Tag: breakfast

Christmas Breakfast

Christmas breakfast was a big thing at my house when I was a kid. Mom and Dad pulled out all of the stops and bought all kinds of awesome food that we pretty much never had any other time of the year. I associated these foods so strongly with the holidays that it came as a great revelation to me when I moved out that I could buy Havarti cheese with dill or caraway seeds, or Babybel miniature cheeses, or Stoned Wheat Thins all year long.

We’ve been hosting Christmas breakfast at our house since the year that Thing 1 was born. Given that she would have needed to be fed and then probably put down for a nap sometime during the festivities, it just made sense for us to stay home and have the rest of my family come to us. Breakfast is generally served buffet-style, so that everyone can have a little bit of everything and then head over to the Christmas tree to open gifts, often while still munching.

This year I served (working roughly from left to right):

– Nan’s pan rolls* with butter
– red grapes
– rosemary bread from the bread machine**
– homemade dill pickles
– Chevrai Original Goat Cheese
– Garlic & Fine Herbs Boursin cheese
– Chicken Bones
– Daiya Plain Cream Cheeze Style Spread
– Crème Oka cheese
– Laughing Cow cheese
– my husband’s homemade cornmeal muffins
– homemade pickled beets
– coffee & tea with sugar & milk
– chocolate toffees
– meat platter with Hungarian salami, Montreal smoked meat, roast beef, and Black Forest ham
– shrimp ring with cocktail sauce
– Christmas Cookie Monster’s Shape Cookies (made, for the most part, by Thing 1 and Thing 2)
– cold hard-boiled eggs
– Babybel miniature cheeses
– cracker plate with Stoned Wheat Thins, Ritz, Vegetable Thins, and Rosemary & Olive Oil Triscuits
– pepperettes (all-beef by my hubby’s preference and European style for mine)
– Oka and Havarti cheeses
– Fudgy Pumpkin Brownies (this time with no coffee)
– bananas
– strawberries
– clementines
– blueberries

In case you’re worried, no, the seven of us did not eat this all in one sitting. This much could have easily fed twice that amount of people, with food to spare! The point of this kind of meal (which only happens once a year) is that everyone can have as much as they like, and then it all gets packed away to become lunches and dinners for the next week or so. There were still a few leftovers as of New Year’s Day, but that was of the kind of thing that takes forever to go bad, like crackers. Some of it will probably even make its way into the kids’ lunches in the new year.

*I discovered that these rolls can be left to do their second rise overnight in the refrigerator, and then just popped into the oven to serve fresh-baked for breakfast. If you’re going to do so, make sure that the pan you use is metal and not glass, as it takes the glass longer to heat up and can make the bottom of the rolls take a little too long to cook. Also, if the top is browning but the bottom isn’t quite done yet, cover the top of the rolls with aluminum foil to prevent them going from “browned” to “burnt”.

**Classic White Bread, found on page 24 of Betty Crocker’s Best Bread Machine Cookbook (1999) — but with half the sugar, olive oil instead of margarine, and about 1/4 cup fresh chopped rosemary added.

Circular Bacon?

I’m trying my darndest to get the costume photos from this weekend edited, but it’s taking much longer than I had hoped, although I do acknowledge that this is mostly because I’m really picky. It would have been much too easy to just crop the photos to size. So it may be another day or two before I have it all done.

In the meantime, I did have to cook dinner last night, which had to be quick because I had to get the kids to extracurricular activities. Thing 2 requested bacon and eggs, which I thought was a perfectly acceptable solution. Earlier in the day I’d put some Milk Loaf (page 65, Bread Machine: How to Prepare and Bake the Perfect Loaf (Jennie Shapter (2002)) on to cook in my bread machine. I just microwaved some bacon (my preferred low-mess way to cook it), scooped out some honeydew melon, fried up some eggs, and buttered some fresh bread for a quick dinner.

You might note that the bacon in the above photo are shaped unusually. It’s not an illusion, the slices are actually more or less circular! They’re actually Presiden’t Choice Naturally Smoked Bacon Rounds, which are described as follows:

A real game changer when it comes to whipping up burgers, breakfast sandwiches and BLTs, bacon rounds make things so much easier. Cut from the pork belly, they’re everything you love about traditional bacon – only rolled prior to smoking and slicing. Not only are they the perfect fit for buns and English muffins, the edges curl up a little while cooking, creating a “cup” for toppings.

Well, my slices didn’t curl up on the edges, but maybe they do so when fried. I have to admit, I’ve never had any problem whatsoever fitting traditionally-sliced bacon into a sandwich or burger, so I think that these bacon rounds have been created to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist. I mean, if your bacon is too big for your bread, it can be broken if crispy or cut if soft. The rounds are more expensive than the same brand’s regularly-sliced bacon, too ($1.60/100g vs. $1.20/100g). I have a feeling that other shoppers agree, since I found my supply in the clearance section at the local grocery store and I haven’t seen them there since. I paid only $0.99 per package (so $0.26/100g if I did my math right), and at that price it was definitely worth it since the rounds taste exactly the same as regular bacon. Without another comparable sale, I can’t see myself buying these again though.

Sick Day Part 2

I’m at the tail end (hopefully) of recovering from my cold, and unfortunately my kids have caught it too. Well, they might have been the ones to bring it home in the first place, elementary school being the wretched hive of scum and villainy that it is. At any rate, I kept the kids home from school yesterday in an attempt to speed up their recovery.

I gave the kids the option of homemade chicken noodle soup for dinner, since it’s a traditional kind of food to eat when you’re not feeling well. They vetoed this idea, and I was willing to be vetoed, as I hadn’t actually started cooking anything yet. At first they voted for instant mac-and-cheese, which I said no to. I can’t tell you how much it frustrates me that it doesn’t matter how many original and tasty meals I prepare, they’d live off of 99¢ dried pasta with powdered cheese sauce, given half the chance. Next they argued between themselves between bacon and eggs and trout with teriyaki sauce over rice. A quick trip to the grocery store brought the decision firmly down to bacon and eggs, since trout was not on special.

So our family dinner last night was eggs over easy, reduced-salt bacon, freshly baked Light Wholemeal Bread (Bread Machine: How to Prepare and Bake the Perfect Loaf (Jennie Shapter, 2002), page 69), and a side of sliced strawberries with a sprinkle of sugar. The girls were even up to hulling and slicing the strawberries. All in all, not a bad dinner for a house full of sickies!

Still Waters

Some days begin with a jolt, a jump out of bed, a hustle to get out the door. On the other hand, some days begin with reading in bed, a relaxed breakfast, and a trip down to the dock.

Breakfast at my parents’ rented cottage this day was eggs over easy, fried mushrooms, sliced avocado, and leftover fruit salad with a bit of maple syrup (slightly mushier than fresh, but still very tasty).

After breakfast, while the dishwasher ran (and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate having a dishwasher at the cottage, what a luxury), I strolled down to the lake to take in the view. The water was like glass, reflecting the clear blue sky.

The water was so still and clear that I could watch the small fish (probably rock bass) that enjoy the shelter of the dock and the retaining wall.

Even the canoe that passed by left barely a ripple in the lake. The canoeist waved a quiet hello to me as he passed by, and we both continued to enjoy the calm of the morning.

At The Lake

I spent the weekend at the lake again — but a different lake this time. My parents have rented a cottage for the summer, and I’m taking the kids up whenever I can.


The view from the dock.

Of course, every trip to a cottage comes with hearty breakfasts… Okay, well, brunches… Okay, sometimes lunches. It all depends on how early the kids get me up, and how lazy I’m feeling when I first get out of bed. A beautiful day at a cottage often makes me want to sit on the deck or the dock with my morning beverage of choice and just relax.


Cottage breakfast with French toast, bacon, and fruit salad (asian pear, cherries, and banana).

Of course, once I’ve had something to eat (and okay, sometimes before), it’s time to jump in the lake. This particular lake is really clear and actually quite warm for a Canadian lake, which means that you still don’t want to stay in there all day, but it’s not breathtaking to jump into.


Thing 1 practicing her cannonball.

My kids would spend all day in the water if their lips didn’t turn blue, which happens even in a heated pool, eventually. Their favourite part is launching themselves bodily off of the dock


I think Thing 2 doing her “starfish” jump.

Also, I’m pretty sure that Thing 2 believes that she can fly.

Breakfast With a View

I spent the weekend at my in-laws’ cottage, which is built uphill from a lake and hence commands beautiful views from one side.  (The other sides look into the woods, which is quite pretty, but definitely isn’t expansive.) I love that the side overlooking the lake has a screened-in porch where we can eat meals undisturbed by mosquitos and, in the evenings, moths attracted by the lights. I would love a screened-in porch outside of my patio door, despite the fact that I would only overlook my own back yard. I think that almost every summer meal would be eaten out there.

Breakfast on Sunday was two eggs over-easy, a slice of buttered crusty white bread fresh from the bread maker, a grilled chicken burger patty left over from the previous night’s dinner, and a banana.

And of course, then there was The View. What a fantastic way to start the day.

Cooking for the Family

I do most of the family cooking, which probably comes as no surprise to anyone. I used to have a weeknight repertoire of about ten dishes, but a while back I got tired of making the same old, same old all the time, and I decided to branch out. I think it has changed our diets for the better, at the very least cutting down on how much red meat we eat and increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables. From a health perspective, that has to be a good thing. From taste and presentation perspectives, well, there have been some bumps in the road of learning, but we’ve come through mostly unscathed. Here are a few of the family meals I’ve cooked lately:

I decided to take my own advice and whipped up some garlic scape pesto, which I then spread on top of trout fillets and baked. I served the pesto trout alongside mashed potatoes and asparagus. It was a super-easy dinner.

I blame the fact that I broke the over-easy eggs for this breakfast on the fact that I’d been up since 5:00am in order to drive my mother to the airport. The statement, “I am not a morning person” does not even begin to touch how muzzy and uncoordinated I am when it’s early. Even so, I was back in time to see the kids off to school, and to make them up a hot breakfast of fresh-baked Dad’s biscuits, eggs, and fruit salad (bananas, strawberries, apples, and navel oranges). I can count on one hand how often I’ve been up early enough to cook breakfast before I send the kids off to school, and I honestly wish it was zero. They are old enough now to make their own cold cereal, microwave oatmeal, or toast — and I could not be happier.

For last night’s dinner I rifled through my pantry and pulled out some sauces I’d purchased ages ago, but hadn’t yet tried. I marinated the steak for about eight hours in Sempio Kalbi Marinade, then I threw it on the grill. It was delicious! It has an flavour that I recognize from the Asian fusion buffets around here. It also made the beef nice and tender. The mixed vegetables (carrots, sweet potato, snap peas, and garlic scapes) were steamed first, then lightly coated in Heinz Sweet Teriyaki & Ginger Vegetable Sauce, which I have never seen before and can’t even seem to find online. It was fairly good, although I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to buy it again. The kids really liked it, but they are big fans of anything teriyaki anyway.

I think that I need to continue to clean out my pantry and use up all of the “oh, that looks interesting” food purchases that I made and then promptly forgot about. If I’m lucky, all of those meals will be received as well as these three were.

Super Rapid Italian Herb Bread

I have been testing out the recipes for my breadmaker recently, because I want to move on from recipes in the instruction manual to the cookbook Canada’s Best Bread Machine Baking Recipes (Donna Washburn & Heather Butt, 1999) that I picked up for a song second-hand. I have a Black & Decker All-In-One Deluxe Horizontal Breadmaker, and I feel it needs to be put through its paces before I start experimenting. To that end, I tried out the recipe for Super-Rapid Basic White bread that can be found on page 21 of the manual.

Physically, it turned out well; it was shaped properly, and it smelled great. However, I wasn’t terribly satisfied with the texture. I found this bread to be very dense, with few pockets created by air bubbles. I think that this is because of the super rapid bake function, which makes a loaf of bread in just over an hour (the regular loaves take about four hours). It just didn’t give the bread the chance to rise and get fluffy like a longer rising period will do. I will have to make a few more of the super rapid bake recipes to see if my theory is correct.

That being said, the bread was definitely edible. It reminded me of the cheap white bread loaves that are available at the grocery store, albeit with more flavour from the herbs. It toasted up nicely and went well in sandwiches and alongside sunny-side-up eggs.

I discovered that the denseness of the bread made for particularly good French toast. It soaked in the eggs without falling apart, which made it much easier to cook up than a lighter loaf. The herbs in the bread also went surprisingly well with butter and syrup, probably because it was only lightly flavoured. I think I would make this recipe again, but only if I had an end dish in mind in which to use the bread, not to eat it on its own. I have a feeling it would also make a lovely grilled cheese.