morning, bake, covered, for 30 minutes @ 350. (No need to pre-heat oven.) Uncover pan and bake for another 10 minutes until browned and set.

One Dish Sausage & French Toast Breakfast

I just love hearty weekend breakfasts. And since my days of brunching on Columbus Avenue seem from another life, this is as close as I can get!

This recipe is adapted from one I found on the Fleischmann's Yeast website.

Ingredients:

Batter:

1 1/2 cups flour

3 tsp Rapid Rise yeast (sometimes known as "bread machine yeast")

2 tbsp sugar

2/3 cup milk (heat in microwave for 60 seconds. Check with thermometer if obsessive)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp cold butter, cubed

1 egg

Topping:

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 eggs

2 tbsp milk

6 pre-cooked sausage patties (I use Morningstar veggie patties to feel healthy.)

Method:

1. Coat an 8" x 8" baking dish with cooking spray.

2. Combine batter ingredients in bowl, scrape into prepared pan.

3. For topping, combine sugar and cinnamon in measuring cup. Beat eggs and milk together in a small bowl.

4. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar evenly over batter. Put sausage patties on top, pour egg mixture over all.

5. Place in COLD oven, set temperature to 350 degrees. Bake for approximately 30 minutes.

6. Drizzle maple syrup on top before serving if you need your teeth to fall out.

Nigella's Banana Buttermilk Pancakes

You make the batter in the blender so they're really easy to pour into the pan and they freeze well. So you can have pancakes even on school mornings! (And no, you can't taste the banana if that's an issue like it is with my son.)

This recipe comes from Nigella Lawson's "Feast".

Ingredients:

1 cup buttermilk

1 egg

1 teaspoon sugar

1 very ripe banana

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 oz melted butter

Method:

1. Whiz the first 4 ingredients together in the blender, then add the flour, baking powder & soda.

2. Let mixture sit for 5 - 10 minutes while you melt the butter (use the microwave, please, it's early!) and heat up the pan.

3. Mix in the butter right before you start frying up the pancakes.

Overnight Coffee Cake

So let's just not talk about the vegetable challenge, okay?

Below is a brilliant recipe and if we hadn't eaten almost the entire thing this morning, I'd include a photo. Maybe next time . . .

Ingredients:
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 TBS. ground flax seed meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 cup buttermilk

Strudel topping:
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 TBS all-purpose flour
3 TBS butter, softened.

Directions:
1. Grease an 8" square baking pan. Cream together butter and sugars. Add egg and blend well. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and cinnamon. Stir the flour mixture into butter mixture, then add buttermilk. Spread evenly into pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the strudel topping and sprinkle over the batter.
3. Cover pan and refrigerate overnight.
4. the next day, preheat oven to 350* and bake for 40 - 45 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

This recipe made me figure out how to use my oven timer -- I set the timer to preheat the oven, so I could just put the pan straight into the oven and then go back to sleep for a bit. Now, imagine if they had ovens that kept things cold and THEN heated them up. I wouldn't have had to get out of bed at all!

Sausage French Toast Bake

This is recipe cribbed from the Fleischman's yeast website, but I've made significant changes to it. For one thing, they call for more eggs and much more butter than I use. They also suggest you mix it all in the pan (in fact, they call this "One Dish Sausage and French Toast Breakfast".) You can do it that way, but I find that it makes the final result stick to the pan annoyingly, so just use a bowl and transfer it to the pan. We all have dishwashers, right?

Sausage French Toast Bake

Batter:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3 TBS flax meal

3 tsp Rapid Rise yeast

2 TBS sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 cup milk (very warm, 120 - 130*)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 TBS cold butter, cubed

Topping:

3 TBS cinnamon sugar

2 eggs

2 TBS milk

6 pre-cooked sausage patties (I like to use soy sausage)

3/4 maple syrup

1. Spray 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray.

2. Mix batter ingredients together in a separate bowl

3. Scrape into pan and let sit with you make the topping

4. Cook the sausage patties

5. Mix eggs and milk together

6. Top batter with cinnamon sugar and sausage patties. Pour egg mixture on top.

7. Place pan in cold oven. Set to 350* and bake for approximately 30 minutes, until even brown on top.

8. Drizzle maple syrup on top when serving.

Swiss Oatmeal

I don't know about you, but I am always looking for some magical recipe that will make breakfast for me. This comes pretty close. I haven't yet fed this to the boys because I've eaten it all myself. Maybe next time . . .

Swiss Oatmeal
(From Better Homes and Gardens, October 2007)

1 1/2 cups of water
3/4 cup steel cut oats (you know, the fancy, long cooking oats in the green and white cans)
3/4 cup milk
6 oz. plain yogurt
3 TBSP honey
1/4 tsp apple pie spice*
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup assorted dried fruit

1/3 cup coarsely chopped almonds
Sliced banana

1. Combine water and oats in a saucepan. Bring to boiling, reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 8 minutes. Remove from heat and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in milk, yogurt, 2 TBSP honey, apple pie spice, salt and dried fruits. Cover; chill for 12 hours of up to 3 days.

2. To serve, heat oatmeal in saucepan over low heat for 10 minutes (or in microwave for 1 minute). Stir in remaining 1 TBSP honey. Divide into bowls, top with almonds and banana slices.

Makes about 4 bowls.




*2 pinches cinnamon, 1 pinch each nutmeg, cardamom & allspice

German Apple Pancakes

The choice this morning was to get up in the dark and run 10 miles or make pancakes. You can see which option won.

This particular recipe comes from the America's Test Kitchen cookbook. It is very similar to a pancake called a "Dutch Baby" that Charlotte d'Amboise and I would eat weekly at the Pancake House in Chicago when we were on tour there with "Chicago the Musical". (How's that for some unapologetic name-dropping?) Anyway, unlike most ATK recipes, this one is not totally dripping in butter, fat, lard or cream. (They do say you should use half and half in this recipes, but I substituted 1% milk (it was all I had on hand) and it seemed to come out just fine.) I'm sure there are some tweaks I could do to make this a little healthier (adding flax meal and/or wheat germ are my default health options) and I'll try them next time.

By the way, the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook is a great resource for WHY things should be done the way they suggest in the recipe. (I'm a big one for taking shortcuts and they explain exactly why you shouldn't do that.) They also have lots of pictures, hints and tips sprinkled throughout which are very elucidating.

German Apple Pancake

(from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 TBS sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 large eggs

2/3 cup milk (or half and half, if you prefer fat)

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 TBS unsalted butter

3 to 4 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced into 1/2" slices

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp lemon juice (I didn't have any on hand and it seemed to come out okay)

1. Adjust oven rack to upper middle position and preheat oven to 500*.

2. Whisk together the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl.

3. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and vanilla.

4. Whisk wet ingredients into dry until no lumps remain.

5. Melt butter in 10" ovenproof, nonstick skillet. Add apples, brown sugar and cinnamon cooking until apples are golden brown (about 10 minutes). Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

6. Quickly pour the batter around the edges of the skillet and then over the apples. Place in oven and immediately reduce heat to 425*. Bake until edges of pancake are brown and have risen above the edge of the pan, about 20 minutes.

7. Remove from oven, loosen pancake edges with a heatprood spatula and invert onto a large plate. Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar and serve immediately.

Chocolate Pancakes

Breakfast this morning. I like to make a big batch of silver dollar sized pancakes on the weekends and freeze whatever we don't eat for those school mornings when pancakes are ordered!

My basic pancake recipe:

1/2 cup white flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup milk

1 egg

I often add 2 TBS wheat germ or 2 TBS ground flax meal, but I didn't today. Instead, for the chocolatiness, I added a glop (say 1/4 cup?) of Nutella. Protein, right?

I find that pancakes really are lighter when you use buttermilk, although I didn't have any on hand this morning. Frankly, I've never found that the old substitution of adding lemon juice to milk works the same as the real stuff. Just buy a quart of buttermilk every couple of weeks -- it never goes bad (or at least, who can tell?)