Bread pudding

I was talking to my sister and realized I had never posted my favorite bread pudding recipe. I keep trying it at restaurants but it is never as good as this recipe. Unfortunately I don't cook it anymore (my family won't eat anything with eggs or milk) BUT I was asked to bring a dessert to a missionary meeting and decided to fix it again. In the past, when my older children were young I made it and they would not eat it. Roger and I would take a week to eat it for breakfast; after all it is practically French Toast.

APPLESAUCE BREAD PUDDING

This is truly an outstanding bread pudding.

 Serve warm with cream or ice cream. Great for using stale bread.

SINGLE RECIPE Yield: 4 servings

Approximately 6 slices white bread or an equivalent amount of French bread, sliced in 1/2-inch slices bread slices.

 2 eggs                                                             ½  cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon                                      1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon mace                                           ¼ teaspoon salt                      

1 teaspoon vanilla                                           1½ cups milk                         

1 tablespoon butter or margarine, melted         ¼ cup raisins (optional)

One 8-ounce jar or can applesauce

DOUBLE RECIPE

Yield: About 8 servings Approximately 12 slices white bread

or an equivalent amount of French bread, sliced in ½ inch slices

4 eggs                                                            1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon                                      ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼  teaspoon mace                                          ½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla                                         3 cups milk

2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted      One 16-ounce jar or can applesauce

½ cup raisins (optional)                                  Pecans- however many you want- not finely chopped

Preheat oven to 325'F. Arrange half of bread to cover the bottom of an 11 x 7 x 2-inch baking dish (for double recipe; use a 1-quart baking dish for single recipe). If you wish, sprinkle half the raisins over the bread. In your blender or food processor, combine eggs, sugar, spices, salt, vanilla, milk, and melted butter. In a large mixing bowl combine applesauce with blended ingredients, mixing well. Pour half the mixture over the bread (add optional raisins) in the baking dish. Repeat with another layer of bread, then pour remaining applesauce-milk mixture over bread. Bake at 325'F for 1 hour, or until custard is set and bread is lightly browned. This pudding is best served warm.Today it cooked for 80 minutes in the stonewear pan I have.

The Working Person’s Cookbook by Charlotte Erickson  Chilton Book Company 1979 pg.159 (Actually the only recipe I use from this cookbook; I ought to try a few more since this one is so good. Maybe there is a Vegan recipe in there.I'll go check; oops all my cookbooks are still packed waiting for the bookcase to be built!)

I've learned with this recipe you do not want to use all homemade bread or all  whole wheat bread. The french bread is perfect although you can throw in a bit of homemade or wheat but it should be mostly French.
Although I tried; I set up the picture of ingredients- forgot the sugar, in the picture, not the pudding Then forgot to take a picture of the finished dish. So sad, I did not however forget to eat a square of it before leaving it at the church. ;) I am not a great food blogger. :(

Amazing child

Y'all know that I have an amazing son, right?
This morning I woke up to the smell of waffles cooking.
VEGAN WAFFLES; no eggs, no butter, no milk.
Yesterday morning it was pancakes.
Last night he made French Toast, WITH NO EGGS, and it tasted great; like French Toast!
The day before that it was 'Scrambled Tofu' tasted similar to scrambled eggs AND everyone liked it AND the boys ate mushrooms for the first time willingly.
A friend loaned me this book.
Vegan with a Vengeance
by Isa Chandra Moskowitz I do believe I'll be getting my own copy.

Here's French Toast
Loaf of Trench Bread, stale, sliced 1" thick
1/2 cup soy creamer (he used almond milk)
1/2 cup rice milk or soy milk (he used almond milk)
2 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup chickpea flour (he ground his own)
several tablespoons canola or vegetable oil

Mix milks and cornstarch until cornstarch is dissolved. Add chickpea flour and mix together quickly, some lumps may remain. Add oil to griddle, heat griddle, cook like French Toast.
Smear with apricot jam, serve. Okay, it's good with maple syrup too.

I do believe I'll keep this child home for a very long time.

900th post! A give away

A zipper pouch, what else? Unfortunately I will not have time to make it until Sept 13th. So leave a comment on this post sometime before Sept 13th and I'll draw a name from the comments and make a pouch in what ever color you'd like; let me know what you're going to put in your pouch too. So leave a comment. PLEASE. (IF you don't know what I'm talking about check out other pouches I have made; here, here, here, and here.)

Design wall:What I'm thinking about:
A border for the bear paws; the 4-patches are actually on the quilt that is being used as my design wall surface (my design wall is currently covered with a very large yellow and green quilt).
The bear paws were an exchange years ago and I put it together about 1998. It needs a border but it shouldn't be very wide so it can hang right were it is.
Progress on Triangle Madness;
This is the last side of the last border and then only the binding to finish; I really wanted to finish Saturday so I could report all this fabric used on yesterdays stash report...oh well, next week IT WILL BE DONE.

Judy has a list of others with a design wall post.

sausage and cheese grits casserole

Does it mean I've grown up? We went to DeeDee's annual back to school brunch and the best things there were the savory things. Maybe my sweet tooth left! We can hope; can't we?

I promised to post the grits casserole when I got home.

Sausage and Cheese Grits Casserole

serves 6 (if you are starving!)

4 cups boiling water

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup stone-ground grits

1 lb breakfast sausage, crumbled and well cooked

1 cup smoked cheddar cheese

3 Tablespoon butter

1/4 teaspoon tabasco

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1-2 green onions

preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a medium baking dish. Add the salt to the water and whisk in the grits a bit at a time. Reduce heat to a bare simmer and cook the grits until thick and soft, 30-40 minutes. (You can use the 5-min. variety here, like I did, but not the instant) Stir the grits occassionally as they cook, to prevent scorching.

Remove the grits and stir in the cheese, sausage, butter and hot sauce (I added 1 oz. of cream chees I had in the fridge.) Check the seasoning and add more salt or hot sauce. Mix thoroghly with the eggs. spoon into prepared pan (Can be covered and refrigerated overnight at this point...In the morning let it sit for 30 minutes out of the fridge before baking.)

Baked until puffed and lightly set; 35-40 minutes.

Sprinkle top with the green onion.

Recipe found in 'best american recipes 2003-2004' they found it in;

'A Real American Breakfast' by Cheryl and Bill Jamison

ike food

So I'm sure you're interested in what I cooked while at Camp Ike. 

• The first day we really did live on banana bread. 
• We had individual containers of chicken spaghetti I had frozen for Roger's lunches that got dumped in the fry pan and heated up for dinner. 
• We had leftover bean dip to eat, one of my kids favorites. 
• Chili; to use up the ground turkey.
• The biggest hit was bacon. I don't normally have bacon but there was some left over from a campout and so had wonderful artery clogging bacon. What a treat for me.
• Chicken and cheese sausage links; easy to cook and serve just wrapped in a piece of home made bread.
• Smoked turkey and crackers.
  
• Homemade macaroni and cheese; I dumped all the bits and dabs of cheese I'd found in the freezer.
• Uncooked cookies; yes I really did cook cookies. The boys were really working hard and I had butter, oats, and chocolate chips, so why not? I should have some unmeltable candy in the 72 hour kits as the kids needed some sweets. (granola bars were available but they just didn't sound very good.)
• We had eggs to eat so we had scrambled eggs one morning then
• Omelets with smoked turkey and leftover cheese sauce from the mac and cheese another morning then
• a new Jewish egg dish I'd read about;Matzah Brei I wasn't crazy about it but I'll have to try it again since Andrew had 3 servings of it! The above link is the recipe I followed but from a cookbook.
• Barbecued chicken with green beans. We did not eat enough fruits and vegetables since we had so much meat from the freezer to use.

ike

Hurricane Ike looks like it is headed right for us. We decided to stay put since our street has not flooded before; we were an island with floods all around us but we were dry. 

I managed to make all of our frozen bananas into banana bread. (Wouldn't it be dreadful to have the power go out and have frozen banans sitting in your freezer... thawing...gushing slimy stuff all over it? It's not going to happen here!) I had about 9 cups of mashed bananas. We have breakfast at least for the next week. I hope, hope, hope we have electricity soon after the storm.... 

The grocery stores were a bit crazy today; I noticed Kroger's peanut butter shelves were empty...a whole lot of people are going to be living on sandwiches...

We need a couple hours of bearable weather in the morning to finish securing the outside; tie down canoes and board up a few windows. 

During Hurricane Katrina we evacuated to Northwest Houston and stayed with the Johnson's. I had brought some of the food from our freezer so we cooked a turkey and had a feast. We watched television and I got my granny squares from my granny sewn together.  We had a great time I hope this hurricane is just as memorable...

cheese blintz

I remember cutting a cheese blintz recipe out of a Better Homes and Gardens magazine about 30 years ago. I'm sure if I went through my files I would find several recipes for them, they sounded so good but I never made them. I made them yesterday; I guess Mars was aligned with Neptune or something. I didn't even look for the recipe, I read one a week ago and sort of made that one...

Cheese Blintz
Make crepes; I used a recipe that had 2 Tablespoons powdered sugar
Make filling;
put into the bowl of your food processor;
4 oz ricotta cheese (I had some leftover from making this recipe; stuffed roma tomatoes.)
4 oz fat-free cottage cheese
1 egg
3 heaping Tablespoons powdered sugar
a bit of salt
and 3 Tablespoons cream cheese (more or less will work-I just had a tad left over from making stuffed peppers Saturday)
process until smooth.
Chill.

Traditionally (this is a Jewish recipe) these were folded into an envelope sort of and then fried. I baked ours and then served them with strawberries. Yummy.
Next time I'll add some lemon juice and more cream cheese.

This morning I had the 3 leftover with raspberry jam on them...

I have long loved the cheese filled Danish but there was never enough cheese. This is the cheese with no Danish around to spoil it. Andrew with Excalibur the fork.

oven french toast

I finally tried the following recipe. I left the nuts out since Andrew doesn't like nuts. I thought it would be nice to have french toast without standing at the stove. Andrew liked them better than normal french toast; I should have turned them over half way through baking but they were fine.
Maybe I'll try the recipe again with homemade bread and fresh ground nutmeg some time next week although it dirtied more dishes than regular french toast; glad I have a dishwasher.
MACADAMIA NUT FRENCH TOAST
COUNTRY LIVING MAGAZINE
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
2/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1(16-ounce) loaf Italian bread, cut into 1 -inch slices
2/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
½ cup macadamia nuts, chopped
Garnishes: powdered sugar, ground nutmeg
Combine eggs and next 5 ingredients, stirring well.
Fit bread slices in a single layer into a lightly greased 13- x 9- x 2- inch baking.dish. Pour egg mixture over bread slices; cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight, turning bread once.
Pour butter in a 15- x 10- x 1-inch jellyroll pan; place bread slices in a single layer in pan.
Bake at 400' for 10 minutes; sprinkle with nuts. Bake 10 additional minutes. Garnish, if desired, and serve immediately with maple syrup. Yield: 6 servings.
Michelle Ettenger Alpharetta, Georgia

waffles

Sunday morning I made these;

PUMPKIN WAFFLES
COUNTRY LIVING MAGAZINE
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup firmly packed brown sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
4 large eggs, separated
2 cups milk
1 cup cooked, mashed pumpkin
¼ cup butter or margarine, melted
Combine first 7 ingredients in a large bowl. Combine egg yolks, milk, and pumpkin; add to flour mixture, stirring just until moistened. Stir in melted butter. Set waffle batter aside.
Beat egg whites at high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form; gently fold into batter.
Bake in a preheated, oiled waffle iron until crisp. Serve with butter, maple syrup, and toasted pecans. Yield: 24 (4-inch) waffles. Virginia Tompkins Lubbock, Texas
The small can of pumpkin has about 2 cups~ so I'll get to make them again soon. I added about 1 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. Very good. I also tried one with miniature chocolate chips. good; then I made some with chopped pecans in the batter. Excellent! I think they improved with a short stint in the oven. I put a cooling rack on a cookie sheet and kept them warm in the oven, it made them a bit crisper.

Rice

Finally I found a hot cereal J and A like. Brown Rice! Sometimes J will just eat it with a bit of butter but he finally came around to trying it with brown sugar. A likes it with a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice and brown sugar. It helped to be completely out of any cold cereal that they liked. I cooked the rice the night before and then just warmed it up for breakfast.