Making Breakfast Easy

I have been working on streamlining breakfast for the past couple of months. Mornings are an early rush for us, so having things ready when we get up is essential for a smooth start to the day. It also makes weekly grocery shopping fairly easy. Favorite quick breakfast foods are smoothies (prepped the night before and blended in the morning), muffins, toast, hard boiled eggs, and oatmeal. Boxed cereal is pretty much an act of true desperation around here. I prep as much ahead of time as I can. Muffins are made in 2-week batches, then frozen. Smoothies, ideally, are measured out in individual cups the night before and then blended in the morning. Hard boiled eggs are cooked in advance and kept in the refrigerator. Here's our basic breakfast schedule:

Monday/Wednesday/Friday: Smoothies and muffins
Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday: Oatmeal/Toast, fruit (ideally) and hot chocolate

The hard boiled eggs are for those who are still hungry after the initial breakfast offering.

On Saturdays we do whatever time allows, but usually it's a bigger, hot breakfast such as pancakes and sausage or eggs, sausage, and potatoes, or (our new addition) kartoffelpuffers (potato pancakes) with applesauce. We're still experimenting with the kartoffelpuffers, but as soon as we get them to a point were I can post the recipe, I will. I say "we", but this is actually my husband's project. I'm just the buyer and taster. Regardless of who is cooking though, this is one of those times when I feel like I'm living in a test kitchen (smile).

New Links

I added two new links to the Food Links list on the left.  The first is jacksonholefoodie.  Annie writes about cooking and gardening in the high altitude environment of Jackson Hole, WY.  Many thanks to Karen for the link!  The second one is Large Family Recipes.  Laura is a mother of six (soon to be seven) and has many wonderful recipes to share.  They are great for feeding many or for power cooking (freezing multiple meals for later use).

In The News

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Halloween at Chipotle

I love this! Chipotle is celebrating Halloween with an unusual costume contest. If you go to Chipotle restaurant after 6pm on Halloween dressed as a Horrifying Processed Food Product, they will give you a burrito, bowl, salad, or order of tacos for $2! Details can be found at Boorito 2010.

New Food Link

The Simpleliving.net discussion boards are a great place to find food blogs about cooking simply, on a budget, and/or with whole foods. One of the board members posted a link to her husband's blog. They are both graduate students, have three boys in grade school, and are living on a tight budget. He is studying how to eat a mostly local diet on a tight budget and he is blogging about the experience. His blog is The Poor Locavore and I'm adding it to the food links on the left-hand menu. Coincidentally having everything on hand, we tried his fried apples with dumplings the other night and they were a hit. The only feedback I got was to add some flavor to the dumplings, for example, some cinnamon. I imagine this would be good with peaches as well. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I do.

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Fall is Here!

Fall is finally here. It was a long, hot summer and many of us wondered when it would finally end. Now we have highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's. It's actually cold at night. I went out onto the deck, barefoot as usual, to bring our dog in a few nights ago and my feet got so cold! It's much better than highs in the 90's and lows in the 70's! However, with the talk of more extreme summers and winters, I wonder what winter will bring given the record breaking heat of this past summer and the lack of rain to go with it. But that's in the future. Now it's fall and it's wonderful!

We saw the first signs of fall in our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box. Suddenly we could select from several varieties of winter squash: acorn, delicata, pumpkin. The neighboring farm set-up at the pick-up lot had cabbage again, beets, and so many varieties of apples that I couldn't keep track. I love going to pick up our CSA box because not only do we pick up our share, but we visit the other farm stands for additional produce that our CSA doesn't grow. Yesterday we canned peach sauce, made with some of the last peaches of the season. I think we have enough peaches leftover for me to prep and freeze for making jam when I have some time. We really didn't want to do this in the heat of the summer. Our kitchen is in the hottest part of the house! Today we took advantage of the many apples we bought this week. We made a crumb-top apple pie for dessert tonight and apple spice muffins for breakfast tomorrow. The house smells rich with apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg! Yum!

Another sign that it's fall: college football! We've been to two local games so far this season and, as always, we're keeping up with our Buckeyes!