Fresh 20, Day 4

Breakfast: Carrot Cake Oatmeal $0
I love this recipe. It started out as a backpacking style recipe, but the concept of eating vegetables other potatoes for breakfast has always been hard for me to picture. But eating carrot cake for breakfast? I can totally get behind that. So first we tried it as written, then I switched it to a stovetop recipe, now it has become an overnight recipe. It is best when topped with a dab of cream cheese and coconut, but even without, it’s pretty great.

Lunch: Oatmeal, Bacon, Cheddar Scones Pizza Scones $1
I had originally planned on using the last of the bacon for this recipe, but then I cooked it up for breakfast this past weekend. So, scrounge through the fridge and find an easy swap – pepperoni and mozzarella – sounds like pizza to me! Using one of my kids’ favorite flavor profiles makes for a guaranteed winner at school. And the recipe makes enough for the freezer, too!

Dinner: Pan Seared Salmon with Honey Glazed Carrots $10.05
This was the first time I have cooked salmon at home, and I was really pleased! Just simple salt and pepper and oil, with a really hot pan, and it was pretty close to perfect, with a nice crunch and not really hard to flip (even though I don’t have a fish turner).The carrots were also very nummy, with honey and Herbes de Provence. They were strange because they were baked in the oven; I am used to glazed carrots being cooked in a saute pan. This is definitely a keeper, although the brown rice needs to be made fresh.

I had a much better day today, with lots of sewing on a new quilt made from fabrics I bought for my birthday, and topped off with a great dinner.

Fresh 20, Day 2

Breakfast: Prune Muffins $0
These were pretty good, using my normal muffin mix and adding chopped prunes and poppy seeds. I have to figure out a way to chop prunes, though. Those are some seriously sticky things. Maybe dust them in muffin mix first, so at least the outside isn’t as sticky? Dipping my knife in hot water after every cut would do the job, but that is a lot of thinking for early morning, pre-coffee.

My daughter wanted to be reassured that she wasn’t going to get diarrhea from them before she ate a muffin, since we use prune juice as a laxative at our house for the kids.

Lunch: Leftovers! $0
Leftover Thanksgiving Chicken Bake, with leftover sweet potatoes, with fresh pickle salad for the kids’ lunchboxes this morning. Pickle Salad is the new name for the recipe, I think. Basically, it is thick sliced cucumbers doused in rice wine vinegar, sprinkled with salt and dill. For a lunch box, let it marinate for as long as you can, then drain off the liquid. If you sliced the cucumbers thinly, this would become refrigerator pickles – hence the name.

Dinner: Meximac and Cheese $17.11
This recipe was weird. I am used to making a bechamel and adding cheese to it to make a cheese sauce. This had me making a sauce with beaten eggs and milk and alternately adding this mixture into the hot noodles with the shredded cheese. My eggs scrambled because my noodles were too hot. And the sauce didn’t taste as good as mine.

And then I was supposed to add raw broccoli to this (along with cooked turkey). Since I had to box my dinner up to go, the broccoli had time to steam in the box, but I don’t think that my family had cooked broccoli at all. I love putting broccoli into mac and cheese, but I usually add it to the cooking noodles when there is about 3 minutes left so that it will be cooked, but not mushy.

Not a winner at this house.

Fresh 20, Day 1

Breakfast: French Toast $0
This is one of those recipes I learned at the stove from my mother. Once I had mastered scrambled eggs, this was my next step. Apparently, our recipe is weird, in that you can decide at the very last minute to make it. While I very much enjoyed watching Alton Brown’s version of French Toast, it took waaaaaaay too much planning the night before. I’m good if I can remember to set my oatmeal each week (and there have been days I forget). So, if you are like me, here is a recipe for you (with bonus in process pics!).

In a shallow dish just bigger than your bread slices: add 1-2 eggs, 1/4-1/2 T. milk, tiny pinch of salt, 1/4 t. cinnamon, 1/2 t. vanilla PER PERSON. This recipe easily scales from 2-8 servings. The inexactness of the ingredients is because some bread soaks up more liquid than others. I was using day old homemade bread, so I used 6 eggs for 4 people, and since my bread was HUGE I used a pie plate. Pre-sliced bread doesn’t soak up as much.

Mix everything up, and then start soaking some bread in it while you get a nonstick pan heated over medium heat with a dab of butter. Don’t let the bread soak more than a minute or two, then flip it in the egg. Again, let it soak for a minute or two. Then transfer to the pan.

Cook the toast until the egg starts setting along the edges, and it is nicely brown, like this. Flip and repeat (you won’t see the egg on the edges on the second side). Done! The whole shebang takes 20 minutes for 4 servings, but you have to stand there and babysit it the whole time, so have leftovers or something baked to pack for lunches.

Also, did you notice? No added sugar. Make it as sweet as you like with syrup or powdered sugar. My favorite is cooked bananas and maples syrup, although cooked cinnamon apples is also nom.

Lunch: Leftover Casserole $0
Yeah, I chunked up some leftover cornbread, and tossed it with the last of the roasted veggies, baked at 350 while I made french toast (about 20-30 mintues), until brown.

Dinner: Thanksgiving Chicken Bake $14.24
Our first meal from the Fresh 20! It wasn’t too bad, but I should have added a salad. THis was the first time we have had chard, and it was not noticeable, except that my son pulled it out and gave me the look. He is very suspicious of leafy green stuff that has been cooked, like spinach or kale or chard or even basil.

WAO Day 12

Breakfast: Banana Nut Oatmeal $1.50
My favorite steel cut oatmeal recipe, with banana slices and crushed walnuts. Mmmmmm, lots of cheering this morning.

Lunch: Pizza Pan Biscuits $5.67
This is a camping recipe I can’t use for my troop. I could take out the pepperoni to make it vegetarian, no problem. It’s the cooking two servings at a time part that I can’t deal with! 🙂 For my kids’ lunchboxes, though, it’s great. Quicker than muffins, with as much cheering.

Dinner: Spicy Udon Noodles $0
Um, no. Actually our weekend plans went haywire, so my husband got the kids, went across town to pick up a cousin, who spent the weekend, and then they ate pizza at Movie Night at their elementary school (Madagascar 3 on the inflatable big screen, lol). I grabbed drive thru on the way in to work.

WAO Day 11

Breakfast: Raisin Toast $0
Mmmm, homemade raisin bread. I was supposed to put peanut butter on this. I remembered this fact as I finished spreading butter on the last piece. *shrug* Next time.

Lunch: Roasted Vegetable Sandwiches $0
So I took some of the vegetables I roasted the night before, chopped them up fine, and mixed them up with a smidgeon of mustard and mayo to make a sandwich filling. The kids enjoyed it.

Dinner: Roasted Veggie Pitas, with Hummus $1.48
More of the roasted veggies, this time warmed up with pitas and hummus. I’m not sure how my husband served this, because I had to go get my car from the body shop and then get to work.

WAO Day 10

Breakfast: Cinnamon Rolls $0
It was so nice to be able to sleep in this morning. I mean, I have my alarm set so I get to hit the snooze button a couple of times most mornings, but this morning I got to sleep in good. All I had to do this morning was chop some veggies and pita for the kids’ lunches.

But, back to the Cinnamon rolls.

So. Good. The boy told me these were a smidgeon better than the ones from the grocery store, which is a high compliment from him, and the girl yelled at him that they were 100% better!

To make them, I took the slightly sweet honey oatmeal bread dough that I was making and spread it out into a thin rectangle, maybe 12″x8″. Then I covered it in cinnamon and brown sugar, and rolled it into a 12″ long tube. I used my long serrated bread knife to cut it into 12 pieces and put in a 8″x8″ pan that I sprayed with cooking spray, covered with a napkin, and let rise for about an hour. Then I baked them at 375 for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I mixed up a simple glaze of 2 cups powdered sugar substitute, 1 t. vanilla, and enough milk to make a paste. Once the rolls were out, I spread the glaze all over and put in the fridge when they were cool.

Lunch: Dippers Lunch $2.34
Mmmmm, homemade hummus. Fresh pita. Veggie sticks. Basic, easy, delicious.

Dinner: Roasted Fall Veggie Pizza $14.09
It’s a lot of money for pizza. I know it’s a lot of money for pizza. But I can’t buy one parsnip and one carrot and part of a head of cauliflower, etc. It’s especially a lot of money when I find out that my pizza chef is out of pizza dough! So I bought a pound of parsnips, a pound of carrots, a head of cauliflower, a crown of broccoli, and an onion to roast tonight and planned to use them for a couple of other meals; and then we went out for dinner. Le sigh.

WAO, Day 9

Breakfast: Banana Nut Muffins $0
Mmmm, I love muffins. Especially when I have bananas so ripe they are practically black. And now, I also have enough dry mix for 48 more muffins in the pantry – which means I will be more likely to make muffins. Except, I need to make up some streusel topping, too. Then the muffins will be awesome.

Lunch: Chili and Cornbread, Corn $0
Yeah, leftovers. With a freshly cooked side dish of Mexican corn (corn sauteed with onions and peppers and garlic powder).

Dinner: Split Pea Soup, Cornbread $3.58
So, here is one of the first places I modified the WAO menu for the week to include some meat. The original recipe for split pea soup includes tahini and chipotle to give the smokiness of the bacon it does not have. I put the bacon in. Mmmmmm, bacon.

And yes, apparently one of my favorite pillows is split pea soup green.

Bonus Crazy Baking Day!!! $4.81
On top of making a big batch of muffin mix, and a dozen muffins this morning, I spent the entire morning baking. Serious baking. Honey oatmeal bread. 4 pounds of it. 2 pounds became a regular bread machine loaf, 1 pound became cinnamon raisin swirl bread for one of the “Toast and Peanut Butter” breakfasts this week, and the last pound became CINNAMON ROLLS with SUGARFREE GLAZE! Mmmmmm, cinnamon rolls . . . . Breakfast. Tomorrow. You will see.

AND – I cooked chickpeas and made hummus. Yum. But I forgot to save the cooking liquid, so I had to use way too much olive oil.

WAO, Day 8

Breakfast: Breakfast Burritos $0
This was supposed to be our breakfast over the weekend. Except we left all of the groceries I bought for the trip in the fridge in our haste to get out of town. le sigh. But now, we have noms in the freezer in addition to in our bellies. I cooked up a pound of sausage, a pound of diced potatoes, and a half dozen eggs. Then I added 1/4 cup of salsa (maybe more, maybe less. It should kind of soak in, not add a bunch of liquid) and 1 1/2 c. cheese. Then put about 1/2 c. on each tortilla and roll up. I got 8 fully stuffed burritos, plus extra portion for my son who likes to open his burritos and eat the filling out of them. Five into the freezer!

Lunch: Clean out the Fridge $0
Yep, just what it sounds like, I peeked in the fridge, grabbed leftover linguine and red sauce, leftover peas, and leftover baked pears. I also added the last Granny Smith to my daughter’s lunch.

Dinner: Chili with Cornbread $6.58
So I made a full 8 serving pan of cornbread, using my mom’s special method (not really a recipe, but a way to make any recipe taste like home to me. I used Maggie’s recipe), and then used another 8 serving’s worth to top some chili from last week. Which made the cornbread take so long to cook, it was almost burnt. Almost. But not quite. Instead it was delicious. Which is good, cuz the kids are having it for lunch.

WAO, Day 3

Breakfast: Morning Cobbler $6.17
It’s my lovely 2 ingredient breakfast. This morning, we had blueberries with our granola, a yummy change from our usual strawberries. I wanted peaches, but I could only get the BIG bag of frozen peaches.

I think over the next couple of weeks, I need to make a big batch of cooked cinnamon apples, and freeze it in bags to use in this recipe. Mmmmm, cinnamon apple cobbler. Crunch. Crumble. I need to come up with a new name, too.

Lunch: Dippers Lunch $5
Simple, simple. Hummus, a bag of pita chips, and a bunch of veggie sticks. This morning I cut up celery and bell pepper. And I added half an apple for dessert.

Dinner: Winter Kale Pizza $1.25
So, last night was Halloween. And I had a billion other things to get done. So my brain was not on making sure I got pictures of food. But dinner was really good, even if my 6yo son whined about the kale and tried to get out of eating it until I told him: No kale, no candy. Then there was still whining, but not so much trying to get out of it.

The hubby and I liked the kale pizza. We used the red sauce I made earlier in the week, plus some onions and kale sauteed in bacon grease – from the bacon, of course. Mmmmm, I love greens with bacon. So, even though the original recipe in the WAO book called for no meat, I added a bit of bacon.

The pizza chef also tried out a recipe he has been thinking about: breakfast pizza. We used up what we had, so the last eggs and some more bacon (mmmmmm, bacon), the red sauce and some green salsa, and some cheddar cheese. It was good, but next time, there needs to be hash browns.

WAO, Day 1

Actually, this was more like Day 1 and Day 2 combined. I didn’t make a bunch of vinaigrette, because I still have a bottle of Italian dressing left in the fridge from the Relish! weeks (seriously, we don’t use a lot of dressing here), so I figured we could just use that up. I did make pudding, though. Until I made my first batch of WAO pudding, I never even thought about making pudding from scratch. I didn’t even buy the cooked kind of boxed pudding mix. But chocolate pudding is so easy to make, it’s dangerous. It makes you think about doing things like making batches of the dry ingredients to go in the pantry. And making batches to freeze into pudding pops. And, ooooh, wouldn’t this go good inside a cupcake?!?!?

Breakfast: Eggwiches $0
English muffins from the freezer. Cheese and eggs left over from last week. Simple and cheap and tasty.

Lunch: Applesauce Sandwiches, Antless Logs $0
Yes, seriously. Applesauce sandwiches is a great recipe I found years ago on Recipezaar, and have modified over and over again, but the basic idea remains tasty bread with applesauce filler and cinnamon sugar somewhere. The original recipe called for it to be sauteed like a grilled cheese sandwich, and then sprinkled with cinnamon sugar on the outside, but I hardly ever do that. Usually, I sprinkle the inside with cinnamon sugar after I spread the applesauce.

And Antless Logs? Well, I think the raisins on Ants on a log are icky. PB and celery OR PB and raisins, not all three together.

Dinner: Tomato Sauce with Peppers and Onions $7.84
Would you believe, for that price I got not only tonight’s dinner, but also the sauce for our pizzas on Wednesday, and Thursday’s dinner, as well? I only had 4 servings of farfalle, so I will have to spend 20 minutes cooking spaghetti on Thursday. And I will probably have peas for a side dish, as I only bought 4 servings of green beans.

Having chocolate pudding to bribe my children with was very satisfying. The green peppers and onions which often get left on the side of the plate got hurriedly eaten when I said the magic words: “There’s dessert”. Dessert in our house is a rarity, but the kids know that my philosophy is “If you aren’t hungry for the rest of your dinner, you aren’t hungry for dessert” no matter how hard they whine that their “dessert” stomachs are still very empty, indeed.