breakfast blogger

As you may know, you can Frenchify just about anything. In the past, I’ve made french toast danishes and stuffed french toast sandwiches. I happened to have some sunflower seed bread kicking around and decided to give it a shot.

I just love this bread to bits. I get it at the IGA grocery store here in Hull. If someone knows where you can get this in Ottawa, please let me know!

My french toast mix is simple… a few eggs, a bit of milk, cinnamon and vanilla extract. As you can probably tell, this morning’s mix happened to get quite a bit of vanilla extract!

I threw them on to my new griddle which I’ve been meaning to blog about… it’s over 2 feet wide and can be submerged in water for cleaning. I’m totally in love with it.

Since the bread was thick, I let it fry for a while…

I just added a touch of maple syrup, took some pictures, then went to town. The texture of the sunflower seeds really makes this quite delightful. The extra time I took frying these suckers up meant that they just had a hint of crispiness too.

YUM :-)

Oh my. Here’s something our kids don’t need:

And this on the heels of the announcement that Kellogg would phase out advertising to kids 12 and under unless their product is of certain nutritional value. I’m suspicious about that considering that it’s up to food manufacturers to come up with what constitutes a “portion.” Have you ever tried to compare the nutritional value of things while at the store? You might want to bring a calculator because it’s anything but straight forward. And then try convincing your kids to eat just one “portion.” I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, I’d eat two huge bowls of Rice Krispies in the morning. The whole thing stinks.

My suggestion? Screw the kids breakfast cereal industry and make some granola at home and serve it with no fat yogurt and berries:

Homemade granola:

6 cups rolled oats (not instant)
2 cups of chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans, cashews, sesame seeds, etc… go nuts!
1 cup of dried unsweetened coconut shreds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
A wee bit of salt
1/2 to 1 cup of maple syrup (or honey or a combination of both)

In a large pan, cook the oats, stirring every once in a while until they change colour and start to smell nice. Around 4 or 5 minutes. Use two burners if it helps.

Add the nuts and seeds, stirring often. 2 minutes later add the coconut and stir some more for another 2 minutes. Add the salt, cinnamon and sweet stuff then stir some more.

Throw that into the oven at 300 F for 20 minutes, stirring a couple of times during that period.

Once it cools, store it in a sealed container and put it in the fridge.

Starting your kids off with a breakfast like this is the way to go. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the sugar in commercial breakfast cereal is contributing to the behavioral disorders we hear about…

Link to the Froot Loops Cereal Straws story. Via boingboing.

Here’s a little something that my mother suggested I try:

- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup of milk
- Slices of cheese (my choice at the time was a semi-strong cheddar, but try whatever you like! Smoked Gouda would work nicely I think..)
- 1 apple, thinly sliced (try much thinner than what I did below)
- 4 slices cinnamon raisin bread
- 2 tbsp butter for frying these suckers..

We’re gunna make two French toast sandwiches here folks.. mix the eggs and milk in a shallow bowl. Then make the sandwiches:

Press down on those sandwiches and smoosh ‘em a bit. Then bathe them well in the egg-milk mixture one at a time and bring ‘em to the pan:

Fry those suckers up nice and slow to make sure all the eggy goodness soaked up in the bread is cooked through..

Oh my, it was a party in my mouth ;)

My top two wisdom teeth got extracted on Monday so I’ve been confined to a mostly soft/liquid diet for a little while now.

It’s given me a chance to whip up some smoothies using my favourite juice in the world!

Pure pomegranate juice is just too damn expensive. I’ve found this great alternative by President’s Choice that has a blend of apple, pomegranate, blueberry and concord grape.

That be some very very tasty juice indeed.

So I gathered some strawberries, raspberries, an organic banana, ice, fat free yogurt, juice and some pure vanilla extract and threw them into mr. blender.

I discovered that my blender’s reservoir has a tiny crack in the base and leaks all over the place– looks like I’ll be on the market for a new blender soon if I can’t find another reservoir =P

I present to you, a breakfast smoothie in a Guinness glass:

Yum :)

It was too frikken cold to go out last weekend so I decided to make something unique. I offer you, Bacon Pancakes:

I put down strips of pancake batter and then placed bacon which I had prepared earlier on each strip.

Flip!

Oh my, I’m gunna enjoy this:

Bacon and butter.. together at last. Homer Simpson would be proud.

I was cruising You Tube and came across this:

Doing eggs this way at low heat is the way to go.. it really makes for a nice texture. Just like the way my mum makes them!

BB is one year old today!

Yep, it’s been one year since we’ve started to bring you breakfast goodness. In celebration, I give you this:

Gather up these bad boys..

Maple Syrup
Butter
12 slices of white bread
6 eggs

Fire up the oven at 410 F.

Grab a muffin pan and butter it up.

Combine some butter and maple syrup in a saucepan at low heat.. try 2 tablespoons of each.. just enough to coat the bread.

Un-crust the bread slices. Take two slices and place them diagonally on top of each other. The idea here is to create more area. Flatten them with your hands or rolling device.

Paint some of the maple-butter goodness on to the bread and then work it into a cup of the muffin pan.

Do it again 5 more times.

Then crack them eggs into each cup and dress ‘em up with some pepper or whatever floats your boat.

From the side:

Stick that pan in the oven for 15 minutes or more.. you wanna make sure those eggs set up real nice so they look a bit like like this:

Ignore the burnt crust, trust me, these ‘lil suckers are to die for..

Cheers!

Super special thanks to Betsy for the recipe!

Via digg.com:

***EDIT***

I wrote to the Ziploc people about doing this and got a reply this morning:

Mr. Peabody,

Thank you for your email regarding the safety of ZIPLOC® Bags.

Regarding your inquiry, ZIPLOC® Bags cannot be used to boil food. Unfortunately, we do not manufacture a “boilable” bag.

We do not recommend using any ZIPLOC® Bag in boiling water, or to “boil” in the microwave. ZIPLOC® Bags are made from polyethylene plastic with a softening point of approximately 195 degrees Fahrenheit. By pouring near boiling water (water begins to boil at 212 degrees) into the bag, or putting the bag into the water, the plastic could begin to melt.

If you have additional concerns, we recommend you call our Product Safety Department at 1-866-231-5406. They will be happy to address any questions you may have.

Best regards,

Megan

Consumer Relationship Centre
SC Johnson
Toll free number: 1-800-558-5566
www.scjohnson.ca

Reference Number: 012700037A

——-

Yikes! You have been warned!

I woke up feeling a bit sluggish this morning and decided to try something a little different from my regular breakfast. I bought some berries, granola and no fat yogurt, put them together and voila!

Christmas breakfast at my folk’s place is always special. My mum makes the best velvet scrambled eggs. First you need a whole lotta eggs ;)

Then you whip ‘em up, add a bit of milk and then cook them at the lowest possible heat setting. It takes a while this way (15-20 minutes) but the texture you get in the end is totally worth it.

My mum very slowly moved the eggs around with a spatula.. in the meantime, I checked up on the potatoes:

After a while, the eggs started to take shape:

I checked up on the back bacon:

And then the eggs were almost done:

They just needed a few more slow lazy minutes of tossing on the low heat until they would be ready:

Mmmmm, an awesome Christmas breakfast ay my parent’s place with velvet scrambled eggs:

Cheers!