Baked apple oatmeal! Like pie for breakfast!

I've edited this picture SIX times, and it will not stay upright.  But you get the idea.

Alaina likes oatmeal, I like oatmeal, and it's good for you.  But just serving plain oatmeal with brown sugar, milk, and raisins lost its luster for me a LONG time ago.  But adding fruit and baking the oatmeal, it's more like a breakfast casserole, and you've upped the nutritional ante with the fruit.  As always, NO QUICK OATS. I used extra thick cut organic oats.  If you're using steel-cut, be sure to slightly increase the liquid and the cooking time.

RECIPE

4 C. milk
1/2 C. brown sugar
2 tbsp. butter
cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg...whatever spices you like, equivalent 1 1/2 tsp.
1/4 tsp. salt

Combine these ingredients in a saucepan, warm over medium heat until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved.

To the milk mixture, add:

2 C. oatmeal
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 C. chopped apple (that's about 2 small-med apples.  I leave the skins on)
1/2 C. chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

Pour into a greased 8x8 baking dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, or until center is set.

This recipe is one of those that is FANTASTICALLY easy to reheat.  Just scoop some into a bowl and microwave.  Excellent to make Sunday night for a couple breakfasts during the week.

Potatoes Au Gratin, cheater style.

Cheesy potato casserole?  Uncle.  I could sit down to a baking dish of these suckers with a fork and not even think twice about offering you some.  Sorry, I'm a girl who loves her starches.   But I'm also REALLY impatient, and doing full length potatoes au gratin just doesn't sit well with my clock-watching habits.

DISCLAIMER:  I didn't measure anything for these potatoes.  Just eyeballed the whole thing, so I'm sorry if the recipe seems vague.  I was just busy inventing.


Recipe:

• 6 well scrubbed potatoes, Russet or Yukon Gold preferred
• shredded cheese, lots (it was probably just under a pound).  I used sharp cheddar, fontina, and asiago.
• 1 egg, beaten
• Dijon mustard, about 1/4 cup
• About 1.5-2 cups milk
• thyme and black pepper to season

Slice potatoes thinly.  Add to cold water and bring to a boil.  When almost cooked, drain water and rinse with cold (just so you can handle them).  Mix liquid ingredients (i.e. not the cheese).  Begin layering potatoes in a well greased baking dish (pretty sure I used an 11x13...the shallower you make the dish, the shorter the cooking time).  Use about half the potatoes for your first layer.  Top with half the cheese.  Layer remaining potatoes, top with remaining cheese.  Pour milk mixture into casserole dish.  Do you best to make sure everything it distributed evenly!  Bake in a 400 degree oven until cheese has gone delicious-looky (slightly browned) and it doesn't look soupy anymore. 

Super Gourmet (yeah, right!) Stuffed Squash

I have a confession:  I'm a total sucker for fall vegetables.  Parsnips, turnips, beets, and squash.  I love squash.  So when I saw this beautiful little Swan White Acorn squash at the market, my culinary wheels started turning.  Baked squash is great.  I just had pureed squash for Thanksgiving.  So what to do?  I'm a big fan of stuffed bell peppers, so I thought, why not stuff the squash?

I completely and utterly made this dish up, so let me know if you have a variation.  I'd love to try something new!

Recipe:

• 1 cup uncooked rice, made according to package directions (I used basmati)
• 1 lb. sweet Italian sausage (I used ground, not links)
• 1 med. yellow onion, large dice.
• 2 apples, peeled, cored, and chopped (I used Braeburn...you'll want something a little tart)
• 3/4 dried cranberries
• 2 thick slices of cheese (I used fontina and asiago...personal preference dictates you use whatever you like!)
• 1 acorn or butternut squash, halved and buttered.

Make rice, set aside.  Bake buttered squash at 400 degrees.  While it's baking, cook sausage.  Add onions, cook until crisp-tender.  Add apples and cranberries.  I seasoned this with a couple shakes of allspice, but you can use whatever you like.  Cinnamon and nutmeg would be good, too.  Cook until apples are softened, but still crisp in the center.  Add rice, and reduce heat to just warm the whole mixture.  Check squash for doneness (you want the squash almost completely cooked, but still firm).  When the squash is ready, fill with rice and sausage mixture.  Pack it in and mound it up, otherwise it's a whole lot of squash with a few bites of rice!  Top with cheese and bake for about 15 minutes longer.    You should end up with a lot more rice and sausage mixture, which was great on its own, too-just microwaved it the next day for lunch.  It's probably even enough to stuff 2 squash (4 halves) if you're feeding more.

Baked Banana Oatmeal

Alaina is a huge fan of oatmeal, and so am I.  But just a plain old bowl of oatmeal can be so boring, and I'm always looking for a way to reduce the amount of sugar we take in, and increase the nutrition.  Baked banana oatmeal fits that profile!  When it's finished, the texture is almost like cake-like, which makes it feel like a treat rather than breakfast.

And now....for the recipe:

• 3 bananas,  2 sliced and I mashed (I used a "freezer banana" for the mashed)
• 2 cups rolled oats (NOT QUICK OATS)  I use thick-cut oats, they don't get as mushy.
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 and 1/2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Combine dry ingredients.  In a separate bowl, combine the wet ingredients, including the bananas.  For ease of mixing, add the mashed banana first and blend well, then add the sliced bananas.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix thoroughly.

Pour batter into a well greased casserole dish (about an 8x8) and bake for 26 minutes at 375 degrees.  Top with a heaping tablespoon of brown sugar, and turn your oven up to broil for 2-3 minutes.  Then enjoy!

As written, this recipe serves about 4.  But it also reheats great in the microwave, so save the leftovers!

More bread...the obsession continues!

I've got two loaves cooling on the counter, and another batch starting to rise.  Watch for my episode of "Intervention" on A&E.

I hate to throw away food.  So, like everyone else I know, as soon as I've deemed a banana "too brown" to eat, I throw it in the freezer.  This morning, after juggling eleventeen frozen bananas to get to the ice cubes, I decided to do something about it.  I'm not a huge fan of quick breads in general.  Around Christmas, sure, there's a few I like.  But I'm usually only good for a few slices before I forget all about it.   After Googling "what do I do with frozen bananas?" I hit on a recipe for a yeast bread that calls for bananas.  All the reviews promise that I'll never make banana quick bread ever again, that I'll be wholly a banana yeast bread convert.  Judging by the smell in my kitchen, that just might be true.



I bought some AMAZING tomatoes....you know, the kind that are just right with just a dash of salt, and eaten whole?  Oven roasted the skins off those suckers (literally), and tossed them in a dough with dill, sage, rosemary, and dehydrated onion.  It's rising now, and smells phenomenal.  I can't wait to try it with cream cheese and roast beef sandwiches!  This will be the first bread I've baked without the courtesy of a recipe.  Might be a success.....might be moonrocks.

Why post about Buckeye chickens?...

Because we added two Buckeye hens to the Emme family menagerie!  Pretty girls we call Dumpling and Biscuit, they're also extra smart, learning to head into the henhouse at night only after one day.

I chose Buckeyes for a couple of reasons: they were developed by a woman, they're an endangered breed, and they won't need a lot of "winterizing."  They also stay more on the small side, so the girls won't need quite as much space as a Silver-Laced Wyandotte or a Buff Orpington (huge beautiful birds, but boy, are they puffy!)

Dumpling and Biscuit

Their sweet lil' home.

We've had them almost a week now, and so far, we are big fans of having chickens.  They're fun to watch, are fairly low maintenance, and will be providing us with delicious eggs soon.  Our ladies are still a little too young for laying....but, for fresh eggs, I'll be patient.

Buckeyes!

The Buckeye was first bred and developed in 1896, by a Warren, Ohio resident named Nettie Metcalf .  They are the only American breed of chicken known to have been developed by a woman, despite the fact that women were customarily given charge of the household poultry flock throughout much of U.S. history.  Metcalf crossbred Barred Plymouth Rocks, Buff Cochins, and some black breasted red games to produce the Buckeye. Her goal was a functional breed that could produce well in the bitter Midwest winters. Contrary to popular belief the Buckeye breed was created before the Rhode Island Red breed and actually sent birds to the RIR breeders for them to improve their breed. 

The Buckeye was admitted to the American Poultry Association's Standard of Perfection in 1904.  Entrance in to the Standard of Perfection signifies official certification as a breed by the Association, and thus allows Buckeyes to be entered in to poultry shows and judged according to the breed standard (as outlined in the Standard of Perfection).

The recognition of Buckeyes in the Standard has been a significant factor in its survival.  In the past, largely due its lack of color variations, the Buckeye has not been an especially popular exhibition breed, but there is growing interest in the exhibition poultry fancy for this dual-purpose, heritage variety of bird. Not adopted by commercial operations, the Buckeye has generally been a bird of smaller farm flocks. Today the breed status is listed as Critical by the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy,  Critical being defined as fewer than 500 breeding birds in the United States, with five or fewer primary breeding flocks (50 birds or more), and globally endangered.  The breed is also included in the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste, a catalog of heritage foods in danger of extinction.