What to do When Your Kids Won't Eat Hard-Boiled Eggs

It's maddening.  Neither Encyclopedia nor Cool Guy will even taste a hard boiled egg.  So, so easy, so nutritious, so portable, so REJECTED.

Still, every month or so, they appear on the breakfast table, always with other things, so that the boys will have something to eat.  I wish they would at least try them, but it's not really a battle I'm ready to have a stand-off over.  I continue to boil more eggs than get consumed, and then have eggs left over.

Here are some things I do.  (Also, let me confess, I always boil more eggs than needed so that I WILL have extras)
1. Have them the next day cold while I fix oatmeal for the boys.
2. Slice them, cold, and serve them open face on buttered bread for lunch the next day.
3. Make tuna or egg salad.
4. Use them, quartered, in salads.
5. One from my mom: quarter them and serve over cooked spinach.  (I'm still the only consumer, but it's an old favorite.)

I was playing around with egg salad the other day, and came up with a great version that Burt raved about.  I diced up the eggs, and then added mashed avocado, a squirt of mustard, squirt of mayo, and had the best egg salad ever.  Do try it.

A New Twist on a Breakfast Favorite

I have posted before about making baked potato skins.  This is one of the boys' favorites, and it's really not that hard or time consuming, as long as I remember to bake the potatoes the night before.  Then I just halve them, scoop out the centers, and garnish with filling and toppings.

My usual skins have bacon, cheddar, sour cream, and green onions.  But, this past weekend, Burt and I did up a smoked beef brisket (which was to-die-for fantastic).

  No matter how wonderful it is, though, three of us at home cannot eat 8 pounds of meat in one sitting.  Leftovers are inspiration of some of the best things to eat.

Here's my new skins combo.  Brush barbeque sauce on the skins, top with chopped brisket, and cheddar, and put back in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes to warm everything up.

It's not a traditional breakfast taste, but it is very satisfying and delicious.

Dessert or Breakfast?

Am I cheating?  Justifying?  I don't know.  I just know that it's good.  This morning, we had an apple cobbler with cranberries, complements of King Arthur Whole Grain Baking.  Over the past month, I've been haunting Marietta Farmer's Market, especially Lane's Orchard's Stand, where each week, new varieties of apples are available.  They recognize me now.

We are lucky.  We have a basement, and it has a kitchen (!) complete with a full sized refrigerator.  We don't have a root cellar, but we do have a mostly empty fridge "downstairs," so I decided to get as many apples now, while the gettin's good, and store them there to see us through part of the winter.  We have Grimes Gold, Firm Gold, Macleod, Winesap (tart!), Macs, JonGolds, you name it, we got it.  Have I mentioned that unless it's peach season, my favorite fruit is apples?

So it's apple season, and I have an overflowing refrigerator.  And I wake up at 5:00, while the rest of the household sleeps in since they stayed up late watching Oklahoma football on TV.  May as well do something good with all these apples.  Burt loves pies.  In fact, he always asks for pie for his birthday instead of cake.  I think I've made it known to him that a pie takes about two hours of labor, while a cake takes 20 minutes.  Still, he persists in pie.  I should be happy that birthdays only happen once a year.  And, truly, Burt wants nothing else.  No presents, nothing else.  Just pie.  So it's the least I can do.  But pie at any other time?  Sorry.  It's just too much of a time eater.  Counting the crust, which Burt prefers to be homemade, and we're talking 3 hours total.  But there are other options, and cobbler is one.

I stumbled upon a apple pandowdy recipe, and decided to try it.  The idea behind the pandowdy is that you put the fruit in the pan and then top it with a crust.  After it has baked, you break up the crust and integrate it with the filling, thus soaking the crust in the juice.  The thing that appealed to me was that the crust could be just a wreck, and no one would know.  And it should be a lot quicker than pie.

This particular recipe came from King Arthur, which, very nicely, gave me permission to reprint their recipes as long as I credited them and provided a link to either their store or their cookbook.  Credit and links duly noted.  Let me say right now that this pandowdy is the best apple concoction that I have ever made.  And believe me, I've made a lot, lot, lot of pies, cobblers, etc.  I'm a regular baking machine in the fall when it's apple season.  This is supreme.

The addition of dried cranberries is genius.  It adds a wonderful rosy color to the dish, and provides just the right tart.  For apples, I like to use as wide a variety as I can.  You know, some apples are eating apples, and others are cooking apples.  Some are tart, some are sweet.  I say just take a little of each, and then you don't have to worry about mushiness, tartness, oversweetness, or whatever.  Well, I pulled from six varieties, and it was a wonderful balance.  Let me add that if I only had one variety, I'd plow onward and make this.  I just don't see how  it could not come out good.

So is it a good start to the day?  Honestly, I don't see how anyone could question that.  In 7 cups of apples, only a mere half cup of sugar is used.  The crust is whole grain, so the carbs are not empty.  Yes, there are 6 tablespoons of butter, but come on.  You are getting SO MUCH fruit.  Live with it.

One thing that might be a little off-putting is that the main flour of this dish is barley flour.  I have a really hard time finding it here, and have gotten lucky occasionally at the local health food store.  However, this is a whole grain flour, and it adds a really nice taste, so it is worth taking the time to find it.  If I were determined to make this and I didn't have barley flour, I think I'd use white whole wheat flour instead.

When this baby came out of the oven, and I dug in, I just couldn't believe how good it was.  Cool Guy, who is not really a pie fan, became really hoggish with the crust parts, as in picking them out and taking them for himself, the rascal.

If I were to name a drawback, it would be that I doubt that the crust will retain its integrity over time.  Therefore, I ordered the family to consume the entire dish in one day.  It was going to breakfast, part of lunch,, snacks, and dessert for dinner, but by gosh, we were going to eat it in one day.  No protests.  If any is left, I guess I'll find out if the crust is any good on day 2, but I don't think that's going to be a problem.

*NOTE*  Day 2, there was enough of the pandowdy to make two small bowls for breakfast.  As I feared, the crust just wasn't as good, but overall, the taste was fine.  Certainly eat as much as you can on the first day, but enjoy it on the second, also.

Since eating it fresh is so important, I wouldn't recommend making this unless you have a lazy weekend planned.  Start to finish, it took 2 hours, and an hour of that was labor.  If I had thought to make the crust the night before and refrigerated it, if I had thought to peel and chop the apples ahead of time, it would have all gone together quickly, but I know me, and that doesn't happen often.  By the time dinner is over, this early riser is ready for bed, not another round in the kitchen.  Save this one for when you have time, but if you don't already have a favorite way to enjoy apple baking, be sure you carve out time for this.

Apple Cran-Dowdy
Courtesy of King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Book

3/4 cup whole barley flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
6 TBSP. butter
2-4 TBSP. milk

Combine dry ingredients.  Cut in the butter until it is the size of small peas.  Add enough milk to make the dough hold together.  (For me, that was all 4 tablespoons.)  Shape into a disk, and refrigerate while you prepare the filling.

7 cups peeled, cored, chopped apples
1 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup apple cider or apple juice
2 TBSP butter, cut into small pieces (I forgot to add this, and everything was FINE.)

Toss the apple slices with the cranberries in a large bowl.  Combine the brown sugar, spices, and salt, and add.  Pour the syrup and cider over the fruit and toss.  Put into buttered 9-inch square pan, and dot with butter.

Roll out crust to fit over the fruit.  Place it on top, and stick in a 350 degree oven.  Bake 50-55 minutes.  After it comes out of the oven, let it rest a few minutes, then cut the crust up, kindof turning it into the fruit.  Leave some large chunks, leave the edges alone, and leave some sticking up.

The Onslaught Begins

Zucchini, that's what I'm talkin' about.  The zucchini tsunami has begun.  Thankfully (?) I don't grow them, but if I go late enough to the farmers' market, they are practically giving them away.  Late, meaning that the people manning the stands want to dump their wares and get on home and will offer outrageous deals.  So it happens that I have a crisper drawerful of zucchini, yellow squash, pattypan squash, and yellow zucchini.  What's a poor girl to do?

Zucchini bread, of course!  Actually, I was lucky enough to pick up the latest issue of Eating Well magazine, which had lots of ideas for zucchini, but the bread struck my fancy.  It's easy, and good for you, too.

I went ahead and threw in a half cup of chocolate chips, to make it more tempting for Cool Guy, who resists any and all vegetables on principal, and he adored it.  My plan is to gradually decrease chocolate chips (they did nothing for me except add calories) until they disappear and are only a distant memory in Cool Guy's subconscious.

Next time I make this bread, which will be soon, I plan on converting it to muffins, following my muffin conversion strategy.  They stay fresher that way, are much easier to portion out, and any leftovers can be frozen for those bleak winter days when we have no zucchini to complain about.

Cool Guy and the vegetable story:
Last week, a water line broke in our neighborhood.  We had no water for 8 hours.  Come lunchtime, I had nothing to offer.  Oh, we had PBJ and milk, but no way of washing up, and the kitchen was a shambles from breakfast dishes still to be done.  And then there was the toilet issue.  Couldn't flush, and Cool Guy was refusing to go.  So I made a command decision to Go Out for Lunch.  My decision, my choice, so we went to the Indian place in town, which has a lunch buffet.  Lucky us.

We were a bit early, so the buffet was a bit bare at first.  No fritters, no rice pudding, no naan.  So Cool Guy took some tandoori chicken and something that looked like gravy.  Boy, did he dig that gravy.  I made the mistake of asking the waitress about the "gravy," at which she replied, "it's only spinach."  Well, that did it.  Not another bite of gravy passed Cool Guy's lips.

 I reminded him of DW, the Picky Eater, (an excellent, funny book that everyone should read) but still no dice.  Ah, well, it was good while it lasted.  And so you can understand my gilding the zucchini bread with chocolate, which was quite good.  Try some yourself, and throw in some chocolate to convert the natives, if needed.

Granola Girl

Does this make me a crunchy mom?  The fact that I make granola?  Do any of you dear readers make granola?  Do you know how easy it is?  And how good?  And how good for you?

What I like best about granola, besides how good it is, is that it makes a ton at once, and then for several weeks, I have at my fingertips the making for a very healthy, very quick, breakfast.

Let's face it: the boys and I don't share the same tastes.  Cool Guy could happily eat oatmeal every morning of the year, and he does ask for it for breakfast every night before he goes to bed.  Wish he could remember to brush his teeth as faithfully as he remembers to ask for oatmeal.  But after awhile, oatmeal pales for me.  I sometimes try to jazz it up a little, like last week, when I added rhubarb to the oatmeal pot, and thought Cool Guy was going to have to miss school because he was so incensed with my tinkering.

I guess granola is my way of tinkering with oatmeal so that it's not just oatmeal that I've ruined, but is something else entirely.

I've tried several different "recipes" of granola, and by far, my favorite is King Arthur flour's Maple Granola.  All granolas I've made have been good, if I do say so myself, but this one is superior.  It is perfect in its ratio of nuts, fruits, and grain, and is sweetened perfectly.

I never, ever have the exact ingredients called for in the recipe, so I make substitutions like mad, and each batch comes out differently, and always good.  This time, I used pumpkin seeds instead of sunflower seeds, and pecans rather than walnuts.  I cut out the coconut entirely because I do not like coconut at all, ever.  And I don't add the powdered milk - don't like that either.  For fruit, I used apricots, dried cherries, and dried cranberries.  A little heavier on the cranberries than the other fruits.  And I got to use some maple syrup from the local farmer's market.  It's available right now and very reasonably priced.  Sometimes, I use dry roasted peanuts, and that makes a good addition.  And I always throw in a handful of ground flaxseed to bump up the Omega-3's.

Another twist in preparation, is that I throw the whole mess into one 13 x 9 baking dish rather than portion it out between two jelly roll pans.  I do this because my rotten, lousy oven is too small to accommodate a jelly roll pan.  I have never had a problem with baking it all in my one pan, and it makes the process that much easier.

Yes, making granola is an investment in time, though most of the time is baking time, where I just plop down and watch a movie (wish) while it bakes.  But you've got to be around for it, to stir it around, and then you've got a big bowl to wash, and some containers to find to hold it all, but it is so worth it!.

This morning, another oatmeal day, before I put the water on to boil, I measured out 1/4 cup of granola into my bowl and 1/4 of lowfat vanilla yogurt.  I mixed that together, sliced a banana and mixed that in.  The granola gets a chance to soften a little, which I like, while the boys' oatmeal is cooking.  When their oatmeal is ready, so is my granola, and we sit down and eat together.  They're happy, I'm happy.

Do my boys like granola?  In a word, no.  When it comes out of the oven, they snick little tastes, but once I've put it in containers and offer it for breakfast, they want nothing to do with it.  Go figure.  I just tell them that their tastes aren't mature enough yet.  Burt loves it, and I love it, so I say, More for us.

Print out this recipe from King Arthur.  Get some ingredients together.  Give yourself a evening to make it, and then you can spend the next few weeks congratulating yourself on how frugal and healthy your breakfast is.

My Third Favorite Coffeecake

My first favorite is rhubarb.  My second is blueberry buckle.  And third place goes to (drumroll) Peach - recipe is here.  In truth, peaches are my favorite fruit of all time, but, sadly, a little something is lost between the fresh peach picked from the tree and frozen peaches that I must use at this time of the year.  Also, though the peaches are dandy in this coffeecake, don't get me wrong, nothing, nothing can compare with a peach off the tree.

We are very lucky to be living in a part of the country where fresh peaches grow well.  We have two trees in our backyard, and last summer, I was on-the-ball enough to put bird netting over the trees before the squirrels stole all my peaches.  One variety is white and clingstone, and the other is orange and freestone.  Both are equally delicious.

Peaches give you lots of vitamins, like A, and some fiber, and not much in calories.  And this coffeecake combines the good of peaches with the good of whole grains and it is tasty, crumbly, cinnamony, moist.  There's nothing not to like.  It's just not fresh peaches, so of course I'm disappointed.

My boys, though, any morning that they get out of bed and find out that coffee cake is cooling on the counter, are NOT disappointed.  They very much enjoyed this two days in a row, especially when accompanied by some bacon or fried smoked sausages.  Add some milk, maybe some juice, or even coffee, and your morning is set for success.

Another thing about the peach coffee cake is that I had the final slice on the third day of its existence, and it was still just as moist as on the first day.  I think that, more than anything, is what the peaches do for the coffee cake.

What I especially like about this recipe is that it makes two cakes.  So we eat one, and I double wrap the other and freeze it so that I have a super easy breakfast sometime in the near future.

Full disclosure: I began making this at 5:45, and the boys ate it at 7:15.  This is not a quick meal - probably better for the weekend.  But sometimes weekends around here are even more hectic, so I decided to do this on one of those early-rising mornings.  Don't regret it at all.

Roughy

The name for my new fruit salad: Roughy.  It's like a Smoothie, but it's not smooth - get it? 

The point is that sometimes it takes clever marketing to make things appealing to the Younger Generation.  "Fruit Salad" just doesn't stir excitement in my boys' souls.  I guess I could have called it "Wookie yum-yums," or some such, but I've got a little dignity left.  After making this salad, I realized that what I put into the bowl was exactly what I would have put into the blender if we were having smoothies.

And under the guise of Roughy, this salad got eaten.  Not that is wasn't delicious on its own, but it looked suspicious, being an amalgamation of things all mixed up together.

I served this fruit salad with oatmeal (again) for the boys and with a leftover scone for me.  Here's how I made it.

Roughy

1. Take whatever fresh fruit you have on hand (I had oranges, apples, and bananas) and cut them into bite-sized chunks.  I didn't peel the apple, and no one protested.

2. Throw in some dried fruit.  I used a handful of dried cherries and a handful of dried cranberries.

3. Stir in enough vanilla yogurt to cover all the fruit well.

That's it!  And it got eaten and requested again.

If I had had some canned pineapple, I would have used it.  I only used one of each fruit, but this could be infinitely expanded.  Total time was minimal.  I started the salad while the oatmeal was cooking, and while the boys were putting on their oatmeal toppings, I finished up the salad.  It could also be made ahead, thus allowing the dried fruit to soften a little.

Now and Later

I love chocolate-covered cherries, and I love Black Forest chocolate cake, and I love the even easier take on it, a moist chocolate cake with a can of cherry pie filling mixed in.  I simply cannot think of any better combo than chocolate and cherries.

Another thing I love is scones.  Here's why:

• They're easier than biscuits
• They seem so much fancier
• I can make a whole batch and freeze half for later and it will be just as good.

When I found a recipe for chocolate-cherry scones, I thought "what's not to love?"  Even better, these are not terribly bad for you, being made with whole grains.  At least, while having the melty chocolate and dried cherries surrounded by a rich crumb, I know that I'm getting in some protein, fiber, antioxidants.

This recipe makes 16 scones, way more than we can or should eat in a morning. (Note: the recipe I linked to is not exactly the one I used, but very similar.  Mine came from King Arthur.  My batch of scones used barley flour instead of whole wheat, and I used almond extract instead of vanilla.  I was out of vanilla.  Almond worked just fine.)  What I do for scones and also biscuits is go ahead and roll out the dough and cut it, and then take what I'm not going to eat right away and put that on a baking sheet.  I put the baking sheet in the freezer until the dough is frozen and then I bag the scones up for the freezer.  Whenever I want them, I just pull out what I want and bake it just like normal, maybe adding a minute or two.

Scones are easier than biscuits mainly because you just pat out the dough rather than roll it, and you just cut wedges rather than use a biscuit cutter.  But easier isn't the same as easy.  They do take some time, and you've got to use a pastry cutter and get your hands dirty - unless you have a food processor, which I don't.  But the hour that I invested this weekend makes a pretty special breakfast treat for three breakfasts around here.  I'm definitely serving these on Valentine's Day.  My love letter to my family.

If this weren't my favorite combination, I think I'd find some version of scones that was irresistable to moi, and bake some/freeze some.  We have some dark winter mornings ahead, and this can be just sort of thing to make a day more special.

A Bagel Story

We had bagels this morning, but not just any bagels.  No, these bagels come with a story, which I hope you will be patient with as I indulge in a little nostalgia.

In the mid-1980's, I was a pledge at a social sorority at Oklahoma State University.  Every Monday evening, while the members of the sorority had their chapter meeting, the pledges of all the houses participated in an institution known as "Coke Date."  All the pledges  in my house - and we were dressed in church clothes - lined up shortest to tallest, meaning that I was first in line.  Then the pledges from a fraternity (it rotated week by week) would be lined up the same way, shortest to tallest, at our front door.  We paired off, me with the first (shortest) boy in line, and so on.  I have no idea what happened if there were more girls than boys or vice versa.  That problem fell to the tall ones.  Then we would walk, two by two, on a Coke Date, to keep ourselves occupied while our elders took care of the important business of the house.

Many, many times, our Coke Date was a trip to a bagel place on the main drag in Stillwater.  At that time, bagels were not common fare in Oklahoma.  I cannot remember ever having one until the Coke Dates.  Monday at this bagel place was 2 for 1 night, a promotion ploy I imagine that was concocted with the Coke Dates in mind.  Anyway, we would line up, and proceed conveyer-line style through the place, getting a foil-wrapped bagel shoved at us, and then on to the Dr. Pepper station.  (Yes, it's called Coke Date, but Dr. Pepper reigned.)

Monday night, therefore, would find us, in a strict, formulaic ritual, partnered with a total stranger of the opposite sex, who paired well according to height,  munching our bagels, sipping our DP's, and being with Everyone at this bagel joint, having a memorable time of it.  It was fun, and I met some very nice, short, young men during that time, but it also seems so quaint, even foreign to me now.  Really, what a bizarre thing it was!

The bagels, though, were fantastic.  Remember, I had never had one before.  These were just your basic white (who at that time had even heard of an Everything Bagel?), with cream cheese and very thin slices of ham sandwiched in the middle.  They were wrapped in foil and kept warm, and the combination of the chewy bread, the melty, messy cheese, and the salty ham was just unforgettable.  And I've never forgotten, though I don't think I can remember one boy who provided me with these beauties.

When I make bagels for breakfast, I like to replicate my college treat and remember that very exciting, world-expanding, eye-opening period of my life.

Stillwater Bagels

1. For each bagel, spread both halves with cream cheese.  I like to use Neufchatel, as it's lower in fat.  And nowadays, I use whole wheat bagels.

2. Place 3 or so slices of thin, deli ham on one half and top with the other half.

3. Wrap in foil, and put in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

4. Have lots of napkins handy, unwrap, and enjoy!

You could get the bagels assembled the night before, wrap them and refrigerate, although assembly is very quick the morning of.  But if you're pressed for time, it works fine.  Then it's only a 10-minute breakfast.

Carpe Piem

(Note: no picture today, due to operator error.  I shot a movie of a pie sitting on the counter on accident, and then deleted it, again, on accident.)

Yes!  We had apple pie for breakfast, and I'd do it again.  Not that it happens much around here, but Monday was a holiday.  I ran the boys all over town getting errands done, had Cool Guy do some reading for me, sent the boys outside to have their Nerf Gun war outside, and finally, it was mid-afternoon, and each boy had settled in for some cave time: Encyclopedia to the computer for one of his empire-building computer games, and Cool Guy to watch some of the 20 or so Tom and Jerrys that he DVR-ed.  (The kid has a love-affair with the DVR button.)  We were having leftovers for dinner so no cooking to be done in that department, and there was no basketball practice or gymnastics as per usual on Monday afternoons and evenings.  In short, I had time.

Burt loves, loves pie.  He has pie for his birthday cake.  If we go to a fancy restaurant, he orders pie for dessert.  And he would get it more at home except that I rarely make dessert, and he asked me once if I could please, please make homemade crust when I make pie.  It's a lot of work, and there's rarely time.

But today, there was time.  I put on a podcast, heard just above the T & J on the TV, and started rolling crust.  These pies of mine are never pretty, always a bit lopsided with jagged edges.  But inside, a pile of diced apples mixed with spices, vanilla and a little cream, and the crust - oh, my, it was so perfect and crumbly and melt-in-your-mouth, if I do say so myself.  The filling recipe was much like this one, but I used a double crust.

I don't even want to think what the calories were or the fat in that crust.  So, we're livin' high.  But I can rationalize pie in the morning this way.

• It has fruit in it, so there's got to be a healthy element.
• The whole pie only had 1/2 cup of sugar.  Surely a slice has less than a bowl of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.
• Served with a slice of cheddar or some meat, it works for keeping us going in the morning.
• It's super-fast in the morning.  Slice and eat.

We'll only have it today because it will be gone by tomorrow.  Carpe Piem.

Ham and Corn Pudding

I woke this morning without my throat screaming at me every time I swallowed.  I got up and wasn't dizzy.  I made coffee and didn't feel that I had to rest after doing so.  I'm on the road to recovery!  Now, I'm going to be honest, here: I don't mind being just a teeny tiny bit sick once or twice a year if it will allow me to lie in bed and read all day long guilt-free, but this wasn't what I had in mind at all.  I felt awful for three days, and there's no glamour in feeling too rotten to do anything for three stinkin' days.

So, on to breakfast.  I haven't been to the store in almost a month, and we're scraping the bottom of the barrell.  We have oatmeal, sure, but I didn't want oatmeal again today (though  Burt and Cool Guy would).  What we have in abundance is ham, loads of ham.

I decided to try something new, Corn and Ham Pudding, a recipe from the Meal Makeover Moms, two dietitians who have children with typical children's tastes.  Their recipes are designed to be

• healthy, or at least healthier than the original recipes
• quick and easy to cook with ingredients that real people have on hand
• something that real kids will eat without making faces

I like listening to their podcast, and I subscribe to their email newsletter, but I have never tried a recipe.  But today, feeling much better, I was ready to explore new territory. 

I didn't have lean deli ham, just leftover ham, which I trimmed the fat from, and I didn't have lowfat Swiss cheese, but instead had locally-made Swiss - fabulous and most definitely not lowfat.  I'm OK with that.  And I didn't have my corn thawed (and microwave is broken.)  Otherwise, I followed the recipe verbatim.  I usually do the first time I try something.

If the ham and cheese were already cut up, it would take just a minute to mix together, but you need to allow 40 minutes for it to bake and then a little more time for it to set, so this is not a quick breakfast.  Save it for the weekend or one of those early-rising days.

It smelled fabulous as it was cooking, and it looked pretty good coming out.  The judgement was that Burt and I liked it pretty well, but we liked it even better when we smothered it with picante sauce.  We like picante with our eggs.  The surprise was Encyclopedia, who is suspicious of anything new, and I was sure that after his one no-thank-you bite, he'd move on to the cereal, but he tried it and then got a HUGE helping.  And this is the boy who never likes ANYTHING that is "all mixed together."  Cool Guy just wasn't going to try anything this morning.  He drank his juice, ate his orange, and declared himself full.  He can try it again another time, because it will appear again at our table.

I like that in one easy dish, we had eggs, meat, cheese, and a vegetable, if you count corn as a vegetable, which I do, needing all the wiggle room I can get to meet my daily veggie quota.  Picante sauce is a veggie, too.

You Say Tomato, I Say To-mah-to

No, I didn't serve tomatoes this morning.  Or potato po-tah-tos.  We had hard boiled eggs, one of my favorite breakfasts.

What I want to talk about is how different things are done in different families, and hard boiled eggs are a case in point.

The way I grew up, we peeled them, sat at the table with salt and pepper shakers, sprinkled those on, and munched away, using more salt and pepper as needed.  De-lightful.

Burt's family proceeds entirely differently: They put the eggs on a plate, roughly chop them, and then put pats of butter, plus some salt and pepper, and eat them with a fork.  De-licious.

I think one of the most interesting things in life is finding different ways of doing every-day, ordinary things.  De-lovely.

Are there other ways to eat hard boiled eggs? 

Both methods are equally good, but my way has the advantage of allowing a little flexibility for cooking and serving.  Burt's way requires the eggs to be quite hot, as in right off the stove, to have enough heat for the butter to melt.  I eat my plain hard boiled eggs hot, room temp, or cold.  It's all good to me.  And since I have a rotten, miserable cold right now and plan on crawling back into bed the moment I start feeling bad again, I think I'll go with the flexibility of the plain eggs today.

(Just a note: neither boy has yet taken to hard boiled eggs, but both like eggs in general now.  I'm suspecting that they just haven't had enough during all those cold cereal years, so I continue to make them once a month or so, serve the no-thank-you bite, plan on using the rejected eggs for tuna salad, and get on with things.  Mom-sick days are fine ones for the boys to pour their own cereal.)

This morning's eggs were served with whole wheat English muffins with honey, and a mandarin orange.

I Never Would Have Dreamed Up This One

Sometimes, it just takes the outlandishness in a child to spark some creativity.  Last night, as I was baking potatoes for the  next day's breakfast, Cool Guy asked, as usual, if we could have oatmeal for breakfast.  (I think I mentioned that he's on an oatmeal jag right now and asks for oatmeal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  He gets it about 50 % of the time for breakfast and lunch.)  Anyway......

Cool Guy: "Mom, can we have oatmeal for breakfast tomorrow?"

Me: "No, I'm baking potatoes right now for fried potatoes in the morning."

CG: "How about potato skins?" 

Well, how about potato skins?  Never had em for breakfast, never heard of em for breakfast, but so what?  They have potatoes, bacon, cheese, and they make boys happy.

Except I've never made them before.  I woke fairly early and already had the potatoes baked.  "This will be easy," I thought, anticipating extra time to do a little early morning web surfing.  One hour later, I'm just about ready to get the skins in the oven for cheese melting and muttering that this is the LAST TIME I'll ever make potato skins.

Until Cool Guy takes his first bite.  He is almost doing cartwheels, he likes it so much.  I am, too.  Who knew they could be this good?

Will I make them again?  Definitely.  Will I do it on a regular basis?  Probably not.  Way too time-consuming for daily fare, but for a weekend, holiday, birthday, snow day, how about potato skins?

(Note: I used the recipe from The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  I didn't have any green onions on hand, which I'm sure was fine with the boys, and I had baked the potatoes the night before.  I baked one potato per person, plus one, making 5, and I cooked only three strips of bacon, which was plenty.  A tiny dollop of sour cream (reduced fat) was perfect.)