Author Archives: metamegan

Fancy Breakfast Friday: French Toast Casserole

My food photography isn’t quite there, but I can’t go wrong with nature photography in my neighborhood.  Enjoy this mountain view and use your other senses to imagine french toast casserole.   This was a multi-day multi-recipe effort that turned out “OK”.   I had read a recipe for Granola Bread in The Breakfast Book that sounded amazing.  Day one was to make the unsweetened granola for the bread.  This recipe made the world’s saltiest granola.  It was unbelievable.  Dave said if we added worsteshire it would taste like chex mix “in a good way”.  I put the granola away because even though it was salty and weird, “people” were eating it out of the pan.  Step two was to make the granola bread.  It turned out OK.  Nothing to write a cookbook about.  It never browned, so I may have over cooked it.  It was sort of a beigey gray.  The first loaf was eaten quicly, with butter, as toast, and as grilled cheese.  But there was the problem of the second loaf.  I had planned to make it into french toast casserole from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, but it seemed a little risky to use so-so bread in fancy recipe.  But then what to do with the bread?  Well, I think french toast was invented to use up old bread so I went with it.

This recipe was one that I should have read and started the night before, but I didn’t.  First you toast the bread in the oven with butter and cinnamon and sugar.  That was amazing.  Then you arrange the bread beautifully in the pan and pour the custard over it and let it sit for some long period of time.  I skipped that because I didn’t have time.  I did try to arrange it beautifully, but the bread refused.  And, I have to say, I halved the custard.  I wasn’t emotionally and intellectually committed to this recipe enough to use 6 eggs in it.  Long story short, reviews ranged from “yum” to “it was OK.”    But it was a big step forward for me because I found myself starting to make another loaf of bread for the French toast so it would be perfect and then I thought, “No, that’s crazy.”    I’m sane now, people.

Ok, here is a picture.

Book Club 

  It’s that most wonderful time of the year: “Best of” Book List time!  I like to give myself a gold star if I have read a bunch of the books, and if I see some I want to read, I can order them at the library.  This time of year, they show up right away because all the cool people have already read them.  Then I get a little stressed about by growing pile of library books, and the only way to destress is to read.  It’s a cycle.

Here are some of the lists I have perused:

BuzzFeed: (link) I have read 4.25 of these books.  

Goodreads (link) 4 books

New York Times (link) 9.75 (in the middle of two books on the list.)  This one is gold star worthy for sure.  

It’s been a whole since my last book club post so I have a lot to cover.

I finished The Boys In the Boat, and I am so glad because it was so good.  I loved to learn about the history of time and the adversity that some of the athletes had to overcome.  Thanks for the suggestion, Dad.  Another reader recommendation was “mysteries by Tana French.”  I checked out The Secret Place, and renewed it two times without cracking it open.  At game time, it was read or return, and I just couldnt return it without giving it a go.  I don’t know why I resisted, it was so good.  I didn’t have my usual problem of guessing the solution and reading the last chapter to find out if I was right.  I just let it unfold and it was very enjoyable.  There was even a touch of the supernatural, which I love, but it was light enough that you could gloss over it, if you aren’t into that sort of thing.  (Thanks Aunt Linda!)   I read The Year of Magical Thinking, which was very well written but so sad.  Next was Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which may be my favorite book of the year.  It’s one person’s life, and each chapter focuses on a person that comes into contact with her.  I was sad when each chapter moved on to focus on someone else, and so happy if/when they popped up later.  So good.  And I loved the recipes and the focus on food.  I finished Between The World And Me just after it was announced as the National Book Award, so that was very timely.  Every white person in America should read it for a different perspective.  I had been stalking Fates and Furies ever since I heard Richard Russo recommend it on NPR but my library didn’t even have a copy.   I put the digital and hard copy on hold at the Erie library and started the digital copy as soon as I could.   Just as my one week digital loan expired, the hard copy came in.  I was trying to motivate myself to go to Erie when I saw it on the “lucky day” shelf at my local library.  The universe wanted me to read it.  Fates and Furies is on all the year end lists, and I thought it was very interesting.  I could not put it down… but the characters were jerks.  Mutlifaceted jerks, but still.  You should read it.  It was very well done. Then I started The Sellout, but it was a digital loan and I wasn’t super into it, so I have to circle back to it.  The First Bad Man was next on my list…  and I loved it.  I feel weird recommending books that have super bizarre sex in it, but whatever.  It was so weird and funny.  Now I am in the middle of The Outline, which is very well written, but I feel very depressed while I read it.  Once I put it down, it’s hard to start again, but once you get started, you are sucked in.  In and down.    I don’t like to admit to reading self help books, but I am also reading Big Magic on the side, about the creative process/life. and I love it.  It is really speaking to me.  Elizabeth Gilbert was a 50/50 for me.  Loved The Signature of All Things, hated Eat Pray Love.  But it was on the Lucky Day shelf, and I feel the need to have read all the books on there.

Next on the list – finish The Outline and The Sellout and Big Magic.  The unread stack contains The Museum of Extraordinary Things and Dragonfish.

At the end of the year, maybe I will do my own best of list.  What is the best book you have read this year?

** I like to pose Lucy with a stack of books, but that’s way too hard with digital books ands books that have been returned to the library, so click the link (each book in Blue links to Amazon) if you want to know more about the book.  And enjoy this picture of Lucy frolicking.  

Clean Up on Aisle One

  
I took this picture at 8:00 am at the grocery store when I headed there straight from the morning school drop off. Turns out, that’s a fun time to run into people you know and chat, but not a good time for shopping because they were low on food.  By “low” I mean, the produce section was empty. 

Later in the day, I can find fruits and veggies, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to get to.  There will always be someone stocking something, and an abadoned cart, and a giant car cart with two kids and no parent around.  So I have gotten trapped in certain sections before.  But this particular time, the problem was that the produce guy was 100% blocking the avocados.  I figured this was actually a win for me because I could just ask him to hand me a ripe one.  Save myself some time and trouble.  I said, “Hello.  Can you please hand me the ripest avocado?”  He said. “Well, none of them are that ripe. But here, this one is the ripest one here.”  I said, “Oh, thanks!  Maybe I’ll just wait to use this tomorrow.”  Or something else totally cool and normal.  And then, for reasons that cannot be explained to this day, I jauntily tossed the avocado in the air and tried to catch it.  Tried.  Tried and missed, but knocked it back into the air.  There was nothing cool and jaunty about me anymore, because I screamed when I missed the avocado.  Well, screamed might be a bit exaggereated.  It was more like a really loud yelp.  I didn’t catch it on the second or third try either,  but maybe by the fifth time, when I had gotten the attention of the entire produce section with my yelping and my juggling, I finally grabbed ahold of the damn thing and then I had my big finish.  I raised both hands in the air, one holding the precious avocado and I said to the 8 or 9 people staring at me, “I caught it!!!!  Wooohooo!!!”  And I looked around for high fives, but everyone quickly looked away in fear, dismay, and maybe embarrassment.  Possible pity.  I think I saw one person staring intently at a tomato and laughing.  At me, or with me, I will take what I can get.

This is the first intallment of my Monday series designed to brighten your week with a light story about something embarrassing I have said or done. Let me know if it helps you get through your day and I will try to keep it up.  I have a quite the backlog of stories.

Fancy Breakfast Friday:  Thanksgiving Cranberry Scones

I don’t know if all grocery stores do this, but at our grocery store the cranberries are “buy one get one free” during the holidays.  And I don’t think it’s one of those situations where you can say, can I have one for half off?  King Soopers would say, “No, we sell these once a year and we are getting rid of them all, now take them and go.”  Side note – I could start a weekly column about what terrible or annoying thing happened to me at the grocery store last week.  I could have guest columnist talk about how they had 4 employees searching for the wasabi powder and when it was finally found she got it for free due to the hassle.  Or how the deli guy didn’t seal my bag of pepperoni, so when I grabbed it, pepperoni was flung to all regions of the deli and cheese section, and even a little into produce.  Actually, something happened last week that was so funny/horrifying that I was thinking of starting a regular Monday blog post about the embarrassing thing that I did last week.  I can think of three things off the top of my head.  And they didn’t all happen at the grocery store.  One was at Target.

But I digress.  For the second year in a row, I thought, “I’ll just make some pastry with the other bag of cranberries.” And for the second year in a row I found that the recipe calls for craisins.  This year I was like, “NBD, I don’t have a job.  I can make my own craisins!?”   I found a recipe that seemed pretty simple, but when I got to the part where you leave the cranberries in the oven for 8 hours at 135 I thought, “Nah.  This sounds like one of those stupid things I would do and then blog about later.”

So why did I buy cranberries anyway? We have been making Cranberry Orange Relish on Thanksgiving ever since Grandmom introduced us to in in 2007 or so. (Click here for the recipe)  It’s very good, and bright, and delicious.  A tablespoon on your plate with the rest of Thanksgiving is completes the meal. But even with 18 people eating a tablespoon each, you have some leftover, not to mention that entire second bag.  (Guess who’s having cranberry relish for Christmas dinner!)  Long story short, I decided to invent a recipe to use up the leftovers.  I combined a bunch of scone recipes and I need to revisit and refine, but basically I made the dough, split it in two and put a layer of crabberry relish in the middle.  I was a little stingy because I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but next time I would  use more.  The scones were very pretty and delish.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Swedish Pancakes aka Crepes


I was thinking about going to Ikea to get lamps for our living room, and I thought, “I should get some lingonberry jam while I am there for my Swedish friend who serves it with Swedish pancakes…” Then I decided it was too far to drive and I had lingonberry jam from the last time I went to Ikea.  And thus the #fancybreakfastfriday idea was born.  I combined a bunch of online recipes and served the crepes with jam, blueberries, bananas, and chocolate sauce.

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Coffee Cake Redemption

 

I made “Aunt Patty’s Coffee Cake” from my cookbook Mad Hungry – Feeding Men and Boys.  I bought that cookook or maybe asked for it for Christmas because the author writes recipes for Martha Stewart, and Martha Stewart recipes always turn out.  (Except for that one time.)  However, I do think the title is weird and sexist, and an obvious marketing ploy, but whatever, it worked on me.  I like thinking of myself as this “mom” who cooks for her “boys”.  But there is a chapter titlled Boy Salad.  Come on.  i have made a lot of recipes out of this book and they are all pretty good though.

I can’t complain about the coffee cake, it was amazing.  The filling was cocoa/sugar/instant coffee – I used instant esspresso.  I thought it might be too bitter for the boys but they loved it.  The only weird thing about it was that it said to pour 1/3 of the batter into the pan then do the filling, repeat etc.  I didn’t find the batter to be pourable.  I had to glop the batter into the pan.  And by the time I had the bottom of the bundt pan covered, I had used more than half the batter.  I didn’t get perfect swirls of filling for that reason.

Click here for the recipe.

In addition to the coffee cake, last week I baked cookies, a birthday cake, and made another round of the chocolate chip brioche pretzels.  I had just said, “Maybe we should take a break from baked goods for bit, at least until Thanksgiving.  But then my neighbor called and said. “I have a lot of eggs, can I bring you 30?”  I said, “SURE”.  So the break is over before it started.

Fancy BreakfastFriday: Fluffy Caramel Coffee Cake

I think what sold me on this recipe was the name.  It sounds so good.  Fluffy. Caramel.  But the theme of my life last week was “cooking things in the wrong size pan” and consequently I made some delcious things that were not pretty enough for a photograph.

Fluffy Caramel Coffee Cake was from the book The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham, which was a gift from my friend Laura, and I love it.  It’s one of the only cook books that I like to read just for kicks.  In fact the very first FBF recipe for waffles 11 weeks ago was from the book.  I like that Marion says what to do the night before and how to handle the rest of the steps in the morning.  Exactly what I was wondering about two weeks ago.  I also like that this is a yeast bread which gives it a cool flavor and creates the fluffiness.

Alas – the recipe called for a 10 inch pan, and I made it in an 8 inch pan.  This caused some spill over and also too high of a topping to cake ratio that made it way too sweet.  This is partially my fault and also the fault of the universe cursing me for making fun of my midwest upbringing.  See, I went to a “hot dish party” on Halloween and I made cheesy pototoes, which I thought was gross as a child and now see as “midwest”.  I’d link to a recipe, but I didn’t follow one, and when I went to the source (Mom) for info it was too late and my casserole was gross.  (Undercooked with no buttery corn flake topping.)  I will say that during the party the hostess tried to unmold the jello and was heard to moan, “Oh noooooooooo” from the kitchen.  That made me homesick and was straight out of an family holiday party.  Ironically, I just read the book Kitchens of the Great Midwest, and there is an amazing chapter making fun of today’s locally sourced, dairy free, wheat free, blahbity blah foodies, and honoring the midwest bakers of peanut butter bars. (I will be making those.)

The problem is, I brought a 9×9 dish to the party and I left with an 8×8.  So I thought my pan was a little too small but it was a lot too small.  I woke in a cold sweat, worried about the size of my pan and the bread overflowing.  I told myself, “Self.  Measure the pan.  If its 9×9, just go with it.  If it’s 8×8, move the whole thing to a 10 inch spring form pan.”  Well, it was 8×8 but I could clearly see that trying to move the dough would cause a massive deflation and would not be worth the effort.

Long story short, it was good, but too sweet.  Jack said it was the perfect amount of sweetness and that the cake had a sourness to balance it.  He was sort of right because of the yeast flavor, and the sour cream in the topping. But I had to eat mine with bacon and black coffee to balance the sweetness.  I made a note “too sweet” and I probably won’t make it again.

I’ve already staged my comeback with another coffee cake for next week.  I had planned croissants at Laura’s request, but all the birthday baking I have going on got in the way.  What else do I need to make?  Scones? French toast?  Frittata?

Fancy Breakfast Friday: Halloween Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

When pinterest was invented, I pinned these muffins and then never made them or looked at pinterest ever again.  But I did eventually make them 3 years later and they are delicious!  The recipe says it makes 12, but for me it made 15.  I was in sort of a rush and I didnt want them to cook too long.  Did you read about all those people who did the apple update on their phone during the night and it turned off their alarms and they were all late for work or missed class?  Well that didn’t happen to me because I never update my phone, but coincidentally, my alarm didn’t go off.  So after all my blustering about only spending an hour on Fancy Breakfast Friday, I only ended up with half an hour the next week.  I made an egg for Luke and muesli for Jack to eat while they waited for their muffins.  Jack said it was the best Fancy Breakfast Friday ever, for the third week in a row.

The rest of the muffins were eaten during our hundred activites over the weekend.  They even got left in the car over night in a tupperware and were still delcious and moist on Sunday.

I feel the need to step up my game for next week because I am not sure these are really “fancy” so we’ll see what I come up with next.

Agony

 
Yesterday, Jack and I were working on an elaborate lego project when he broke from our format.  The format is this: I sort the legos by color and hand him the pieces required for each page.  He puts them together.  It’s kind of tortuous and unsatisfying, but we like our together time.  When it came to the lego guys, he just went crazy and put on a bunch of heads without putting the backpacks between the heads and the bodies.   The heads can be hard to seperate so after one attempt he tilted hid head towards the heavens and moaned, “AGONY!”  I thought, “that sounds vaguely familiar.”  He tried to get the head off again and said, “Actually, it’s more like this…” and this time he pretended to rip his shirt off and sang, “Agony…!”  I thought, “is he doing that Chris Pine scene from Into the Woods?” 

We saw Into the Woods during Christmas break last year, and after the movie our collective family review consisted of a shrug and a “huh” and a “I guess I didn’t know that was a musical.” And then we never spoke of it again.

As I was thinking back to the movie almost a year ago, Jack was removing the globe and some other various toys from the chair in his room so he could put one foot up on it and do a deep lunge and really belt it out, “Actually it’s more like this… AGONY!!!!!”

In the meantime I had removed the lego heads so he was free to get back to building.  But since we had had this bonding time, (that I subsequently mined for blog material, and because I don’t want to forget this afternoon) time had passed and I needed to make dinner.  I went upstairs and started cooking and when dinner was ready, Jack brought his lego project upstairs and major progress had been made.  I said, “How did you get all that done?!?!?!”  He said, “I followed the instructions? You didn’t know that I could do that?”

No, I did not.

So it should come as no surprise that this morning I said, “Remember when I threatened to not micromanage you all morning and if you get to school late, you will just have to get a tardy?  Today’s the day.  Get ready and we will leave when you are ready to go.  Good luck.”

He was ready on time with no micromanaging.

On the way to school I said, “Why do you let me do so much for you if you are capable of doing it yourself?”

He said, “Because I’m lazy?”  (To the tune of Agony.)

Sigh, I can’t blame him because I have been making his promise to always be my baby for the last five years.  But it seems like my baby is all grown up.

AGONY!

Book Club – Good bye for now Game of Thrones

  I have just emerged from a slow reading period and next I hope to rip through a bunch of books. I finished the last Game of Thrones book, which was slow going for me because of the overlapping time frame with book four.  had also read a spoiler that bugged me and I dreaded that part.  Utimately, I did get into it, and it took over my life as per usual.  I read about 3/4 and then started skipping ahead because I wanted to know what happened with each character.  All my skipping ahead via skimming chapters led me to the believe someone died who didn’t and then I was surprised when someone else died.  (Not a spoiler, people die all the time.)  Alas, I thought I would be relieved to know what happened but I was left wanting more.   At least book 6 is supposed to be out in the next year or so.

So what else am I reading? I started Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  It’s a letter from a a father to his fifteen year old son about being black in America and protecting your body from harm.   It’s very intense, and I could only read a little at a time.  With a one week digital check out from the library, I didn’t get it finished.  It’s been short listed for the National Book Award under non-fiction and it’s been on my radar for a couple months, but it only just arrived in digital form at the library.  I put it back on hold and I’ll try to finish it next time it comes into my queue.

I also read most of  The Boys in the Boat, which was a reader recommendation.  (Thanks Dad!)  I am a much slower reader of non-fiction so it took a while to get into it, but I enjoyed it a lot.  I had to share facts from every page to the delight/annoyance of my loving family.  Again, this was a library book and it was due today, so I had to skim the last half and then devote myself to the ending which was very exciting.

I also still have The Year of Magical Thinking and Kitchens of the Great Midwest waiting in the wings. Tomorrow I chaperone my third field trip in less than a week, and I recently learned how much work moms put into class parties, much to my surprise.  It used to be that I was lucky to take an hour off to show up and help out.  When you volunteer earlier in the process, you end up making elaborate (by my low standards) crafts for the whole class to do.  Props to all you moms that have been planning parties all these years, I had no idea.  Long story short, I have not had time to read with all the momming I have been doing, but I think I am approaching a lull, and the reading will pick up soon! &nbsp