Breakfast & Brunch

Happy Birthday to Me!

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Image by Prawny from Pixabay

Today’s my birthday, so I can write what I want! So first of all I’m going to say that my dear friend Cecelia (and many others feel the same) always said that she considered her birthday to be the start of a new year for her. Guess what? I turned 70 today. Is that even possible? Jim and I went out for breakfast and walked about four miles total to and from. It was fun! And it was a good start to my plan to walk EVERY DAY IN APRIL. Then, as a reward, I’m going to walk EVEN MORE by climbing The Incline at Manitou Springs. Glutton for punishment, that’s me.

I also have my menu nailed down for Saturday’s Cherry Creek Chorale breakfast. (I had said I was going to do a crepe bar twice this month but realized that I needed something simpler and more finger-food-friendly for the choir’s event, as we’re still supposed to kind of disperse during breaks so that the “aerosols” can dissipate. People need to be able to wander around with their food and eat it on the hoof, as it were.)

So here’s what we’re going to have:

Fruit (brought my one of my gallant helpers)
Dried apple slices (ditto)
GF treats (ditto)
Hard-boiled eggs (me)
Energy bites (me)
Many mini muffins (me)

Plus coffee and juice

This is so much simpler than the big extravaganzas I used to have, when I’d haul out the chafing dishes and have some kind of hot breakfast casserole. Those days may or may not come again. We’ll see.

Here are the recipes I’m using:

Sally’s Baking Addiction applesauce muffins—the recipe makes 12, but I’m putting them in mini-muffin tins and so will get 36. That’s probably enough with everything else, but I may also make the cranberry ones from my cookbook.

Pumpkin Energy Bites and Raw Vegan Carrot Cake Bites—these little balls are no-bake (although decided not no-work) and endlessly adaptable. I plan to use almond butter in one and peanut butter in the other. They can be made ahead and frozen or refrigerated.

Have a great beginning to April, but no not-so-funny pranks tomorrow, and come back next week for yet another tweaked salad dressing and a report on how the breakfast went. Coming up: Easter breakfast at my church for about 100. The fun never stops!

A Great Recipe from Yesterday’s Breakfast

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Yesterday we have our last all-church breakfast before going to our fall schedule. We had perhaps 60-70 people, and it went very well. I used a recipe from my cookbook, “Simplified Southwestern Casserole.” I added some fresh chopped poblano peppers and some frozen corn kernels. It was a huge hit! The cheese and veggies can be prepped ahead of time and spread out in the pans, thus leaving only the mixing of the cornmeal mixture for the last minute. You can see in the picture that I used the disposable half-size pans to bake the casseroles. Each one of them holds 1 1/2 times the recipe, so I made six times the recipe for four panfuls. We have one pan left over, but that missing section represents the depredations we made this morning for our own breakfast. I will probably freeze the rest in individual serving-size baggies.

As we head into the fall and (we all fervently hope) a somewhat-normal season, you might be well advised to keep this casserole in mind, as well as all the other recipes and ideas I have for feeding large groups.

Note: My cookbook is also available on Amazon.

Upcoming Food Events

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Image by Uwe Conrad from Pixabay

If there were any doubt about my love of cooking for crowds, my sense of anticipation as I head into August would end it. I have two events for that month. The smaller event is a meet-and-greet for my beloved Cherry Creek Chorale. I’ll make some cookies and also one of my savory cheesecakes from my cookbook. Someone else will bring fruit and bottled water. This food will very much fit into the “food as fellowship” role. We’ll be meeting at 6:30, so after dinner. The food is simply a reason, an excuse, for people to come early, stand around, and talk. All perfectly legitimate.

The bigger event will be the last of the pre-service breakfasts being served at my church. We started these in April, and they’ve been very successful. Once we’re into September our schedule will change and these events will be over for the time being. So I’m planning on a big blowout, perhaps making one of my sweet-roll variations and also doing a bangup version of hash browns, using the magical freeze-dried ones from Costco and building from there. I’ll do sausages and fruit, too. It’ll be great.

And with that I’ll be plunging into a somewhat-normal year. We’re planning to start up our regular four-concerts-a-year schedule for the Chorale, with the first performances in October. I’m not sure what the post-concert receptions are going to look like this year, but I’m hoping for a return on that front. I’ll be doing the retreat breakfasts as usual. We aren’t having the Chorale picnic this year, but I’m sure there will be an annual dinner next May. The church women’s retreat is in October and the Christmas dinner/party in December. On the whole I’ll probably be in charge of one big event per month through next May. Woo-hoo!

I love the idea of planning out the menus and drawing up the shopping lists. Yes, there will be times for each of these events when I’ll be tired and tempted to cut an item or two from the lineup. I’m hoping, though, to put into effect the lessons I’ve learned over the many years I’ve been doing this: doing as much as possible ahead of time, resisting the temptation to say “oh, I’ll just finish it up in the morning,” and doing due diligence on delegating.

If you’d like to get the recipes for the dark beer brownies or the savory lemon cheesecake that I plan to make for the chorale get-together, be sure to get my cookbook!

How Did the Celebratory Church Breakfast Go?

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Image by Bruno /Germany from Pixabay

Splendidly, that’s how. Remember the story of the plague of locusts that descended on Egypt in the Old Testament book of Exodus? Well, the nicest-possible locusts (we’ll say a swarm and not a plague) pretty much vacuumed up the food that I and my helpers made for yesterday’s before-church breakfast to celebrate our once again meeting as a full church. It was fabulous!

So here’s what I did, and here’s the one glitch I had (which I still haven’t figured out completely)—

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What I Had for Breakfast–Oatmeal with All the Trimmings

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photo by Debi Simons

Continuing on in my occasional posts about what I’ve eaten lately, here’s a picture (yes, one I took myself—you can tell because it’s so terrible) of yesterday’s breakfast. It contained:

  • Old-fashioned oatmeal, cooked right in the bowl using the microwave, 1/2 cup of oatmeal to 1 cup water and a pinch of salt, nuked maybe 3 minutes on 50% power, stirred, then another 2 minutes or so, with perhaps a final 30 seconds on full power. Takes a little more time and attention than quick oats and quite a bit more than instant oats, but they’re well worth it because of their nice chewy consistency, their lack of added ingredients, and their slower digestion that results in less of a blood-sugar spike. The more processed a grain is, the quicker its carbs get dumped into the bloodstream. Plus, it’s almost impossible to find instant oats (which need only to be mixed with boiling water, as they’re pre-cooked) that don’t have lots of added flavorings and, especially, sugar. OF oats are a nice compromise between quick oats (which have thinner flakes and are partially pre-cooked) and steel-cut oats (which take around 20 minutes of stovetop cooking). I like them when they’re not cooked to mush.
  • Walnuts, which I toasted briefly in a pan with a little dab of butter and the tiniest sprinkle of brown sugar. They could have just been used plain, which I often do, straight from the freezer.
  • A pat of butter. Yes, butter.
  • Another tiny sprinkle of brown sugar. (Not really necessary.)
  • Some dried date bits, which I almost always have on hand. These are extruded ground dates dusted with oat flour so they won’t stick together, available online and at places such as Sprouts, and are much less expensive than regular dates. They add sweetness and texture. If you don’t have them you could use raisins. (That’s what my husband does, anyway. I hate raisins.)
  • Some half-and-half. You could also use whole milk. Please, no skim milk! If you’re on the anti-dairy bandwagon you could use oat milk, I guess, for a matching set. Or almond milk, or soy milk. Honestly, though, there’s nothing wrong with good old cow’s milk, and nut milks typically have less protein than regular dairy. They may or may not have fewer calories, depending on which variety you use, but your aim should be nutrition and satiety, especially for breakfast.

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Some Great Breakfast Ideas

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Great breakfasts around here this week! Remember the principle that you frontload your day, eating a hearty breakfast and then a lighter lunch and an even lighter dinner, with no evening snacking. This morning I threw together a rather complicated crustless quiche that used up most of a container of spinach that I had foolishly bought last week and the rest of an opened log of goat cheese. I will point out that soft goat cheese is richer and tangier than regular cream cheese—as well as being more expensive, of course. But I buy mine at Costco, and although it comes in a two-pack I think the unopened log will stay good for a while. So I found a recipe this morning for “Quick and Easy Spinach Quiche,” using fresh spinach instead of frozen (because that was what I had) and goat cheese for the cream cheese (ditto). And I didn’t have a pastry shell sitting around, all rolled out and ready to go, so that wasn’t in the mix. I just sprayed the pie pan with Pam and sprinkled panko breadcrumbs into it, sautéed the onions until browned and then added the chopped-up spinach and cooked until it wilted, let that cool while I crumbled up the goat cheese into the pie pan, mixed up the milk and eggs, and grated the cheese (which happened to be Gouda but could be cheddar or any other flavorful grating cheese). Everything went into the pan and it baked for about 45 minutes at 3250. I realize that not everyone has that kind of time in the mornings, but I like to get up early and can put together somewhat elaborate breakfasts. Jim and I ate about half of it.

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A Lovely, Festive Holiday Sweet Roll Recipe—That’s Not Too Sweet!

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Closeup of cranberry walnut rolls
photo: Jim Simons

For the main dish at the Cherry Creek Chorale’s Saturday-morning rehearsal breakfast, I’m making my old reliable Union Square Breakfast Casserole. I didn’t make enough of my Caramel-Apple French Toast casseroles last time; I think for this event I’ll make a six-fold batch. But . . . I have some nice ham on hand that I need to use up, so I’m just going to dice that up and use it instead of the Italian sausage called for, and I’m going to make 1/3 (so two panfuls) without the ham so it can be vegetarian/kosher. I won’t have to brown sausage, which is a whole step in the recipe. [Also, later update: I didn’t do the fresh mushrooms, nor did I cube the bread. The casseroles were pretty thrown together, but they tasted great.] You do need to follow the recipe for the egg/milk proportions and for the basic amount of bread, but beyond that you can do pretty much what you want. Which I did!

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Breakfast For a Crowd—Lessons Learned and a New Recipe

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Image by Pezibear from Pixabay

This previous Saturday the Cherry Creek Chorale held the first of four special Saturday-morning rehearsals as we prepare for our October concert. To add a note of conviviality—and to encourage attendance—breakfast is traditionally served at 8:30 before we get to work at 9:00. It’s always hard to know how many attendees to plan for, as it seems to be the case that since Saturday counts as somewhat of a “makeup” rehearsal that can replace a regular one (and we’re supposed to miss no more than two regular rehearsals for any given concert), some people

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Special Cranberry-Maple Muffins

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cranberry maple muffinI have struggled and struggled with this recipe, as the muffins tasted really good but didn’t rise very well. It seemed to me as if the issue must be with the leavening. If you have acidic ingredients such as buttermilk, as my original recipe did, then you’re supposed to use baking soda instead of baking powder, but the recipe called for baking powder. So I’ve tried a number of different leavening amounts and combinations, but I never was quite satisfied with the results. After one especially disastrous experiment I got a Sally’s Baking Addiction post in my inbox (she’s one of only three cooking websites to which I subscribe) that was basically her version of this recipe, although with different spices. Boy, would it have been helpful if she’d 

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Complicated-but-Good Harvest Muffins

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many muffinsI would highly recommend these muffins, and you could leave off the topping if you want them to have less sugar.  The amount in the muffins themselves isn’t too bad.  You do have to measure a fair number of spices and grate apples.  I kept trying to talk myself out of putting in the apples when I made this recipe for the first time, as I didn’t want to bother, but I decided I’d better go ahead and include them and I was glad I did.  The combination of the pumpkin and the apple is really good, and the apples are probably counted as part of the liquid in the recipe.  So it’s kind of a pain, but worth it.  These probably aren’t muffins that you’d whip up for a regular weekday breakfast, but they’re very nice for a special occasion.

To get the recipe, follow this link: https://www.intentional-hospitality.com/complicated-but-good-harvest-muffins/