I'm interrupting my 5S series for a bit about tweaks to breakfast. I've done two lately, and they've been huge successes, so I'm sharing them to inspire you to devise tweaks of your own.
Tweak #1: Mary Poppins says a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but around here, all it takes is a spoonful of pork, preferably in the bacon or sausage category. Here's the story. I had some leftover cooked sausage in the fridge and wondered what in the heck to do with it. Sure, I could put it in an omelet, but I don't do omelets. Lots of other ways to use it, but I ran across an idea from A Real American Breakfast. This is one of those fantasy cookbooks, where only in my fantasies would I be cooking like this. After all, I have lots of other things to do, and there are still only 24 hours per day. However, I was glancing through and saw that they stuffed cooked sausage in the center of baked apples. Up to this point, boys have refused baked apples. I've tried stuffing them with brown sugar, raisins, pecans, cinnamon, all of the above, and no dice. "What the hey," I thought, "can't hurt to try." Let me tell you, those apples disappeared in nano-seconds. Wish I'd made more. Brown sugar won't do it, but sausage does.
This is super easy to make; all you need is to be awake an hour before eating.
1. Have some cooked, crumbled sausage left over. You don't need much.
2. Peel the apple, just a circle off the top of it. This helps keep it from splitting open.
3. Take a melon baller if you have one, and use that to scoop out the core. This makes it so easy. Be sure to leave the bottom intact.
4. Stuff a little sausage in the middle, up to the top of the apple.
5. Now place apple or apples in a pan with just a little water in the bottom, and bake at 350 covered for 30 minutes. Then remove the cover and bake another 15 to brown things up.
That's it. The only real work is coring the apples, which will take you about 5 minutes. After that, the oven does the work, while you make coffee, and work your crossword puzzle. And it is so worth it.
Tweak #2: The Mmmelvis. This is named after the Elvis bagel plus our common first inital. And you say "Mmmm" after eating it. Get it? Here, I was just make the ol' Elvis bagel and on a whim decided to add a few chocolate chips to the mix. What a hit! One caveat: you may not want your bagel toasted. When I tried that, the peanut butter, and banana, and chips all kindof slid off the thing into a puddly mess. Cool Guy was not amused. So Mmmelvis is better eaten non-toasted for those who prefer not to get messy hands.
Tweaking is fun, and breakfast is so forgiving, that you should really try it sometime. And if, as when I tried adding rhubarb to the oatmeal, it turns out a disaster according to the peanut gallery, there's always cold cereal to fall back on. And life goes on.
Tweak #1: Mary Poppins says a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but around here, all it takes is a spoonful of pork, preferably in the bacon or sausage category. Here's the story. I had some leftover cooked sausage in the fridge and wondered what in the heck to do with it. Sure, I could put it in an omelet, but I don't do omelets. Lots of other ways to use it, but I ran across an idea from A Real American Breakfast. This is one of those fantasy cookbooks, where only in my fantasies would I be cooking like this. After all, I have lots of other things to do, and there are still only 24 hours per day. However, I was glancing through and saw that they stuffed cooked sausage in the center of baked apples. Up to this point, boys have refused baked apples. I've tried stuffing them with brown sugar, raisins, pecans, cinnamon, all of the above, and no dice. "What the hey," I thought, "can't hurt to try." Let me tell you, those apples disappeared in nano-seconds. Wish I'd made more. Brown sugar won't do it, but sausage does.
This is super easy to make; all you need is to be awake an hour before eating.
1. Have some cooked, crumbled sausage left over. You don't need much.
2. Peel the apple, just a circle off the top of it. This helps keep it from splitting open.
3. Take a melon baller if you have one, and use that to scoop out the core. This makes it so easy. Be sure to leave the bottom intact.
4. Stuff a little sausage in the middle, up to the top of the apple.
5. Now place apple or apples in a pan with just a little water in the bottom, and bake at 350 covered for 30 minutes. Then remove the cover and bake another 15 to brown things up.
That's it. The only real work is coring the apples, which will take you about 5 minutes. After that, the oven does the work, while you make coffee, and work your crossword puzzle. And it is so worth it.
Tweak #2: The Mmmelvis. This is named after the Elvis bagel plus our common first inital. And you say "Mmmm" after eating it. Get it? Here, I was just make the ol' Elvis bagel and on a whim decided to add a few chocolate chips to the mix. What a hit! One caveat: you may not want your bagel toasted. When I tried that, the peanut butter, and banana, and chips all kindof slid off the thing into a puddly mess. Cool Guy was not amused. So Mmmelvis is better eaten non-toasted for those who prefer not to get messy hands.
Tweaking is fun, and breakfast is so forgiving, that you should really try it sometime. And if, as when I tried adding rhubarb to the oatmeal, it turns out a disaster according to the peanut gallery, there's always cold cereal to fall back on. And life goes on.
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